I know I've mentioned our wonderful neighbors before, but I have a special thanks today to our lovely neighbor and friend, Conchita Gimenez.
Conchita is an amazingly talented crocheter (is that a word?). She actually crochets lace curtains! I look at it and am in total amazement. I can't imagine ever doing anything of that quality. I've done a little embroidery, needlepoing and simple crochet, but nothing that comes even within a country mile of Conchita's work.
For years, I've been carrying an old crocheted afghan around with me. It was made by my great-grandmother, so has to be close to one-hundred-years-old. It is made of wool, and let's just say that time has not been kind to it. It's the kind of afghan made out of squares, and most of the squares were coming apart. The edging was worn out and torn off in places. It was a sad, sad piece of family memorabilia.
But I've kept it because there's something so wonderful about having a handmade piece of family history, even if it is stored in a plastic bag on a dark shelf in the closet.
I bought some green yarn and took it over to Conchita's house to see if she could teach me how to fix it. Instead, she offered to do it herself. Less than two weeks after she started, she brought it back to me yesterday. It's absolutely amazing! It looks brand new, as if it had never been damaged at all.
I know how difficult it was for her to repair. Certainly, just seeing what she was doing can't have been easy. As I sit here now, looking at it, I'm touched beyond words at her kindness. I don't think I can every truly thank her enough for repairing this small piece of my family's past. It is one of the finest things anyone has ever done for me.
Before I tell you about Maggie's day, I wanted to respond to a couple of comments by readers.
First, to "Anonymous" who was posting regarding the driver's license issue: I'm sorry that your friends had such a bad experience. It's really the little things that sometimes get in the way of a great relocation experience. I know that when JM first mentioned how difficult it was to get a French license, I thought he was over reacting. I learned that wasn't the case. When people have to take a written/slide test twelve times and STILL don't pass, there's a serious problem somewhere. I had someone who doesn't speak any French at all write to me about the issue, and my response was that I think it would be impossible to get a French license without speaking relatively fluent French.
And, to "Rossini," thanks so much for your support. People do seem to get hung up on false assumptions. I think that a lot of folks in the U.S. are just feeling angry right now, and rather than taking it out on the government, they re-direct it at those whom they perceive to have "escaped" the system.
On to other things!
It was time for Maggie's annual vaccinations. And, there were a couple of other small things that needed seeing to, so off we went to our terrific vet, Dr. Un-Ren in Lavelanet. A lot of the folks around here use him and at least four or five of them have told me that he saved their pet's life. That's a pretty good recommendation.
We were helped by his assistant this time, since there was nothing particularly life-threatening going on. Maggie had her vaccinations, a small cyst on her back looked at, her anal glands emptied (disgusting task!!), general health checked out, etc. Then, we came away with a tick collar (must have around here) wormer pills (no heartworm in the region, but recommended to do a general worming twice a year), cream for her sore butt and a bag of a new food we want to try until her regular supply arrives. The total bill for all of that was 80€. Honestly, that just blew me away.
I loved our vet, and friend, Gayle in Reseda. I did not feel that we were being overcharged and I know for a fact that we often got a break on the prices of some things. But, I'm positive that a visit like today's would have cost a minimum of $250.
Last year, when I told Dr. Un-Ren about what we paid for things in L.A., he was shocked. I have to admit, when I think about it, it shocks me too. There's no way that most of the people around here could possibly afford health care for their animals if they had to pay L.A. prices.
I don't know why there should be such a variation. I suppose that part of it is that the cost of rent, insurance, salaries, etc., is a lot lower here. I'm sure that it costs lots more than what I paid today in Paris too. But the price difference is actually rather staggering.
I hope I don't ever have to find out how much the "more expensive" types of things like surgery cost. But my restrained budget was very grateful for today's bill!
After the recent meltdown of my computer, I decided that I really should make it easier to recover data if something like that happens again (practically a certainty at one point, no?).
The biggest loss, aside from my recipe file, is always one's address book, which takes so long to gather and get right. I have webmail with my webserver account, but I don't like the way it works. I'm not wild about Wanadoo's online mail either, so I decided to go for the paying version of Yahoo, or as it is known around here: YaPoop and The Big Poop. Probably unfair, as you DO get a lot of free stuff from them.
The nice thing about their Mail Plus service is that you don't have any ads; a major bonus with any online service. And, it's pretty cheap: $20 for a full year. For me, the big positive though, was that once I imported what remained of my Thunderbird address book, it was permanently stored online and I will never lose it again.
The theory was perfect. Except that yesterday, the Poop was down! For part of the day, I managed to find a backdoor workaround into my mailbox, but at the end of the afternoon, even that went south; very annoying, to be honest. Of course, the Catch 22 is that to write to their customer service department and, more particularly to receive a response, you NEED TO BE ABLE TO GET TO YOUR EMAIL!
Luckily, by this morning, all was back to normal. Clearly there was a server or router problem somewhere along the line, but it does point out that with computers, as with life, there ain't nothin' that's perfect!
In the meantime, I found a nice, inexpensive backup software that allows me to do automatic, off-site backup, as well as backing up to CDs, DVDs, etc. Once the initial major backup was done, it takes hardly any time at all to operate and, I should never lose more than a few hours worth of work again.
Now, on to Chalabre. Yesterday morning when we opened up our copy of the Dépêche and turned to the Limoux/Pays section, imagine our surprise to see a big article on JM's diaporama at the bibliotheque last week! It was a very nice piece, well reported, and there was a picture of us and some of the audience. I need to look at it again, to see if Diva Maggie got her fifteen-minutes of fame.
Okay, I'm back to the old system. There were just things on the new blog software that I didn't like as much, and others that I wasn't able to get working without spending an inordinate amount of time on them. So, we're back to good, old Original Possum. I'm thinking that this whole thing fell into the "life is too short" category!
We had a nice, if quiet weekend. So many people are on vacation that the whole village is quiet. We did get together with two of the lovely people we met at JM's slide show the other night, and that was fun.
But, mostly, I spent the weekend playing with software, which doesn't lend itself to interesting commentary.
