A day or two in the life.

Wednesday: I am tired; I guess the invigorating aspect hasn’t kicked in yet. I woke up and drove Caleigh to school this morning, returned to meet with an electrical contractor. The walk through went well as I described the rewire that would be required for a house that was last updated a week before Edison put forth his concept of electricity. Each room has one rather shaky looking plug, and all the switches are mounted on the wall with the wiring stapled to the wall. It really makes you think twice before getting up in the middle of the night and running your hand across the wall searching for the switch. I fear one morning Cindy will wake up and find me smoldering doing an altogether too real impersonation of Don King. But the good news is we got our house phone and Wi-Fi last night and both laptops are receiving a signal. Cindy then went to pick up Caleigh from school as Wednesday is half day for the students, she is then driving to Bergerac for an abbreviated shopping spree, bowls, another blanket, kitchen stuff, and I imagine some new clothes for the young one. I stayed around and tore down all the old telephone wiring, as the new service is located in the office, and the remote phones don’t need telephone jacks, or in this case Jacques? Then I tackled and finally finished a huge pile of old vines that were torn out and stacked as firewood. After getting the pile relocated into the nearest barn, I raked the area where the pile was earlier; my hands are starting to get blisters, which will hopefully soon turn to calluses. The work on the Kitchen and bathroom are waiting for another week as we are possibly going to be filmed by one of those renovation T.V. shows. Their interest was piqued when they discovered that there was an American teenage girl in the family. The main problem is that all my tools are floating 30 feet above the water on a freighter somewhere in the Pacific. It will be interesting to see if anything becomes of this, divorce springs to mind, as we have offered a chance to film our kitchen or only bathroom. Realizing of course that those rooms should be done as soon as possible to create a comfortable environment, if Mommy is not comfortable, where does that leave Dad? As I said, invigorating hasn’t kicked in yet.
Thursday: Cindy and I just returned from a day out hunting the health insurance office and required paperwork. We drove to Bergerac and found the correct office, took a number, waited, then met with a really nice woman. Long and short of it, we had most of the necessary stuff; however we were in the wrong county. It would be the equivalent of applying for a sears credit card at J.C.Penney’s. So we drove the 50 kilometers south to Marmande and went to one office, were then directed to another office about a ten minute walk away. Again we took a number and waited, then met with another helpful lady that redirected us back to the first office. Returning to the first office we took another number and finally met with another really helpful lady who gave us the required stack of forms to fill out. All in all it was exhausting, but we felt as though we were narrowing down healthcare. We left Marmande and drove to Caleigh’s school and picked her up and returned to the farmhouse. The annual sales are the next two weeks so we have started our list of priorities, washing machine, sandblasting attachment to the compressor, T.V. and other less glamorous items: socks, kitchen stuff.