The Worker

At the garderie last week, when i came to pick him up, Gabriel had built a very large tower out of kapla blocks in the hour and a half between the end of school and the beginning of home from school.  This is a hint, in case his grandparents are reading, of something that he would love to have for Christmas.

Then, two days ago, he said that he was going to go fix the mobile home, and took his briefcase (an old box recuperated from our lovely Swedish fusebox), which contains “tools,” for example, a block of staples, a discarded piece of pvc pipe, and scraps of plastic binding tape from the terra cotta tiles, out to the back of the mobile home.  He very carefully looked at the existing light, before deciding how to fix the other one.  He is, he says, a worker and a fixer.

Today, (pictures to come, really), with Nicolas, we insulated the closet between the two bedrooms with hemp wool, which is a delight to work with, and smells like sunshine on clean hay; and then we put down the pellets over Gabriel’s floor, and put down the first layers of flooring.  This is a huge leap forward, and you can actually see what his bedroom will look like (and it’s so nice to have the big pile of pellets out of the middle of the floor).

Thanksgiving

On Monday, i turned 36, Gabriel woke me up with a song, and Malin, Anton and Klara made a great lunch, and while we ate it it was sunny for the first time in several grey weeks.  We had seafood fettucine for dinner, and Gabriel thought that the picture needed to have a helicopter, hovering, to make it complete.  Yesterday, our furnace was delivered; the deliveryman needed some help rolling it up onto the new concrete slab, and Sandra and her friends came to help Gabriel and me:  this is a very long story that began about two months ago, when our dear friends Viv and Mac, and Zeph and Austy, generously offered to invest in Maffay with us.  Thanks to them, we’re going to have heat in the house, and various and sundry other little advancements, like an insulated floor upstairs, in the next few weeks.  Simon will come to install it on December 8-9, and the wood that M. Roullier Père cut in the Forêt du très grande Chevrolais, and delivered for us with PIerre-Yves’s tractor, will start burning and heating the floors and water, in addition to the solar panels on sunny days.  And i’ll be able to light the fire in the furnace, thanks to Joyce and Paul’s gift of Mother Earth News, which had an article last month on how to start a fail-proof fire.  On the weekend before my birthday, Willy came to stay with us and eat good food and watch the Pink Panther and help take care of the cats, and also:  helped wash the terra cotta tiles in the living room/kitchen, with muratic acid, so that i can treat them at the end of next week, and we can move into that room.  The floor is of course, if i haven’t mentioned it already, the generous gift of Aunty Izzy (pictured here this summer in Rennes, when we went out to dinner at Ay Mexico all dressed in green polarfleece, just to be cool.)  Gaël came on Monday and finished putting up the drywall on the office ceiling, over the insulation that Nicolas helped me put up over the last two weeks.  Gabriel got himself into bed last Thursday, when i was working in the house with Gaël, and i came in to find that he had made my bed for me.  On Tuesday of last week, Zaher came to visit for dinner.  And yesterday, i took the car down to Montreuil for some new headlight bulbs, and realized that i haven’t posted the other picture, from this summer, just a little image to say that we are thankful for our red car, which has turned 300.000, back in August.  We’re going for 500.000kms now.  M. Honoré stopped by yesterday to cut some more wood, and said he’d stop by next time with a pumpkin.  M. Roullier came by yesterday and used some old innertubes to brace up the new birthday liquidambar that’s now in place over by the fence to Pierre-Yves’s farm.  We took brownies down to celebrate Inès’s birthday yesterday with Romane and their Grandma.  We ordered our turkey from M. Gauthier, and Anne Marie and Paula came up to pick it up this morning, and we’ll go join them all this afternoon with a pot full of mashed potatoes, Grandma’s rolls, and an apple pie in addition to Janette’s green beans and a genuine handmade Christmas pudding.

The cats are getting better.  We’re almost in the house, and will hopefully be there before Grandma Sally comes on December 15.  And we are so thankful for everyone today, and always. (this is Gabriel, attempting to fly like a bird, at our beach this summer).

(a little song, for the day:

On Thanksgiving, on Thanksgiving,

eat no bread, eat no bread!

shove it up the turkey, shove it up the turkey,

eat the bird!  eat the bird! )

Progress

Here are pictures of the house from last Sunday, our anniversary.

Romain came over to fix a loose slate on the roof.

The back of the house with our two outdoor stacks of wood

Looking at the future kitchen.

Looking at the future living room/stairwell (on the left)

The passageway/winecellar.

The upstairs bathroom

My bedroom/at present, a storage room.

Gabriel’s bedroom. also storage.

The hallway/stairwell

Outside, courtyard view.

Back, meadow view.

More pictures of the wood because it’s so nice to have it all stacked.

One year at Maffay

Today, November 16, we’ve been here exactly a year.  In 2007, it was cold and icy, and Gabriel had his first day at the école Pierre-Marie Chollet, and that afternoon we went together to the notary’s to sign the deed for the left side of the courtyard at Maffay.  It was freezing, Malin, Simon and Anton came over that night to drink champagne and eat soup that Malin brought, and we had no water for the dishes, and in the night I couldn’t sleep because it was so cold in our little white casa blanca on wheels.  Gabriel of course was too hot, and threw off his sleeping bag in the middle of the night, which i promptly retrieved for my own use.

Now there are four of us:  Cip and Max have joined up, and we have a hard time remembering what life was like before Maffay.  Everything seems divided into two parts:  before November 16, and after.  Today, we stacked wood all morning (small note, if you ever consider hiring a six-year old as a manual laborer, change your mind, because at the nascent hum of the first tractor to pass, he’ll be off like a shot to go “say hello” and you’ll find yourself stacking wood all by your lonesome, but this is actually not so bad, because contrary to everything you think you remember about stacking wood as a kid, it’s actually a very satisfying activity.  You see your progress, and order is made.)  Then i had to clean out the garage a little, because there was no room to stack wood so that it will dry out, as it awaits the arrival of the new furnace, which is hopefully being made right now as you read this, in Austria, by the little elves of Fröling who are doing their very best work on our new FHG.  Then we had lunch, pasta, but this is no surprise because we eat a lot of pasta.  Then, Gabriel built Atlantis in the sandpile, and i insulated around the windows with lime, hemp, a bit of sand and water:  after it dries a bit, i’ll put up some pictures, they call it “calfeutrage” in french.  And this is another very satisfying thing to do, because it has taken me six months, since the windows were installed, to get around to doing it; one small note though, you should prepare to spend more time protecting the windows with stout orange tape, than it takes to actually do the calfeutrage itself.

While we were busy with our respective occupations, Gaël and Romain came, and plumbed the upstairs shower.  Sandra and Jean-Luc left the outside light on so i could see while cleaning the cement mixer, and i came in at 8:00 to find Gabriel asleep on the floor, which shows great flexibility on his part, because there is not a lot of available floorspace.  His body was curled up in a sort of L, with his head towards the heater.  I woke him up, we ate some pasta (whole-wheat, if it’s any redemption, with some fish) and now he’s back to sleep, and after a short three-minute shower, i will be too.  Pictures to come soon of how things look today, after our first year has gone by.

Here is the way it looked here one year ago.

Why we did not work on the house this weekend

Our excuse:  there was a GREAT salsa/changuÏ concert, and a whole festival with amazing Cuban dancers and lots of people who came from everywhere to learn from them and see the concert,

click here for pictures

and even though it meant a weekend away from working on the house at a point in time when we’re four days away from our year anniversary of being at Maffay, there is something to be said for getting to aim one’s camera at such effusive joyous beautiful sound and movement and try and capture just a bit of it, to keep us warm during the long winter months until spring.  Elito Reve y su Charangon made the list of my favorite concerts of all time: and afterwards, talking with Maestro Reve in the loges behind the scenes, the subject of Barack Obama came up, and Elito said, roughly translated, that he thinks his election means hope realized, for the world.

Of course everyone should run out right now and buy any and all albums recorded by Elito Reve y su Charangon and his papa the late Elio.  And check out the site:  www.orquestareve.net to learn more about them and changuÏ.

A few moments from October

Where is this year going?  November is here, and these little pictures from October never made it up into  the phone lines, swinging on the branches of the walnut tree, running under the eaves of the chapel, out to the lonely pole who keeps guard over the middle of Maffay, out to the world.

In October, in the very first days, Eliane came to visit from Switzerland, and we went out to pick (up) walnuts and apples and chestnuts at M. Roullier père’s field, and then he gave us cases full of apples, so we’ve been having applesauce ever since and have enough apples stored in the chapel to get us through the winter.  The walnuts won’t last as long because they are very very good.

Our walnut tree had fewer walnuts this year.  But there was a perfect fold in the plastic around the outdoor shower, a little walnut chute, and they would fall onto the little platform for soap and razors.  Now that November is here, we no longer take our showers outside.

Also, haaaaaaaaapy birthday to F.G. Cynthia on November 4, a day which she shared with the election of Barack Obama.  This is a picture of our orchid for you ms. C, it apparently looooooooves mobile home because it has a plethora of blossoms right now.

And here are our boys, taking another nappis, curled up with one another because it’s a nice way to keep warm.

Blue Maffay

5:00a.m.  Just one small comment about the elections.  Uf då.  Many strange and wonderful things are possible in this world and the way that the Americans have voted today, in such number, makes proud, and fills me with hope.  I keep going back to the AP map and remember this same map four years ago and wonder what it will look like in four years, and eight, but tonight, sleepless, it is wonderful.  Bon courage, President Obama.

11:30a.m. Hughes’ dream deferred has become our dream.

Happy 64th birthday Grandpa P.

We still need you, and promise to feed you.  And happy birthday to our lovely Carolina also, i think this must be your 34th.  Perhaps it is astrology or perhaps it is merely a twist of fate (or a pure coincidence) but Paul and Carolyn were both born on November 2, and both of them love Venezia, and we love them both, and Venice too.

We were Grandpa and Mimi’s guests in Tuscany and Venice about three weeks ago.  And if you click on the link below you’ll see a little slideshow which we’ve put together for Grandpa’s birthday.

click here to see pictures from the trip but only if you’re really interested because it’s looooong because i really really love venice and Gabriel and i want to go back with Grandpa and Mimi soon and anyone else who wants to go along, especially if we can go eat at Al Vagon and ride lots of traghetti and vaporetti.  (when the page opens, click on ‘montrer’ on the upper left to make the slideshow start!)

Con vongole Al Vagon, Trumpet practice with the harmonica accompanist on the Ponte dell’Accademia, Palazzo Rosa, Il Pestello, cinghiale, chianti, Costa Fortuna, Blue Moon in the Piazza San Marco in front of Caffè Flore, gelato ma non troppo, bazookas, pigeons, lions, doges, almost-lost child on the vaporetto, San Michele and Stravinski, and so many wonderful kilometers walked and floated.

ps. It probably seems very unrelated to Maffay, but it’s a little-known fact that there is one store on Murano that sells handmade glass tiles (piastrini) and we dragged Grandpa and Mimi to the tourist hive that is Murano, with its erratic vaporetti and Mericans Everywhere, and we had a great pizza, and we found that little shop.  And brought back 1,5 kg of glass piastrini that will go up in the bathroom at Maffay, you’re welcome to come take a shower and see them.

Chaude comme une barquette de frites!

This title is purely for the entertainment of Michaël and Yohann.

BUT it really refers to something great:  Simon and Malin, Josephine, Klara and Anton stopped by today in the rain as Nicolas and i were putting up the fermacell in the upstairs bathroom, and Simon plugged in the heated flooring and twisted some dials and showed me how to do it as well, so as of tonight hot water from the solar panels (with slight assistance from the EDF’s nuclear reactors) is coursing through the slab.

It’s going to be tropical in the house in under three weeks.