Two Weeks and Counting

At the start of this past week, I realized, unbelievably, that I only had two weeks left of my time here in Provence. When you get up each day and have to concentrate to remember the day of the week, time is a tentative thing and life just flows by. Unfortunately, this past week and the next find this flow, like our local Ouveze river, moving at a torrent's pace, with a to-do list of chores falling from the sky like the rains of last week.

Luckily, the weather eased for a while. Monday brought more power outages and thunderstorms but Tuesday brought the sun, just in time for market day in Vaison and our planned lunch with Gary and Marilyn, friends from Minnesota staying nearby. Wednesday, both a market and errand morning in Buis les Baronnies, got the chore list front and center.

While getting dressed, I heard our neighbor in the field below our house revving up his power saw. We call him the hippie because that's the way he looks--in a stoner, Keith Richards kind of way. The prior week, between rain showers, I'd discussed having him trim some trees that were growing so rapidly that we feared for our view. He'd agreed but never showed at the agreed upon time to negotiate a price. Then nothing continued to happen even when the skies occasionally cleared. When we passed him in the village, he ignored us, and we thought he'd changed his mind. From the looks of the back of his property, he's clearly not suffering from the Protestant work ethic so we thought perhaps it was just too much effort. But, on Wednesday, with the sound of his saw drifting ever so sweetly upward,I came running down the stairs yelling "hippie" to Hallie. Scuttering along in my bedroom slippers and with my hair still plastered, wet to my head, post shower, I zoomed past Hallie and picked my way down the rickety stairs that lead to what we call our secret garden. I wanted to catch him before the inclination toward work had passed. We quickly negotiated a fee and he started in right before our very eyes. "Hooray, hooray for our side," we said and left him whacking away with his saw at our unwanted tree growth.

We had a task list of our own and hopped in the car and headed towards Buis. First stop--the bank. Our French bank account is great because we use it to automaticly pay almost everything--electricity, phone, taxes, car and house insurance, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, it needs replenishing from time to time and so we needed to deposit some funds. The process is amusing. First we go to the ATM and get cash in euros drawn from our American accounts using cash cards. Then we make out a deposit slip and put the same money back in the bank only in our French account. That accomplished, we were off to our next stop, the tresorie--sort of like a tax or public works office--to pay our garbage bill, which we can't pay automatically, for some reason. This is a once a year thing, as is the water bill, and we had high hopes to pay both. They hadn't managed to do the water bill yet in the brief month and a half since they'd read the meter so that went back on the to-do list for our fall trip to France and we hit the market. On the way home, we made a hardware store stop and did our usual pantomime and sketching routine to get the U-shaped runner thingies we wanted to put outside the door. More on the reason why in a later blog. As you can tell, I don't even know the right term in English for what I wanted so it's no wonder I don't know the name in French either.

Next the e-mails started. All the folks I work for back in the States seemed to want something from me. Some things could be dealt with here and others will need prompt attention as soon as I land in Minneapolis mid-June. So, another to-do list for post-Mollans begins.

It made the week fly by when added to enjoying the good food, wine, and friends that pass through our life, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. Floating through life, like rafting on a river, works until the rapids come along and the current pushes you onward and sometimes overboard. A certain amount of zooming is unavoidable and the trick is to keep the flow balanced between trickle and torrent.

Next up: Wine starts flowing like our local Ouveze.