Brrr – what the hell is going on?! Snowfall in November and it is FREEZING! There are literally no degrees today. Not a one. Last year, we had snow by mid-December – something that all the locals said was extremely unusual. Apparently, in the Dordogne, it only usually ever snows in January and February. So, this is just downright freakish. And wrong. What have we done to this planet?
Anyway, after Thanksgiving dinner, we decided to honour the holiday in full by classing it as a long weekend and taking it easy. Yes, believe it or not, there is a small difference between us in holiday mode and us in day-to-day mode. We chilled out at home all weekend, enjoying 3 further servings a-piece of thanksgiving food. We were still eating the yummy turkey thanksgiving soup up until last night, and we haven’t even finished it yet: we froze the last few portions. It was a very expensive bird, but we definitely made it stretch.
Matt had a slight scratch in his throat at the start of the weekend and by the end of it, realised he actually had a (fairly mild) cold. He has been mostly fine, but today is in that mean, final, stuffy-nosed, snotty phase. Not fun. Poor Louis isn’t that happy either. He had a bit of a nasty trauma on Sunday. It was cold, so we had a blazing fire going in the lounge and Louis (proof if ever it were needed that in-breeding is bad for the intelligence) jumped on top of the stove, burning all four paws. As of today, he is still limping, the poor boy. His front paws seem especially bad – both dry, cracked and obviously very painful. He has basically been asleep since then, in that stasis-like cat-recovery mode that they go into after a nasty shock. I would like to say he is wiser for this experience, but this is actually his second time on the stove (the first being when it wasn’t nearly so hot, thankfully) and he has since once or twice looked like he was planning it again. Natural selection in the flesh, in our lounge. Bless him. An unhappy bi-product of his accident is that the Smoo has lost his usual playmate (lit: victim) and seeing as it is too cold to go out, he has been a nightmare cat. I have the scars to prove it… He has been an attention-seeking whirlwind of claws, meows, biting, climbing, destroying and otherwise terrorising the house. Mercifully, the forecast is for warmer weather next week. It can’t come soon enough…
On Monday, Sharon left for the UK for a week-long business trip, so Oscar is again under our surveillance. He is coping in his usual way by sleeping through as much of it as he can, as he really misses Sharon when she is away. She often seems to have rotten travel karma with her UK trips – and the snow certainly wont be helping this time. She has already been entangled in a London tube strike. Maybe that just isn’t such a hard thing to do these days…
No big developments on the house to report, except a brief email exchange with Thierry Fargeot, one of the 2 current owners of the place. Based on our experience of the two brothers during the negotiations, we named them “good cop” and “bad cop”. Luckily, seeing as he is the one we mainly deal with, Thierry is “good cop”. We asked them if there was anything in the way of beds, cutlery, crockery etc that they might consider leaving behind when they come to take the family furniture away. Thierry told us that they are in town on 11th December to clear the place out, and will be able to say after then what else may be staying. The more, the better for us.
I am impatient to find out what they are leaving so that I can update my “Things to Buy for the House” spreadsheet. One of the few things I used to enjoy about work was organising and managing projects using spreadsheets. It is something I suppose I have sort of kept up since quitting the job – it’s just that now, they are about things like Christmas present shopping (with columns for “ordered”, “received” and “wrapped”), red wines sampled and their ratings, birthday party venue ideas, and of course, the househunt. My current one lists everything we need for the house, organised by room, with a rating from 1-3 of how urgent the item is. It also has estimated costs, and-as yet empty columns to record when we bought the item, what we paid for it, and comparing that amount to what we expected to pay for it to see how we are doing compared to the budget. Yes, I have too much time on my hands. Much, much too much.