mercredi 20 octobre 2010

Sooo long in coming but here is an update...

Sept 24, 2010.

Exciting day! We have electricity and plumbing on the ground floor! I can now wash up and use hot water from the tap to do it! I can also use more than one appliance at a time as we have sufficient “puissance” not to keep having the power cut out every few minutes. I can wash and dry at the same time and don’t have to worry. We have a downstairs loo and wash basin. I am in hog heaven!!
We are using terries for the twins so it hasn't happened a day too soon either. I bought up a supply from a "vide grenier" which appear to be little used (the lady explained she started with high ideals and soon switched to disposables - something I shall not be doing now we have blown all our budget until next June...) Our baby gear currently consists of two "manger" affairs which Mack built, a couple of new mattresses and bedding made from cut down "vide grenier" buys. Ditto on their clothing - I'm not interested in dressing them identically, fortunately. Otherwise I just have a breast pump which has been really useful now I've got the hang of it. We will need some sort of transport for them and car seats in the next few weeks I suppose, but so far we have managed with some very interesting improvised carriers made from some Indian cotton scarves. Very colorful ... I'm going to buy new car seats even if we buy used buggies, I read somewhere not to compromise on the quality of car seats. Pia and Luca have renamed the twins Vi and Gee. I somehow hope those names don't stick! They have also suggested we use the wheelbarrow to transport them around the village when we go for a walk. I suspect that might just push the mayor over the edge though... So far the twins are contented little souls; we hardly know they are around except at about 3am most mornings. They seem to be night owls and I hope they will soon grow out of that. Morris lurcher keeps well away and Nobu (the adopted cat from our "neutering" programme), who has gradually become more and more domesticated, gave them a once over sniff and then backed away under the settee with his tail looking like a bottle brush. I'm surprised he hasn't decided to revert to being a wild cat but he has apparently decided to learn to live with these strange screeching intruders, especially now he has realised they can't actually touch him or chase him.


Sept 15, 2010.

We can proudly announce the arrival of Geneva Meadow and Vienna Rae at 6.15 am today. Each weighed EXACTLY 6lbs 3ozs (translated from the metric). Boy, was I HUGE for the last three weeks! They were a little early but are perfect - lots of dark hair and my olive complexion. I had grand hopes of having them at home as we now have electricity and so on but the "powers that be" persuaded me that I would be better off in the local hospital. We stayed a grand total of 4 hours from arrival to departure and stayed together "en famille" throughout. The kids probably enjoyed it far more than Mack or myself though. They each chose a second name - Pia chose Meadow and Luca chose Rae after being gently persuaded that Jake just wasn't appropriate. They are identical, and each have a little gold name bracelet with their first initial (thanks Eve!) as I can't tell them apart at the moment. She pleaded to know the names in advance but we just gave her the initials - she decided that we were probably going for Genevieve and Virginie for some reason. I came home having lost 22 lbs in weight! Not bad as I had only put on 30 lbs. I've been eating well throughout, probably all the hard work we have been doing (Mack does not see pregnancy as an illness and had me helping with the upstairs work right up until last night...)


August 7, 2010.

Things are looking up in the madhouse! We have moved upstairs at last! It's still very "Heath Robinson" but true bliss nevertheless. We now have a proper living room (almost devoid of furniture), a proper dining room (no furniture at all), a downstairs cloakroom (not plumbed yet) and electricity and water to the kitchen (neither yet connected). I have a wonderful, huge fridge freezer and a proper washer and drier in the kitchen which are not connected yet, they're waiting for the electricians to sort out the downstairs electrics once and for all. We have been able to finally stop using our neighbours electricity and now have extension leads running down the stairs from our own sockets, although we are still using their broadband connection. It looks as if that might take a while to sort out . Any upstairs internal walls are just chalk marks on the floor, which is not a problem except the kids insist we knock on non-existent doors every time we go into their "rooms". Only one of the bathrooms is installed, the other items are sitting in the barn waiting for us to decide exactly how we want to do things now we have to make room for two more bodies. This installed one will be the "house" bathroom eventually, although it's hard to imagine it with tiled walls and hidden pipework. Anyone on that floor at the time you are "in residence" has a prime view - it's just as well we have no visitors at present. The wonderful, long-awaited electric water heater is attached to the wall too, it will be hidden inside a cupboard eventually. Hot water now flows at the turn of a tap upstairs, the loo flushes and the shower/bath water is hot. I can't believe the sheer luxury of all this. Who cares if we blew almost the whole of the coming years budget? I enjoy this self-sufficiency lifestyle anyway but I hope it won't be too difficult with two little extras at the end of September!

July 4th, 2010.

We had our own crazy celebrations. It was a good excuse for a bonfire and we had a barbecue, sang silly songs and generally made total fools of ourselves. Fortunately it was in our own garden so no one was bothered by us. I am expanding! I have a couple of "floaty" cotton dresses, various baggie T shirts, a couple of Mack's old shirts, jeans which sit below my bump, fat-man style and some stretchy shorts and they will just have to do. I have put on 17lbs, so far so good!

June 1st, 2010 and I can carry out a review of our store cupboards. I’ve already itemised what we started the year with and we have spent a total of €247.37 on such things as gas for the car, a calor gas refill for the fridge, a couple of trips to vide greniers and a few extra food basics like oil, coffee and red beans, cheese, yeast and dog chow.
So now we have a freezer full to bursting with frozen fruit, veggies, herbs, rabbits, ducks and prepared dishes. We have shelves full of jam, pickles, bottled vegetables & fruit, pickled eggs and pickled walnuts. We have sacks of potatoes, carrots and parsnips, strings of onions, shallots and garlics and gallons of wine and cider in various stages of readiness. We are still using up huge crops of walnuts and cobnuts from last year and it looks as if there will be lots more this year too. We have tried drying both grapes and figs reasonably succesfully too. I still have around a quarter of all the “basic” items we started with and now have “free” sources of eggs, milk, butter and walnut oil. The hedgerows are bursting with goodies and I can see bumper crops of blackberries, sloes, figs, apples, damson, walnuts and chestnuts later in the year. I have even been initiated into the search for mushrooms by an elderly neighbor, although I will only use those he says are edible as I am still sceptical about my abilities on that front. Nevertheless I have some dried and some frozen and feel reasonably confident about the Meadow Mushrooms I have found. Roll on autumn when there will be lots more! So later in the week we will be off to buy the next year's basics - flour, rice, oil, yeast, sugar, salt, pulses, TVP, coffee and tea, perhaps a few more spices from the local market - they are irresistible. We will expand a little this year and also get some chocolate powder and pasta flour.
On June 2nd we should have been able to say goodbye to all that frugality. But do you know what? I loved it! We are going to try for a second year as we think we will use up the whole of this year’s budget to have electricity and mains water installed, buy more oak for the attic floors and investigate the ”fosse septique”. The inspector says this is a modern one and passed its certification but I think we should have it emptied and the pipes to it blown through. We can’t discover where (or if) it has ever been connected to the main house so that will need to be investigated once we get to the plumbing for the THREE WCs and showers we have ordered. I can’t quite believe we will have our own shower and can do away with the “waterbutt on the barn” summer shower and the tin bath in front of the fire. And the brown porcelain French flat pan style loo in the shack down the garden (which apparently DOES drain into the fosse) can be abandoned for good.


May 31st, 2010.

We have survived for a whole year on next to nothing. I never did count things like insurance and taxes as those have to be paid and we can't get away from that. But overall we seem to have managed a whole year on less than €1500! I'm all registered with various clinics (I've needed to go private for various reasons) and so on and even had a scan 10 days ago - the first for some reason, I suspect I managed to miss one somehow with all the paperwork. I'm so calm now but was not when I saw that scan. We are expecting TWO babies. I wasn't planning on one more and now we will have two. Oh well, I suppose it will all work out...


March 28th.

Major crisis! It seems I probably didn’t have flu, although the chickenpox was real enough. The throwing up was because I’m… wait for it… pregnant! This was definitely NOT on our agenda, totally unplanned, unexpected and frankly a bit of a disaster. A bit of calculating and a trip to the doctor confirms I’m probably ten weeks along.

March 20, 2010.

So now I have it too! Didn’t I ever have this as a child? Surely so! I phoned Eve this evening – no, she thought I was immune as all the others had it at the same time but not me. I feel awful - spotty, itchy, headachy and irritable. The kids’ calamine is useful but I just feel miserable.
To top it all I seem to have come up with a dose of flu to accompany the chickenpox. I’m achy, dog-tired and throwing up – I feel even worse than before!
The garden is looking so much better this year. We already have lots of things sprouting. At last we can start picking “outdoor” lettuce. My experiment of growing lettuce in trays on the kitchen window sill has worked in a way but outdoor ones are so much crispier and greener.

March 14, 2010.

Pia & Luca seem to be sickening for something. They are normally such healthy little beasts and they are now miserable, spotty and hot. I’ve been through some of my premed books and think it may be chickenpox! I called our Dutch friends to see if they had any ideas and they confirmed all three of theirs have the same thing and had it confirmed as chickenpox by the local doctors. It’s been doing the rounds of the local schools and of course we have a little French girl who goes to the same school as their kids every afternoon. They have been given red antiseptic paint and tranquillising lotion for their three which seems a bit extreme. So we have so far managed with calamine lotion and aspirin which is all our medicine chest can come up with. I suppose we will have to dash off to the local doctor’s office if they don’t pick up shortly.
The kids look as if they have some sort of strange medieval mange – bright red weepy spots ringed with white powdery patches all over! But they are now cooled down and seem perfectly happy so no trip to the doctor after all. We have so far persuaded them not to scratch and it probably helps that we no longer have the fire in the evenings and their bedroom/the living room is cool at night.


March 10, 2010.

The whole first floor now actually has a floor and also stairs to get up there too! We’ve both been working so hard on it and it looks lovely. There are only two original stone walls up there, one on either side of the stairwell, so we will have to put in stud walls to make dividers but we have planned two large bedrooms with ensuite shower rooms, two smaller rooms for the kids and a family shower room with room for a bathtub eventually. I’m so thrilled to be able to walk up the stairs and reach the windows at last! We still have fresh air way up to the roof beams as the top floor has no floor (so this new one has no ceilings either) but we can live with that and our trusty tarpaulin. It will be a while before we move up here (probably after June 1st when we have money to try to organise plumbing and electricity) but it’s such a huge step in the right direction!
The weather has been so lovely and the garden actually has flowers this year, I planted bulbs everywhere last autumn - someone in the village had dug a huge pile up and just wanted rid of them. I had no idea what I was getting but there are all sorts, all jumbled up and mismatched. Just how I like them! The goat had had to start being tethered in the garden - she is desperate to get at them and is practising extending her neck as far as possible.