Saturday, June 25, 2011

Family visits

Paul and I got back a few days ago from a visit to the Husaunndees in Northampton. Aurelia is getting to be a big girl now. She goes up on the big slide, likes the swings, the climbing toys and all that. She's very expressive, if not always comprehensible. She repeats just about anything in English or in French. And she eats just about everything, too. We were completely charmed. 
We also got a chance to see the house that Claire and Geoff are buying. It's nice. Big rooms. There will be a bit of work to do on it, but nothing preventing living in it immediately. 
And Charlotte came for the weekend, so we got to play with her, too, and then accompany her back to Woking and see Geoff's parents and the rest of the family, including the newcomer, Daniel, who is just two months old. We bought a couple of rose bushes and blueberry bushes for the garden.
The vet took the cat for the week we were gone. We'll ask him to do that again when we go back, but it still makes just going off for a couple of days difficult. We'd like to go down and see Gwen's folks, meet up with some other friends in the Tourraine.
Before going to England, I had dinner with the kids and Sarah and Kyle, who were in Paris for just a few days before joining their family in the Alps to finish their vacation. That was fun. Gwen had never met either of them and for Louis and Anne, it was the first time meeting Kyle and it had been a long time since they'd seen Sarah. We had dinner at the Bouillon Racine, a really fine restaurant. Very much in its Art Nouveau origingal look. 
Sarah and Kyle have returned home and now it's Roger and Gloria's turn for Paris before they, too, go back. They should be getting in later today with Shelby and a friend of hers. They only have two days in Paris. We're all having dinner together tomorrow. 
I think C was supposed to be coming to Paris for work last week, but I guess I missed her. J and E are coming in a few weeks for a longer stay and other friends are coming in September, so I hope we'll all be able to get together, then.


Saturday, June 4, 2011

Pleasant weather

We're having a drought, the hottest spring on record, and gorgeous sunny days. We need rain, but ideally, that would be in the evening or at night so we could still have these beautiful days. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but they said that for last weekend, too.
In the meantime, the raspberries are almost as abundant as last year's crop even if I think the berries are a little smaller. The tomatoes are coming along fine. I planted the zuchini and cucumbers so late, it's too soon to see what's going to happen.
I'm not really worried about cucumbers, tomatoes and salads coming from Spain or closer to home. I prefer closer to home, but I always have preferred local when I can find it and it's not twice the price of Spanish. It's really a shame that the authorities were so quick to pinpoint the blame for the E-coli outbreak in Germany on Spain and its produce. I understand the growers' rage. I can't understand why people are continuing to boycott the produce and even refuse to buy produce from elsewhere, like here. The stores are not helping. Paul bought a cucumber (a French cucumber) the other day and the price was not any cheaper than before this scare.
I spent Wednesday and Friday helping a friend move her stuff from one storage place that's closing down to another. It made me think that in the early days of Gameboy, I played Boxxle and the training paid off. I'm feeling a little sore, but I did nothing horrible to my back or shoulder; I could use a good massage, though.
On Thursday, she and I went for a little walk in the Bois de Vincennes. On the first lap around the Lac des Minimes we saw mama swan and her cygnets eating on the bank; on the second round they were cooling off in the water. There were also ducks and other water birds. I think I saw some geese. Thursday was a holiday in France (Ascension) and although Paris looks deserted, there were still enough people around to fill up the Bois. There were cars parked all along the road to Nogent and it looked like every row boat was out on the little lake. We had some ice cream at the food stand and people were waiting for seats, and then scrambling to find a place in the shade. It's a shame Paul's not feeling up to these walks any more.
Last week we had a real scare with the cat, Rocky. He didn't eat a thing over the weekend Paul made an appointment with the vet on Tuesday for the next morning. The vet ran a blood test and found that he had an infection in addition to general dehydration. They hooked him up to an IV, started antibiotics, and Thursday afternoon, we picked him up. He's old, for a cat. We can't just leave him under the care of the neighbors any more if we want to go anywhere for a few days; he's too needy. He's got his thyroid medicine twice a day, the antibiotic until tomorrow and he's very irregular as far as eating is concerned. We're down to half-can doses from 2 to 5 times a day. No more dry food (2 years already); no more fresh meat from the butcher or leftovers from us -- except the other day, he did manage to eat a little of my left over swordfish. We have to take him back to the vet for another checkup in about 10 days and I think we'll arrange another "hotel" stay with the vet so we can go to England. For a trip to Tours and St. Aignan, we'll ask one of the kids to come stay at the house for a weekend.