Dead critters

We had a great weekend with Seb's 40th birthday pretty much taking over all our free time but it was fun and we needed to take a few moments to celebrate. We were in the middle of transferring the downstairs kitchen upstairs and we got as far as moving the stove and fridge and connecting the electricty but the water still wasn't connected and our dishes and food were still in a downstairs cupboard, impossible to move because it's nearly cemented to the wall. I spent a lot of time running up and down the steps fetching everything under the sun and washing up. We were also smack in the middle of finishing up our bathroom with that sink partially installed but still leaking so it was definitely a trippy weekend--probably not the best weekend to have guests. Poor guests, but at least someone else got to witness first hand the madness of what our life has been for the past six months. It was sort of like visiting day at the refugee camp.

I always talk about my great neighbors and there are only one or two left hanging about because this is the big vacation time on France. The few that are here have been fabulous and were really helpful and if it weren't for them I think I would have keeled over dead weeks ago. They brought food over and babysat almost the whole weekend and they really boosted my morale which was a bit low when I looked around and saw what a wreck my house was...again.

My neighbor's husband found the source of the ranky smell that was floating through our house all week--a dead tomcat just on the border of our property. The kids were facinated. Little S is curious about anything dead now anyway since the mouse we found a few months ago. He asked me last night "what's inside of the cat that stinks so bad?" and then he asked "what eats the cat?" and then just on and on questions. I remember with the mouse he'd asked after we'd found it "comment on fabrique une souris maman? (how do you make a mouse?)" which is a fun question to answer. I love all these little questions. We left the mouse in a matchbox for a day or so and I'd pretty much forgotten about it until I went to light the candles for our dinner on the small terrace and stuck my fingers in the box without looking. Aaaagh!

A few days later the fur on the mouse was moving and when I opened the box I thought for a second "wow, he's still alive, how..." but then I realized that nature was taking its course even in the little matchbox. I decided not to show little S and we finally buried the mouse at the end of the garden.

That's all my dead animal stories for today.

Excuse me I have to go now and take apart the Playmobil hospital in Little S's room and pack it in a plastic box and I'm really dreading it. It takes about six hours and three glasses of wine to put it together again. It's HUGE and has no instructions because it was a gift from a neighbor, just a little photo from the box that I squinted over for days when I first put it together. I hate moving. Have I mentioned that before?

Hopefully I'll get the time to take some photos of the house in the next few days to show what we've done. We've done a lot. Meanwhile, au boulot!