I've been working on some posts-mostly about French culture and such- but can't manage finish anything. Spring has sprung in the French Alps and I can't seem to keep still in front of a screeen. I'd much rather be outside admiring my bright yellow crocus patch...

The addition to the house ? Well, the builders have got all the doors and windows on and put the interior wood panelling in. Their work is done.

Lucky dogs.

Now there's lots for us to do. JP will do as much as he can by himself, with a bit of help from a neighbor and maybe our kids.

What's left?

Flooring (insulation and then stratified floorboards)

Heat (drill hole through kitchen wall and add on a radiator out in the new room)

Paint (one ugly cement wall which used to be the exterior of the west side of the house)

Light (Agree on, purchase and put up some light fixtures!)

Varnish (interior walls and ceiling with transparent UV protection)

More varnish (exterior+shutters+the carport)

So, plenty to do there.

The REALLY big news is that Tya is leaving for Germany.... at 2am this Saturday morning. That's only about 16 hours from now! She's leaving on a bus with a bunch of classmates and some teachers. They'll all be lodged with various host families in a small town not far from Berlin. Tya's very excited. She'll only be gone a week, so expect a full report on her blog very soon.

I'm back and giving this another try ONLY because I talked to my mom on the phone last night (plain old phone-no Skype. SO primitive!). She patiently pointed out to me that Germany is chock-full of people that use German keyboards and they all mostly ok. Really. No reports of mass keyboard-induced insanity are flooding in from the place. So, it only stands to reason that with a bit of time and courage, I too could master the dreaded beast.
And so I have, pretty much.
Thanks, mom!
I'm not saying that this is quick or fun, but I'm managing. And it sure beats being out of touch with all my cyber friends! Thanks so much for the messages of sympathy and support. Your comments, as Garrison Keillor says of Powdermilk Biscuits, "give shy persons the strength they need to get up and do what needs to be done". (Replace the word "shy" with "fearful of German keyboards and very slow, elderly computers" and it fits perfectly.)

The main news to report around here is that we have SNOW! It started in the night as the rain pattering on the roof above my bed suddenly went silent. It was 3am and I thought, "It must be snowing." Then I thought "OMG! I forgot to shut off the water to the outside faucet! It's going to freeze and burst!" This dreadful idea was enough to send me rocketing out of my bed and out into the snowy night wearing my pyjamas. I went down into the cellar and got the water turned off. That was the easy part. I still needed to drain out the upper part of the pipe. This involved kneeling in the snow beside the house, pushing over a large cement drain cover and reaching down into the dark, damp depths to open a spigot at the base of the pipe.
In the light of day in fine weather, this is not an impressively difficult task. But at 3am in a snowstorm, it takes on a certain epic grandeur.
In my opinion.
I guess maybe you had to be there....

I am writing this post on a German laptop, so forgive any errors. The letters are all scrambled and it IS SO SO SO PAINFUL!!!!! bbbAND THE UPPER AND LOWERCASE LETTERS pop in and out WITHOUT NOTICE.

WRETCHED ABOUT COVERS IT.
AND why am i CAMPED OUT IN FRONT OF A PALS COMPUTEr, yOU may well ask

Due to a crazy error on the part of Orange (our internet "server") we have had no internet at home for the last nine days and it will not return until December 11! And considering the fact that this computer is driving me mad, I sincerely doubt Ill be posting much>

I will certainly post the recipe, biut not very soon>>

How can German people stand this torture!!!!!?
NOTHING is where it should be
Poor me. Poor blog.

AARRGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's sadly ironic that a life that a vacation chock-full of fun, outings and general good-times contains SO much material for blogging, but at the same time eats up every moment that could possibly be used to blog about it.
I've missed my blog this last week, but what's a girl to do? After we got back from a great time in Germany, our friends (ex-Ouaga neighbors) T and K arrived from Bamako with their two lovely moppets, Zoe and Francis. They're staying for about a week and we're determined to show them all the nice things there are to see in our part of the French Alps.
And that's a lot of nice things...

Yesterday, we went to Chamonix, took the little train and then the telecabin up Mont Blanc to the Mer de Glace glacier. We went into the ice cave dug into the base of it and it was "cool" in all senses of the word. (I promise some pics asap)

Today, we went to the very beautiful Annecy Lake and spent the day swimming.

I haven't loaded the pictures yet from any of this. All I've got is a few belated photos of our time in Germany. Here, for your viewing pleasure:




My maiden name is Kolb, so I found the "Kolb's Biergarten" extremely entertaining. They make nice schitzel and serve very, very large beers, which is, I guess, par for the course in a German biergarten.

Here's a view of the place.

It was in a town called Worms, which is kind of sad for them.

(Yes, I know you say it "Vorms", but still...)

What really went on in Jurassic Park :

(Apparently, it was WAY more fun than the movie made it look)

And finally, here are the girls and their cousin walking along the Rhine:
That's all I've got today, but I'll try to post again soon...

As we crossed the border into Germany this morning, I noticed an exit ramp to the right marked 'Ausfahrt'. A little ways further, I noticed another, and then another.

My! What a lot of exits to get to the city of 'Ausfahrt'!
I started to envision a bustling metropolis to rival Paris.

It was, in fact, an embarrassingly long time before I finally figured out my mistake and quietly asked JP : 'Umm...What does 'ausfahrt' mean'?"
By all rights, I should have added in a resigned and chastened voice "It's not a city, is it?', but it was all just too humiliating.

As you, Clever Reader, probably guessed immediately, 'ausfahrt' is a German word that translates as 'drive out'.
In short: exit.

And yes, I am a non German-speaking complete doofus.
Thank you for asking.

Luckily, I have the world's nicest cousins here. Not ony can they get by in German, they live on a huge, mega-cool US military base. No German required!
In fact, we spent today completely immersed in American culture. We had lunch at Taco Bell, which Valentine loved. It's her favorite restaurant, ever. And we had a shopping spree at the BX ,which everyone loved. Think Pop Tarts and Dr.Pepper. I bought WAY too much and have no real clue how I'm going to stuff all the gorceries plus our baggage back into the car for the drive back to France. Maybe if we send the kids home by bus...

The only slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect day was the messed-up, hours long dinner at an on-base, non-Taco Bell restaurant. We waited ages to get a table and when we finally did, our waitress turned out to be a sort of odd, slightly manic young person. She wielded a giant pepper mill and shared her name with us by writing it with no less than three crayons, all across the top of our table. Yet despite her mad pepper grinding skillz and constant, desperately convivial chatter, she couldn't manage to get the order straight or convince the kitchen to give us our tepid food in less than an hour.
It wasn't all the waitresses fault, of course. I suspected strange goings-ons in the kitchen that could probably be remedied by a nice long visit from Gordon Ramsay.

Tomorrow, we venture off -base and search for local color. We couldn't have better or kinder guides. They've already proposed such delights as a visit to a castle and attending a local festival, complete with beer and fireworks. It all sounds great and should be lots of fun.

Phase I of our summer holiday is nearly complete. I have exhausted every entertainment option with a two hours' drive of my home.

It's time to move on...

Phase II involves driving up to Lorraine, the home territory of JP. It's sort of the opposite of Provence, in terms of climate, beauty and touristicality. (Yes, I did make up that last word. Thank you.) But it does have the great advantage to being a stone's throw (if you're feeling like a bit of vandalism) away from Belgium, Luxembourg and also, if you have a good throwing arm, Germany. So, if you have a car, there's lots of possibilities for outings and adventures.

And we're always up for some of that!



After a week visiting with JP's family, we'll head over to Germany and see some of my family. I won't go into the whole story again (if you missed it the first time around, click the link), but we'll be staying with Mike and his family on a US military base there! Should be interesting and fun. Êxpect a full report when I get back...

That reminds me- being at my MIL's place is like going to a research station in Antarctica.
No- wait.
It's actually FAR MORE isolated than that. My MIL not only does not have a compuer chez elle, NOBODY she knows does. There's no place in the whole village where we can even check our emails. The only possibility for occasionally clutching at our cyber-lifeline is a rare trip to an internet café in a village about half an hour away. But it's very small (often completely full) and has odd opening hours.

All this to say that I will probably not post much for the next week. Once I get to Germany, I'll be back in "civilization", though, and will no doubt post a bit from the computer of Cousin Mike.



What have we been doing since we got back from the South of France?

Too much to tell, almost. We've been swimming a lot and getting out to local events. One of note was an outdoor sound and light show, written and produced by folks at the village of Reignier. It was rather bizarre and deserves it's own post, one of these days.

Yesterday, I took the kids to an amusement/water park that's just over and hour's drive from here.

After I took the above picture of the park mascot (a walibi, btw. NOT a kangaroo), Mallory went into quite a long "What's up with THAT?" diatribe about adults foisiting partially-clothed animals upon innocent children. Using Winnie the Pooh and the Walibi park mascot as examples, she pointed out (at length) that having animals (even pretend ones) wear shirts just POINTS out the fact that they don't have any pants. Ick!

If they were completely without clothing, you wouldn't think "Gee, naked animal!". It wouldn't even cross your mind, as animals usually don't wear any clothes-right? But once you start putting polo shirts on them, you are getting into murky territory, as far as Mal is concerned. Either dress them head to toe or leave them starkers, according to her. Otherwise...mega-ick! She got quite excercised about it. "Do they think kids LIKE animals with shirts and no pants? Why would they think that?" Oh dear....

Luckily the water park was nice...and very distracting. She forget her troubles in the clear blue waves. It was very, very crowded, but we didn't care. We were too HOT by then.

Here's Sev posing and looking all sultry for you :

It was pretty nice. Lots to do, such as:

Finally- another picture of Sev, who really will do ANYTHING for a laugh.
After lunch on Monday, he came out to mow the lawn in the above get-up. It was our major LOL of the day.

That's it, I guess. I'll post again when I can.
See you all then!

It's a story of long-lost cousins. Sort of. We're kind of arguing over who was the 'lost' one. He says it's me, but I swear that I knew where I was the whole time and was never lost.


But him? HE was living in Germany, in a place that I can't even pronounce without sounding like I'm trying out for a part in a bad stage production of The Sound of Music.
So, who was lost?
Wasn't me, anyway.

So, the story: There's this guy, living in a town we'll call....Somewhereachtungbaby, Germany. S-town, for short. He's a US citizen, a military officer and a nice guy, from a nice family. His dad back in Idaho calls him up and tells him he ought to get in contact with some woman living in France.
Uh huh.
His dad says "No. Really! Listen! This is a REAL relative. Her father is my first cousin."


Then he reassured his son that he'd actually met the woman, as well as her husband and her numerous offspring and they all seemed like normal, people. Nice, maybe even.


So the nice and dutiful son sent an email to the "real" French relative (that would be me).


What happened next?


Well, the nice guy drove all the way over from S-town with his youngest child and came to spend a couple of days in the Haute Savoie with us. It was a short visit, but a good one. His precocious blonde daughter fit right in with our twins and they created a powerful, triplet-like mass. The weekend was theirs, really.



And Mike, the cousin from Germany? He thought my huge stash of New Scientist was cool (rather than sad and boring) and he started reading them asap. In other words: smart and kind of geeky . And I mean that as the highest praise.



It was interesting talking over "old times" with him. We are about the same age and knew many of the same places and people in our childhood, but seldom met. He was raised elsewhere, but like me, spent long summers out in central Nebraska with the family. He'd stay out on The Farm with his grandparents.
Here's his grandfather, who I knew as my "Uncle Bill". He was my paternal grandfather's only sibling:

Here's my grandmother and my grandfather. I don't have a picture of the two brothers together...
Mike said he liked being around my grandpa and loved the endless stories he would tell if you asked him (and even if you didn't.)

And I certainly loved going over to his grandparent's farm for the day. My grandmother and I would work in the garden, then I'd wander off to chase the cats around in the barn. I'd even occasionally get to ride a horse. "My" horse was Sugarfoot.

Mike would drive the tractor, ride Tinkerbell, drink icy water out of the irrigation hoses... all stuff I never did.

Aunt Marie and Uncle Bill would talk about him whenever I visited, but for some reason, he was never there...

All these years later we finally really connected. Same place at the same time. It's pretty funny that we had to go halfway around the world to do it...

I am very tired.

THIS is why:

Cristian the Romanian Handyman is working 11 hour days. Mine run towards +15 ....
We wouldn't have to work so hard if everything were going smoothly, but smooth is a distant dream these days.

Yesterday, we started putting wax on the 'decorative lime coating' in the living room After the first wall, I knew it was all wrong- there was way too much gray in the blue and it made me feel like I was shortly to be crushed to death in a crippled submarine at the bottom of the ocean.

And that's not how a person wants to feel in his or her own living room, is it?

So, I had to drive back to Leroy Merlin (the big DIY place in a nearby town) for the third time in as many days. I traded in the blue for an ochre color called "Pierre de France" (Stone of France). And my red stencil paint was exchanged for a light sienna shade.

Here's how it's looking:

I'm very pleased, but very, very tired.

And tomorrow promises to be another über-long day. I have to go back yet again to Leroy Merlin and exchange the baseboard paint I bought this morning. I had an entire coat of it applied and then realised that the color just wouldn't work with the Stone of France wall wax. It's so frustrating! If I could just get my act together, this would all be done in a jif.

Suffice it to say that I will not soon be hosting my own home decorating program on French TV.

And finally, some real news: Tya is back from Munich safe and sound, full of tales of adventure! I've been trying to persuade her that she has to write all about it in her blog, which hasn't seen any action since Africa. . .

The Great German Adventure seems to be coming along nicely.
At least, that's the official word from the school hotline dedicated to reassuring nervous persons such as myself. After punching through a series of menus and secret codes, the suffering parent gets to listen to a short message recorded by one of the accompanying teachers.
Yesterday's recording informed me that the bus got to Munich at about 8:30 am, after a long, rather uncomfortable all-night bus trip. After a quick breakfast in a café (Sorry. That would be Kaffeehaus) they got back on the bus and headed over to the famed BMW museum. (I will restrain myself from any further comments on the latter 'attraction'. You all know what I think).
The museum visit was followed by a picnic consisting of the sack lunches the kids had brought along from France. I am hoping it was not a sunny day, as a lunch that endures a long morning in a hot bus generally leads to food poisoning...

And as for the rest of us? Keeping busy, as usual. Especially me. Cristie the Romanian Handyman is back for an encore performance and the house is being transformed. And it needs it, as you can see from these photos. Warning: if you have a heart condition or are just particularly sensitive to scary home-improvement photos, please refrain from viewing the following material...

Not so bad, you are thinking?

Well, what about THIS? This wall is where the sewage from the septic tank leaked through. NOT for the faint-hearted.Here's yet another wall we're dealing with:

Wish us luck!

It's 9:45 pm here and Valentine will soon be boarding the bus to Munich! It's her class trip this year.
Gee! When I was 15, I was beyond thrilled by the occasional trip to Kansas City. That was a Big Deal.

Of course, in light of last week's discoveries regarding what those Germans are getting up to when they're not drinking beer, I'm not all THAT comfortable about her destination .
Why couldn't this year's trip be to Spain, the home of innocuous cooking programs?


But it's out of my hands. All I could do, after I made sure she had an alarm clock, slippers, snacks, toothpaste, her passport and sufficient clothing, was tell her : " If a man comes up to you and asks you if you'd like to make lots of money really quickly and easily, just say 'nein'. 'Kay?"

She just gave me that pitying "you're so weird" look that I seem to so often be the recipient of.

On the other hand, starring in German porn films was NOT on the list of planned activities that the school gave us.

So what items are on the schedule?

The BMW museum and Dachau concentration camp.

'The Ultimate Driving Machine' and 'Arbeit Macht Frei' .

An odd combination, to put it mildly.