pots de crème

For any of you who have been to France, you know what it's like to walk down the supermarket aisles and stumble upon the yogurt and pudding sections. Yes, sometimes there are multiple aisles! For those who don't know what I'm talking about, take a look at this stack of individual yogurt packs.

They're not so big on the 500 ml or litre tubs of yogurt, but boy can you find a million and one individual yogurts. They come in plastic pots, glass pots (perfect for  a little posy vases) and ceramic pots. And yogurt is cheap. Yesterday we bought a 12-pack of plain yogurt for Jean-Marc for 1,35€. 

But then, just across from the yogurt is the pudding section! Have you ever seen so many individual portions of pudding?

Whether it's chocolate, vanilla, pistachio, caramel or coffee-flavoured puddings, French people's shopping trolleys are usually well-stocked with these desserts (much to my shock! Four dozen puddings for the week - really?). French Farmhouse co-owner Caitlin and I discovered the delights of these pots de crème back when we were renovating the house. We bought the coffee-flavoured ones in little glass pots (perfect for tealight candle holders afterwards) and we were hooked, but, ahem, you know, in a reasonable way. Once again, it's all still rather affordable: 4 pots for 1€.

Now that I live here I don't give in to these treats, mostly because I'm trying to avoid sugar and industrial food. But those little ceramic pots that I've collected over the years have come in handy because I have found some low sugar (or no sugar) alternative recipes. Here's one that I recently made that turned out more like a flan than a pudding, but good all the same!

coconut custard flan

ingredients

- butter or coconut oil to grease the ramekins
- 3 eggs
- 1 can of coconut milk
- 2 T maple syrup
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup grated coconut (optional)

instructions

- preheat oven to 325F (or 170C)
- boil some water to use for the bain marie in the baking dish
- grease the ramekins (about 4-5 medium)
- mix all the ingredients and pour into ramekins
- top with larger shaved coconut, if you like
- put ramekins into a baking dish and pour the boiling water into the bottom, surrounding the ramekins up about halfway
- bake custard flans for about 20-25 minutes or until set (you can check with a knife to see if it comes out clean). If your ramekins are smaller or wider, they may be done sooner.
ENJOY!

Here are some of mine that I baked in some of those ceramic pudding pots. You can also make a bit more with 5 eggs, 1.5 cans of coconut milk, 1/4 cup or less of maple syrup, 1 T of vanilla and more shaved coconut. That should be good for 7-8 servings. Miam!

it's official: I can stay!

This news dates back a week and a bit. At the beginning of this year, I received a letter inviting me to pick up my 10-year residency card at the prefecture in Auxerre. While I was still on holidays I decided to drive the 50 km into town to pick it up. The office hours are from 1:30-4:00 pm (so very practical!) and so I got there around 3:15, thinking that I had plenty of time. They told me that they were no longer giving out numbers because there were too many people. I wasn't the only one wanting a number, so I thought I'd bring out my inner French complainer and told them that I was just there to pick up a card (how long could it take?) and that I had driven 50 km just for this card - plus they were supposed to be open until 4pm... Luckily for me and the other two guys also hoping to get in line, a worker came back and said that the numbers could be given out again. I waited my turn, signed a form, handed over my fiscal stamps (162€) and I got this puppy which is good until October 2022.

Oh, and are you curious what fiscal stamps look like? Here they are!

The steps to finally getting this card started on August 6th of last year. I filled out a request for a new titre de séjour and had to address a letter to the prefecture stating that I wanted to apply for a 10-year card this time (I finally had the right to do so after three years of marriage). In October I received a letter, giving me a date and time in late November that Jean-Marc and I were to come to the prefecture together. I thought they may have wanted to interview us both to make sure we're really married, but all they needed the two of us for was to sign a paper saying that we live together. After that I had a private interview with a fellow, while Jean-Marc had to wait outside.

The guy asked me about my education, work, associations I belong to (I had to scramble for that one!) and he duly noted down all the answers. I then was given a paper with two sections that I had to sign: one that said that I'm not currently living in polygamy and another saying that I will not live in polygamy in the future. He then told me I'd have a written test to see if I was integrating into French culture. Here's a sampling of the questions along with my answers.

1. name two specialties of French cuisine (mains dishes or desserts)
- boeuf bourguignon and crème brûlée (we do live in Burgundy, after all!)

2. name a French singer
- Johnny Hallyday (I stayed with a safe choice)

3. name a French athlete (help, I don't watch sports!)
- Zidane (he was the only one I could think of, and I'm not even sure he's 100% French!)

4. where is it illegal to drink? (I had to think about this one - it seems you can drink anywhere!)
- while driving

5. what's the speed limit on routes (I had to ask if it was outside city limits)
- 90 km/h

6. what's the river running through Auxerre (luckily Jean-Marc is interested in rivers!)
- l'Yonne

7. name a person who has influenced the history of France
- Napoleon (which one, Jean-Marc later asked! Erm... )

8. how is the president of the republic elected (huh? By election? No, that's too simple)
- the answer is 'suffrage universelle' but I wrote election/vote. I had honestly never heard that term before, or if I had at one point I never clued in!

9. do men and women have the same rights in France?
- yes! (although it's kind of hard to get your maiden name to stick)

I can't remember the other questions, but you get the picture. I figure I got 19/20, with my only slip being that election question. I'm just glad they didn't ask me the words to the Marseillaise! Although I think that might be coming next year when I ask for my French nationality and passport (something I'm planning on doing, just to make things less complicated and less expensive - but I'm still keepin my Canadian passport, don't worry).

I had better start studying!

exploring

When Jean-Marc and I are at home on the weekend, we usually try to get out for a hike on one of the many paths around our house. Sometimes we head out to another village by car and then explore the area using our hiking maps (cartes IGN). That way we get to discover all the local villages and keep track of the good hikes! I always take my phone with me so that I can take photos when the moment hits me (it's our only camera at the moment). Here are a few photos from this winter's hikes and village explorations.

A vintage house address in Semur en Auxois

A patchwork field

 A cafe wall in Saulieu

 I'm not sure what this is, but it was on a house wall in Nuars

 An abandoned boot

 Manhole cover

 An abandoned shop's door

 Graphic design graffiti

 Electricity cap in Semur en Auxois

 Old stone wall with succulents 

 An old ad on the side of a house in Vézelay

 An autumnal hike near Clamecy

 Do not enter

Thistles in Asquins, with the hill of Vézelay in the background

winter vineyard

There is a small vineyard below the building where I work. For the most part I never see people in it, but the other morning I saw a group of workers pruning the grapevines and burning the branches. You can see the figures of the workers hidden in the fog.

And then later that afternoon as I was leaving, there was a lovely light hitting the vineyard. Same place, different time of day.

As an aside, this is the kind of work that Jean-Marc has been doing for the last couple of months. He's been clearing the pruned branches from the vines, after someone else has done the pruning, and once the branches are freed he breaks them and puts them on the ground in bundles, where they are ground up for mulch.  It's hard work because the vines are attached to the guide wires and other branches, so it means a lot of muscle is needed to separate everything (while not damaging the vine!). I think Jean-Marc is appreciating wine and the work that goes into it in a whole new way!

The bonus is that he sometimes gets paid in wine.

truffles for sale

I saw this in our local café the other day. Truffles for sale for only 25€/100 gr. That's 250€/kilo! Jean-Marc has a month's work in the vineyards and he's seen people looking for truffles nearby his work. Maybe he'll get lucky one of these days and strike gold!

cheese (or, 450 reasons to love France)

OK, so I've counted and we currently have nine sorts of cheese in the fridge, or ten, if you count cottage cheese as cheese. We've got our regular staples:
1. parmasan
2. feta
3. gouda - I am Dutch, after all!
4. camembert - impossible to live without, according to Jean-Marc

And then we have a selection that I picked up on the way home from our snowshoeing trip in the Jura mountains:

Clockwise from the top, we have:
5. aged bleu de Gex
6. tomme de Jura
7. aged morbier (with ash running down the middle)
8. chèvre with truffle oil
9. brebis (sheep milk) with piment d'espelette or espelette pepper, from the Basque region

Our boss had organized a cheese-tasting at a famous fromager's shop in Gex, a city at the base of the Jura mountains. A fromager is someone who not only sells cheese, but ages it himself - sometimes for years and years - before selling it in his shop. France has over 450 kinds of cheese, which means there is more than one for every day of the year! This particular store had over 300 varieties to choose from and I thought it quite impressive to find a shop with two-thirds of the country's cheese selection in stock.

We tasted a number of regional cheeses and in the end we all bought some to take home as a souvenir. When we got back in the car after stopping at a rest stop for a coffee on the way home, the smell was something else (!), but we soon got used to it. Sometimes you have to suffer in order to enjoy the finer things in life!

a surprise trip

A week ago, everybody at work was asked to reserve the following Monday - Wednesday, nights included, without being told why. Then at the end of the week, we received an email asking us to be prepared with a packed lunch for Monday, three days' worth of clothing, a swimsuit and clothes suitable for snow. The plan was to leave Monday morning at around 10 or 11am and come back Wednesday night around 10pm.

So Monday came around and the six of us got into two cars and we started heading south. After eating our packed lunch at a rest stop, we started driving east towards Switzerland. We drove past Geneva (or at least 14 km away from Geneva) and started going up some mountains in the Jura region. We ended up checking into a hotel in the town of Lamoura, which is a small winter sport centre with access to downhill and cross country skiing, as well as snowshoeing, and discovered that we each had rooms overlooking the snowy countryside (and not the road out front!). After dropping our things off in our rooms, we set off to rent our snowshoes for our stay and we then took advantage of the remaining daylight hours to get a bit of snowshoeing in.

The hotel had a wooden chalet feel and it was demi-pension, so breakfast and supper were included. The first evening before supper, we gathered for aperitifs in one of the hotel rooms and enjoyed 2 bottles of champagne that my boss had brought along. The second evening we had 2 bottles of red wine and we played Time's Up in teams of two (it's a game where you have to try and get your partner to guess a word, either using long explanations, just one word or mimes).

During our stay, we had two full days of snowshoeing and we explored a lot of the trails that are scattered around the ski hills, snowshoeing about 10 - 12 km per day. From time to time we would come across chalets where it was possible to have a mulled wine or cup of cocoa, and on both days, we packed a picnic and enjoyed our lunch in the snow. We lucked out with the weather because it was nothing but blue sky and sunshine. Just have a look!

Did I mention that our office dog, Eclipse, came along too? She *loved* the snow and spent her time fetching snowballs, some of which were much larger than her head!

On the way home we stopped at another mountain peak and went to a restaurant for some tea. The sky was clear and there was a panoramic view of the Alps across the valley. We could even see Mont Blanc. It's the biggest one there in the middle.

Further down the hill we stopped at a fromagerie to buy some local cheese before going home (I'll write more about that in a future post).

We arrived home in one piece on Wednesday night. It was nice to have time to bond with my work mates and just have fun together without thinking about work. I think that was the point!

paperasse part two

(another catchup session)

This is an ongoing theme here! Paperasse, or paperwork, is really stress-inducing in France and every time there is reason to change or update papers, just the thought is enough to create a knot in my stomach. SO! Second move in a year? No problem. I told myself I could do this.

carte grise

The carte grise is the car ownership paper that needs to be kept up-to-date in terms of current address. If you don’t do it after a month of moving and are caught, you can get fined and lose points off your licence (but for some reason, the licence doesn’t need to be updated!). Changing your address on your carte grise means a trip to the préfecture or sous-préfectures and proving your new address with a utility bill.

So we drove 15km into Avallon with our rental agreement in hand and went to the sous-préfecture to change our carte grise. Of course once we got there, we learned that a rental agreement is not proof enough of an address (ANYBODY could make up any old rental agreement) and since I had taken time off work to do this transaction, I drove back home to get the paperwork needed. They wanted an electricity bill (and those couldn’t be made up in photoshop?) but I was hesitant to use our electricity bill because we have three (yes, that’s 3) street names on our bill. Why? Good question! It has to do with the street changing names over the years and nobody being willing to accept the correct address. So I brought the bill, along with a stack of other papers showing the correct street name, back to the sous-préfecture and they were able to process the address change for both of us, although we did have to prove we were married – because the bill was in Jean-Marc’s name – and I needed to insist on keeping my own name for the new sticker. Sixty kilometres later, we were both done.

Back in Canada we don’t have anything like a carte grise, but it seems to me that when I moved I was able to change my driver’s licence online in a matter of minutes and that was that.

banks

Changing your address with a bank also requires sending by mail (not fax, not email) proof of address, along with an accompanying letter requesting the change. I sent off the request along with the rental agreement, but – you guessed it! – that was not the right thing to send off. The letter was returned and I was asked to send the valid proof and so I sent off the electricity bill with the three street names, explained the situation, and I threw in a few other bills, just for good measure.

The change was made, but just for one of the two accounts I had requested, so I had to call the bank and request the change for the second account. They gave me the song and dance about sending proof and I said that it had already been sent in. The decidedly unhelpful and unfriendly person at the other end of the line finally understood the situation and begrudgingly agreed to change the second account’s address. Just today I received the bank statement from this account through redirected mail, so the change didn’t actually get done. Somehow I'm not surprised. I’ve written yet another letter requesting the change again, and I’m sending it with a stack of justificatifs de domicile. Third time lucky?

I also needed to change my address with my Canadian banks. I called and spoke to cheery, helpful people who were willing to change my address and take my word for it (after I correctly answered the security questions, of course!). I did both Canadian banks in under 5 minutes.

carte de séjour

After being the proud owner of my carte de séjour for six months, it was time to put in a request for a new card. I went to the town hall and made my request and the secretary thought that the card should come sooner than last year’s, which took almost seven months to arrive. To my surprise, after only two months, I was summoned with Jean-Marc to the préfecture in the big city of Auxerre, which is 50 km away. I thought maybe we would have an interview to make sure that we are really married and together, but we just needed to sign a declaration together, stating that we are living together. We drove 100 km to do that? Couldn't we have done that in front of the mayor at the town hall? They said that the card should arrive in a month. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my card had arrived at the town hall just before Christmas! I was told to buy fiscal stamps to the tune of 104€ (their way of collecting the payment) in Avallon and present them at the mairie to get my card.

We went to the place where you buy fiscal stamps and when I told them the amounts (one for 85€ and one for 19€) they were confused. There are various sorts of stamps for various sorts of transactions (passport, citizenship cards, driving fines etc.) and they are all at specific prices. They didn’t want to sell me the wrong kind of stamps because getting a refund is a chore (oh really?) and the stamps were changing at the end of the year. I thought that it was a prudent suggestion and I decided to check in with the village secretary first thing Monday morning.

First thing Monday morning I called only to find that the town hall was closed between the 19^th and the 29^th! So this little new card had to wait until 2012 to be paid for and picked up. I went in yesterday with my stamps, but the person at the desk wasn't the regular secretary and she had no idea where my card might be. Call me crazy, but I think that a filing cabinet would be a handy thing to have in an office, as opposed to binders and files stacked in boxes! That way the cards could be found under 'C' for cartes. Filing cabinets are so not French.

Why do taxes, fees and fines need to be paid for with fiscal stamps in this day and age? Why couldn’t I just write a cheque, pay in cash or – and I know I’m going out on a limb here – pay by debit card? 

Sometimes I really miss simplicity.

our house

Ok, so after all this talk about the new house, I bet you would like to see and hear more about it! I was actually wanting to get the house in better shape (painted and more furnished) before taking photos, but that’s what I thought about the last place we lived and, well, that day never came. So here we go, here’s our house! I’ll take more photos when the weather is a bit better, so you can see it with the sun shining out front or in our courtyard.

This is our entrance. There are actually two front doors: a mostly glass one (that was perhaps a store-front door?) and a newly-installed wooden one that was a result of the village's architectural demands. In the summer, we keep the glass door open, so that the wooden one is visible to the public. The bonus of having two front doors is the sound and heat insulation that it provides. The things on the walls are various cards, photos and posters that we have displayed on fishing line that is tightly attached to two hooks.

Beside the entrance is our living room, whose windows look right on the sidewalk outside. The the floor on this level is cement tiling that was typical in the 50s in France. See those two chairs? 5€ at a charity shop!

This is a close up of our front window, which is not at all typically French and more like something you might find in Holland or England!

After the living room, you pass through a hallway that has stairs going up to the other floors as well as the first separate toilet. There is a French door (with glass panes) and then you are in the dining room.

The dining room has three windowed doors that open to outside and it also has a fireplace. The curtains belong to the landlord, just in case you were wondering what was going on there.

This room is actually big enough to be a sort of family room, with dining and living areas, but we don't have the furniture for that quite yet. So in the meantime it's just our little table in this big room, along with a bookshelf.

After the dining room, off to the right, there is a door that leads to the kitchen, which is divided into two parts: upper and lower.

This is the upper part (looking dark, but it's actually quite bright), with a sink and counter with cupboards on one side, 

and a fridge and more cupboards and countertop on the other side. I should mention that this is virtually unheard of in France, especially in rentals. As I mentioned before, normally all you get in a kitchen is a sink and one cupboard underneath. The rest is up to you!

And then there is the lower bit with a second sink.

They left us the stove and everything!

I found this old mailbox at a charity shop and decided that it would be a good bread box. What's funny is that it has the number nine on it and I bought back when were were living in Savennières. Our current house number? Nine!

Going upstairs, there are two rooms: the office and our bedroom, with an adjoining bathroom. Oh, and a walk-in closet!

This is the office, which is a huge room with two windows and enough space to have another guest room. I'll post pictures once it's more put together.

This is our bedroom, with windows looking east, over our backyard. We even have a nice view of the countryside and a neighbouring hilltop village. The bathroom is accessible from the bedroom and the hallway.

Up one more flight of stairs and you have a furnished bedroom (no pictures for the moment, I'm afraid - it's been too dark) and a swank guest bathroom that has a skylight and a sitting tub with shower.

As I mentioned, once the weather is a bit brighter, I will take more photos of the inside and add some exterior photos, so you can see what it's like. 

Christmas spirit

Last year was a really crafty Christmas and this year was much less so, but we still got around to a few things. Jean-Marc had the idea of slicing a birch branch into little pucks and then painting them with various colours to make our tree decorations. My only contribution was putting fishing line through the little holes and hanging them in the tree.

While he was busy painting, I decided to take advantage of the paint on the table and paint some Christmas cards to send to friends and family. To be honest, I initially wasn’t very inspired but then what seemed like a disaster on the paper turned into inspiration and I ended up making a wee stack of cards to send off. No photos, though, but some of you will have received them in the mail!

village Christmas gathering

Jean-Marc has been calling up various people in an effort to find work, and one of his recent calls to a local landscaper resulted in an invitation to the village Christmas gathering. Not a job, but a good opportunity to meet more of the locals!

So on the 22^nd, we gathered at the bottom of the hill along with all the families and Père Noël, who was ringing his sheep bell. We climbed the hill up to the town hall’s party room, where there were treats for everyone and Père Noël gave out presents to all the village kids (apparently all bought by the village!). We talked to a few people and then I ended up chatting to the woman next to me. At first I heard her daughter singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with an excellent accent and I commented on how good her English was. The woman replied that they spoke English at home and then we discovered that we’re both from Vancouver and that she went to the high school that is just a few blocks from where I lived for 15 years! Not only that, but she is a classical music agent who is self-employed. The similarities were kind of astonishing, considering we are both living in a tiny village of 400 people, but it was a nice meeting and I’m looking forward to getting to know her better.

Christmas with the family

Officially, I don't have any paid holidays for the first year of work, after which time I get five weeks, but since we had been working long hours and we went away on tour for 10 days, I was able to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off. So we loaded up the car with Christmas presents and Domino the cat and headed off to the in-laws for the holidays. We ended up spending six nights there and had a nice time together with family and friends (the infamous 9-hour dinner friends). This was the first time since I took my job eight months ago that I had proper time off, so it was very welcome! The only bémol (downside or "flat") was that the family got the stomach flu one by one. We thought we had resisted it, but by the time we drove home, Jean-Marc wasn't feeling so great and the next day I was in the same boat. New Year's eve was a bit of a bust as a result - not that we had much planned - but it gave me a head start on my dietary resolutions!

the move

(This is one of the catch-up installments of what's been going on for the last few months.)

Moving. We had just moved in October 2010 and so the idea of packing up and moving across the country in September 2011 was not something that we were particularly looking forward to. I had looked into hiring a professional moving company, but the cost was too prohibitive, so we decided to rent a 20 cubic metre truck and do it all ourselves.

Step 1: rent the truck

I knew this wouldn’t be straightforward. The plan was for me to rent the truck, drive it across the country, load up next day, drive back to Vézelay, unpack and then return the truck on the third day.

I showed up to rent the truck early in the morning. I had anticipated the problem with my driver’s licence; since my French licence was less than one year old, technically I wasn't allowed to rent or drive trucks, so I thought ahead and brought a statement showing the original date of my first licence in Canada. The woman at the counter accepted this and I thought it would be smooth sailing from there on. Then she asked me for a large deposit that she would take out on my debit card. It was more money than I had in my account and I knew that I couldn’t pay for it. After a phone call to my bank and a chat with the store manager we worked something out. Phew! I wasn’t sure what I was going to do otherwise. The good thing about France is that even when the answer is "no" you can usually find a solution and get to "yes" after a bit of negotiation. 

Step 2: drive across the country (500ish km)

This part was relatively easy, but in a 20 cubic metre truck, there was a little more to have to pay attention to (the vacuum effect of bigger trucks, for example).

Step 3: start loading up

Jean-Marc had the unpleasant task of packing up the majority of our belongings in my absence and so when I arrived with the truck we were able to immediately start loading up after making a short trip to the charity store with the things we wanted to get rid of. A friend and neighbour came to help us for a bit, which was a pleasant surprise and a big help. We ended up saving the rest until the next morning.

Step 4: finish loading up, drive across country and fully unload

This was the toughest day! We got up early and kept on packing until about 1pm. Originally we wanted to also do a full cleaning before leaving, but we opted to leave that until our état des lieux (final inspection) which wasn’t for a few more weeks. We had lunch at the local café and then headed out on the road. I drove the truck and Jean-Marc drove his car with Domino at his side. We arrived around 8pm and ended up unloading until after midnight, with just a brief break for a slice of pizza. The truck was due the following morning at 8:30am, so we put our mattress on the floor (the box spring was too large to get up the stairs) and slept as much as we could.

Step 5: return truck and get settled in

We were able to return the truck on time AND with no damage, so it all turned out all right in the end! 

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the move was that Pôle Emploi (unemployment agency) paid for all the moving expenses, including gas, toll highways, truck rental, phone and electricity set-up charges, the legal lease-signing fees, AND the return trip that Jean-Marc needed to do for the final clean-up and inspection a few weeks later. When I sent in the paperwork along with all the receipts, I was fully expecting a wait of at least a few months (I did wait seven months for my carte de séjour, remember) but I received the cheque within two weeks. What? Thank you, France!

hello there!

Well, it’s been a long time! I’ve had friends and family writing me, thinking that there was something wrong with their computer or my blog because they couldn’t see anything new written after August. Ever since the whirlwind of the festival and the tour the followed immediately thereafter, it feels like we’ve been on a non-stop roller coaster ride. It’s not that I haven’t had things to share or write about, it’s more that there has been very little space for such activities. If it’s ok with you, I’d like to catch up on the last few months in a series of little installments and my apologies if it feels like a little much after so much time with so little news. Here’s a small story that happened before and after our move into our house.

the paint job

During the festival at the end of August, I was asked to leave my studio because it was needed for the artists’ dressing rooms. Luckily for me, my landlords were moving a few days before the end of the month and they were ok with me camping out in the house before our big move. Once they moved their things out and I moved my few belongings in, I realized that the walls needed painting; all the holes in the wall from their hanging paintings, plus the wear and tear of living in a house had made the walls somewhat scruffy-looking. Since the landlord left behind a big load of paint for the house, I thought I’d take advantage of the empty rooms and get painting.

Of course this ended up being not quite as easy as I had anticipated.

First off, the big buckets of paint were near empty and I discovered that the cans had gotten mixed up during their move and the landlords ended up taking the full cans home to England with them, leaving the empty ones behind. I wanted to try and match the paint that was on the walls (they had asked that I use their colours) and so I painted a sample on a piece of paper and drove to a hardware store to get a tin made to order. When I got the 12-litre tub home, I could see right away that the tone was MUCH darker than what was on the walls. I ended up mixing white into it to lighten the whole batch, but I never quite got it exactly to the original colour. I decided it was close enough and was eager to get painting so I prepared all the walls and moulding with masking tape and got rolling.

It was all looking really good until I got to the third wall, where I noticed that the paint seemed to be bubbling. I continued on, hoping it would dry with no problems, but then I saw that the bubbling paint was peeling, bringing up many layers of paint with it. Not only that, but the first two walls were starting to do the same. I had spent the better part of the day painting by myself and this was altogether disheartening, so I decided to stop and see what it looked like in the morning.

It was worse.

As much as I was bothered by this turn of events, I just had to live with it until after we moved in because there was no time to fix the problem before then. After our move (details to come in a future installment) we decided to paint right away before settling in. While I was away at work, Jean-Marc spent a week scraping as much of the old paint – along with many other layers – as he could. We sanded the edges of the paint that wouldn’t come off and then had to spackle all the edges and uneven surfaces.

After a week of preparation, we were ready to put on a primer after a good cleaning of the walls. The primer worked ok except on the ceiling, where parts of the plaster were chunking off as we painted. Gulp. We spackled, sanded and primed the ceiling as best we could. We then put the real paint on, and were both super relieved to find that it was sticking, not bubbling and not cracking.

Did I mention that this was in the dining room? The original intention was to do the whole main floor (dining, living and hallway) but after the first room we thought we’d wait until next spring to get to the rest. Something tells me that the other rooms will be just as delicate!

domino the dog-cat

I think I introduced you to Domino our cat last year when he first arrived at our house. He's now 1.5 years old and has turned into a very adaptable kitty. He has been to Holland once, to the farmhouse in the Auvergne twice, and has travelled back and forth between Savennières and Vézelay three times. That's over 7000 km in the car!

At home in Savennières, he is quite independent and he likes to take off on his own for many hours at a time, just coming home for food and a little lap time, although he does come when he is called. In Vézelay, he stays much closer to us, spending a lot of time sleeping on the bed and exploring the vincinity around where I was staying.

When Jean-Marc was here for his holidays, we quite often went out in the evening for a little walk and we noticed that Domino was keen on following us. One time, we wandered up the winding paths to the basilica (about 200 metres away) and when we looked behind us, there was Domino trotting along. We continued further to the park behind the basilica, and he followed us along the stone wall that encloses the area. When it was time to go, he was right in step with us. I thought this was because he was a little afraid of going too far away on his own in Vézelay because of all the other cats and their territories, but what do I know?

A couple of weekends ago, back in Savennières, we were invited over to a friend's house in our village for a glass of wine. This friend lives in an out-building of a winery château that is situated in a large park, about half a km from our place. We went on foot, and when we arrived, we saw that Domino had followed us the whole way. We entered the grounds of the château, leaving Domino on the other side of the gate (due to the other cats) and visited with our friend. Since it was nice weather, we decided to wander into the park and have a glass of wine next to the pond. When we got outside, there was Domino ( he must have climbed the 3 metre stone wall) and he came with us down to the pond. We sat there for maybe an hour and he stayed  close to us, either exploring around the pond or lounging at our feet. Our friend proposed a second excursion into the vineyards of the Domaine, so we crossed a field, climbed some steps and crossed a bridge, which led us into the hillside vineyard. Domino never missed a beat, following us the whole way. Once in the vineyard, we sat on the ground and drank a little more wine, admiring the stars of an incredibly clear night. Domino relaxed in his kitty sphinx pose a couple of metres away and hung out with us for another hour, until we decided to leave. By this point we were probably more than a kilometre from our place and I had never seen our cat wander so far from home before!

We walked all the way home, with our little dog-cat right behind us.

When he's out and about, I imagine Domino to be a bit scrappy because he comes homes with scratches and nicks, but when he's at home he's a total snuggle bear who is very gentle and affectionate. I have a friend who might say that our cat is our "fur kid" - which is kind of true - but as a cat person, I have never met any cat as responsive and faithful as Domino. More like a dog than a cat, really.

I think it's fair to say that Jean-Marc and I are both smitten. We're hoping that the move and the new house, which is dangerously close to some busy roads, don't cause a problem for our little choupie*.

* a word I have invented, pronounced SHOO-pee, which can be used for any animal (un choupie), but in Domino's case, he is Le Choupie. Wouldn't you agree?