May, 2018

One of 5 Texas sized Canadian Maple leafs

at our favorite winery

"La bise" (aka) Air kisses

Few people would have missed news footage of President Trump and French President Macron's meetings during the recent visit. [Relax, this is not about politics] Many Americans were aghast at the sight of the two men exchanging cheek to cheek 'air kisses". We are familiar with the behavior when pseudo sophisticated Hollywood types exchange air kisses, but not like, well, real people.  

"Is this how I am supposed to do it?"

Just don't leave a hickey, ok?

I don't know if this is common all over Europe, but I can attest to the behavior in France. I first saw it when we were in Brittany and thought the men must have a bromance thing going. The first time a guy approached me in that way I thought he surely had me confused with someone else and I instinctively wanted to blurt out "DON'T TOUCH MY JUNK" 

Fortunately, I had come to realize that here, it is a sign of really close friendships (no, not that kind!) and would be a real slight to rebuff it. It's a cultural thing. Not one that we as Americans are comfortable with but when in Rome...

No one is swapping spit so you are safe. Macron is a savvy enough guy to know the cultural eye raising it would cause and surely put Trump on the defensive. The one-up-man-ship was on. So when we go to our favorite restaurant here... we exchange air kisses with the owners. With close buddies...air kisses. If we must.  Its a cultural thing. If you are an American and you try to air kiss me, you will draw back a bloody lip. Its a cultural thing....:(

OMG, say it isn't so!!!

I got a call from my sister recently announcing that she and her husband were looking to buy a home in the Thousand Islands area. Having heard lots of plans from lots of people about what they were 'going to do', I saw little reason to get too excited about the idea.

For the past 35 years, most often we are thousands of miles away from my family, giving us blissful respite from the inevitable family drama that plays itself out occasionally, while we are unaware half a world away. We must have set a good example, since all 5 of our kids moved at least 1000 miles away from home themselves. Admittedly, 'home' is becoming harder to pinpoint, but I digress. I panicked when my sister announced that they had actually put their house on the market in Toronto and were visiting some properties.

When she told me that they were looking at island properties 3 minutes away from ours, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I absolutely freaked. Now, we will probably have to move to Tanzania or northern Alaska.

I did everything I could think of to dissuade her. I started by warning her that while crossing the river, her boat could sink and she could drown. She said that they would be sure to wear life jackets. "What about the sharks?" I asked, hoping to have her conjured up the images in the movie 'jaws', but knowing full well that the only sharks around here were at the aquarium. " But the people here are really mean" I lied, not wanting to compete for the great friends we have made. "You might be marooned" I cried, hoping to spur some basic primal fear. No dice. Growing more desperate, I shouted " You might be flooded if a tsunami comes!!!" " Island people are weird" I said in a final attempt to reason with her, thinking that she might be able to relate by looking at her own brother.

If that wasn't enough, my sister started to talk to my mother about moving closer also. OMG! The very 'chain migration' a certain president [who will remain unnamed but whose name begins with a 'T' and ends with a 'RUMP'] has warned us about. Then, it happened. She called to tell us that their house had sold and that they bought a property on a larger nearby island. Well, there goes the neighborhood.

The point of all this is that if you see a woman on the river with a shark harpoon, go easy on her. She may have gotten bad advice. Besides, she may not be looking for sharks. She may be looking for me.

BTW, just kidding, sis. Welcome to the islands.

Show and tell

OK, it's time. We have not written once about our projects here this season because they were not finished. They are now. If you are fond of pictures, this month we have a boatload of them. The plan this season was to complete the renovation of our front entry and do what needed to be done to our lower level area dining room, living room and bedroom #4 out of the eventual 5.

We live on a cul-de-sac. On one side of the street are 8 'fisherman's cottages' whose residents spend but a few weeks a year here on holiday. They range in size from 500 to 700 sq ft (50-70 sq m). One of them is for sale, if you are interested- a steal at $390,000 (US) or $502,000 (Canadian)- but buyer beware as they are in need of serious renovating. There is also a neighbor with an attached house that took two of the cottages and combined them, doubling the size of their home. On our side of the street  is a small chapel, a Michelin rated restaurant and our villa.

Janice, applying colored grout.

You may recall my explaining that the villa we bought has essentially two levels. The street level has two bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and living room, 1 1/2 baths and a large terrace.

The lower garden level, accessed by an interior staircase, has 3 theoretical bedrooms, a second kitchen, dining, 2 bathrooms and living room with its terrace also. I say theoretical because at the time we bought the villa, the lower level was little more than a WWII concrete bunker with no power, water or working drains. If you are fond of raw concrete walls, ceilings and floors, you would have been right at home.

It would not be fair to call it  a remodel as other than the cement shell, there was nothing to work with in the first place. Last year we jack hammered the floor to the dirt in the first lower level bedroom, ran new water and power lines, poured a new concrete floor, tiled it with Travertine stone, textured the walls and ceiling, added light fixtures, doors, bathroom fixtures and a travertine shower in what is now the master bedroom and en-suite.

Remember this?

Our bedroom when we tore out the floor. When we bough the place, the home inspection report listed 60 pages of itemized reason why we should NOT buy. Home inspection reports are for unimaginative wimps.

After we were done

Surprisingly, this years project went much faster and easier than I had expected, something that is quite unusual for me. While well intentioned, I am usually ridiculously optimistic about how long things will take me to finish, to the point that anyone who knows me usually ignores any predictions I make as to completion dates. I may come within budget, but rarely on time. The before and after pictures are quite startling, even to us. We quickly forget how it used to be after the changes are made. OK, here is a peek at how it turned out.

This was our front entry at the time of purchase. The lack of curb appeal was obvious.

Our property is on a double lot and is shaped somewhat like a wedge. The entry is at the pointy end near the street and gives not a hint of the villa's 3000 sq ft (276 sq m) size. From the street you can't see the sea even though you know you are close.

Invariably, when people enter for the first time, they step into the short hallway to the living room where they gasp at a wall to wall view of the sea below at the widest part of the property through the 7 floor to ceiling glass panes of the 2 double wide French doors that open to the upper terrace. Their reaction is like our pulling the curtain back in the movie the 'Wizard of Oz'.

View of the raw framing under the roof of our entry

As little as there may have been to our entry, we needed to get real and kick up the curb appeal a notch. So, we tore out the stones that were uneven and picked up all manners of dirt, leaves and trash that the wind blew in. After laying a new cement slab, I tiled the floor. Next, was having a glass wall with double entry doors installed. Rewiring to put in some recessed lights, I helped Janice drywall the ceiling with a hand troweled texture and finally added a few furnishing touches to do the trick.

Done deal.

Then there was the colorful wall art piece. Oh, boy... There are two things that Janice and I struggle to see eye to eye on. One is music. I lean towards the 'Grateful Dead'. She leans toward the seriously and completely dead. As in Mel Torme, Tchaikovsky and other relics from the past. I think music should not only be heard but felt. One of us plays music at a volume to wake up the dead, the other at what I am told is at a reasonable level. You figure out who is who.

The second is art. We are in different universes here. We are rarely simpatico on a piece so when we do find one, we jump on it as it is not likely to happen again anytime soon. Speaking of universes, that is what happened here. We chose a triptych that is like a photo of part of the universe you have seen taken from the Hubble space telescope. Very colorful, trippy, awesome and 'spacy' looking. It just struck a nerve with us and was sooooooo not French. Trying to integrate ourselves into the local culture can only go so far.

New entry sitting area and wall art

We ordered the piece last summer when we were at the island. As usual, we plan our projects 8 months ahead, so we picked it then, knowing what we had envisioned when we would return. It was much cheaper to order it while in Canada, even though it was printed on metal In India. When we got it, we flew it with us to California, then on to Seattle when we visited the kids in the fall, and finally our trip home to the South of France. That sucker traveled a total of over 17,000 miles (27,000 km).

So much for curb appeal, it was time to end the side distraction and get on with the main project of the season. This year saw us tackle the dining / living room and the garden level bedroom (#4). This will leave us to complete the 2nd kitchen, another bathroom and the last (#5) bedroom next year.

Before

View of the lower terrace at the living room / dining room entry level


After

I started the interior work by cutting the slits in the walls and ceilings to bury electrical wires for outlets, lights and switches.

Predictable, it caused a little dust, so I made sure to cover the sofa with a good layer of plastic until we could...

...give the room a good spring cleaning. Considering the area had been vacant for 25+ years, the cobwebs were thick and the dirt was ground in, so I power washed the ceilings, walls and floors. With all windows and doors opened 24 hours a day, the room dried in only 4 days. Once done, the walls and ceilings got a hand troweled textured finish, light fixtures installed and furniture brought in. Add a little Janice decorating magic and TA-DA!

Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing. The room had what at first was somewhat of an issue: an unconventional low ceiling. This not being our first rodeo, we did what we always do... turn an issue into a feature! Using a tried and true principle of magic, we hid it in plain sight by giving the room a bit of a cozy intimate wine cellar look by building the arches and laying refractory bricks. 886 of them to be exact, but other than me, who's counting?

The gizmo on the barrel at right is a wine bottle corker. Here, we have access to bulk premium wines from the local vineyards and we can bottle our wine ourselves. The doo-dah on the far barrel is a wine bottle opener so you can safely stay on the sofa and not lose your balance walking around.

The two built in wood niches used to be old style cast iron radiator inserts. 3 years ago when we bought the place and started to clean up the garden, I cut hundreds of these branches with an eye to using them in this way when the room would be done. When our neighbor watched me stack boxes and boxes of these at the time, she thought I was nuts.

Close up of wall art

We put this little art piece together when we found these Indian blocks. They would stamp the blocks on an ink pad then transfer the design onto fabric. What does this have to do with a French wine cellar? Nothing, but it is so organic looking we thought it looked great.

Next came the garden bedroom. This was the saddest part of the place as it had the look of an abandoned farm building as seen below. It, too, got the above treatment after it got new entry doors and a tiled terrace. The 'middle' terrace is right above this bedroom. All 3 terraces have a sea view right behind where I am standing to take this picture.

Before
What's not to love? A blank canvas ready for our touch.

After

Inside, before.

After

The 'desk' was a raw piece of wood destined for the fireplace when I recovered it from a friend before we moved from Brittany. Into the back of the moving truck it went. After a little refinishing, it turned out to be a beautiful slab of Oak wood and was perfect for the room. The wood wall feature is Olive wood that we acquired from a local sawyer who harvests unproductive trees from Italy and Spain.

With a new heat exchanger (heat and A/C) unit, lights, a Travertine stone floor, staircase, the 'desk' and this bad boy started to look pretty sweet for a 14' X 15' (18.5 sq m) bedroom.

Click on the arrow to see our day at the beach

Today is May 15th. We are slowly winding down our stay here and I hear the sweet sound of an airplane calling my name. Besides we have a little project awaiting us at the island...

April, 2018

Hanging out at the beach of St Tropez

My baby

Families are like fudge. Most are pretty sweet, but there are always a few nuts. Over the years, I have written about some pretty special relatives in my family. The kids are all great, of course, and my mother in law is the absolute best. I have superb aunts and uncles and some very cool nieces. The grandkids speak for themselves. This not about any of them.

No, this is about my bride. We celebrated our 34th anniversary the other day, exactly half of our lives. I was thinking about how when we got married, we had only known each other for 9 months, and no there was not a little one on the way. We were blending two families with kids and bought the property we were going to build our home on, before the wedding day. I was relentless in wanting to build a geodesic dome home since I was 16, and finally the stars aligned. 

It did not occur to me at the time, that here was this woman who was embarking on a new marriage with 3 kids between us, soon to be a 4th on the way and a 5th to follow, with a guy who wanted to build a complicated custom home -alone-.  This, with all but no construction background, while both of us were working full time, pouring all of our assets and a bank loan for a bunch of building materials.

Did I mention that the budget called for not a dime for labor, and living in a single wide mobile home on the property to boot? If that was not enough, both our exes were at war with us and had gone nuclear, while we were dodging their arrows trying to take us down. Both our attorneys are still enjoying their wine cellars we paid for.

We had ticked every box -bar none- that causes stress in relationships that frequently lead to divorce. And we were newlyweds. Still, she jumped in with both feet with a guy long on promises and short on experience but determined to deliver. At the time, it would have been fair to describe the plan as pure folly. But, when things later prove to work themselves out, the plan is then seen as bold and forward looking, or some such poop-la-doo.

Janice self-portrait, 1983.

I am still struck by the trust factor.

This is our 4th home together. Each time I have asked myself "What on earth makes her think I can pull this off?" She proposes to pour a lot of money (to us at least) into projects I have no background or experience in and assumes I can deliver. Newsflash! I am not 'Joe the contractor' and often have to refer to much smarter people than myself for advice. Sometimes I wonder if I complete projects simply because I don't know enough to know that I don't know enough to pull it off. (!) Let's face it, at the end of the day, I am just a guy with a rusty hammer.

Truth be told, there are few women with her moxie.

Meanwhile, she has soldiered on, working on her garden here, from the initial 90 bags of clippings to a recognizable flowered oasis.

Strike two

We are beginning to think we might be jinxed, or there might be something wrong with us. Last month we had friends from Brittany who had planned to visit for a week but canceled because their flight got snowbound in Geneva.

This month, we had Island friends from Canada who had planned to visit for a week also but bailed on us 72 hours before their scheduled arrival because their son had an accident and was hospitalized. 

OK, so there are plenty of vacancies available now so.... what are you doing that is so important that you don't want to spend a week on the Riviera?

Chateau Entrecasteaux

Taking yet more time off to goof around, we spent the day with our buddies Maurice and Brigitte. We visited castle 'Entrecasteaux', built on the ruins of an 11th century fort and transformed in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. 

Janice, gathering decorating ideas...

Close call

We got an email from Google the other day. Now I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single good reason why Google would want to write to the likes of me so I figured there could only be a bad reason.

"Janiceeeeeee!" I shouted, figuring that their algorithms had picked up on her typing Trump's name in the search browser at some point. "Now we will probably be kicked off the internet -or worse- sent to  Google hell where miscreants like us go to repent." We will probably have to type all our future search requests in Tagalog or Ukrainian or something.

Steeling myself, I opened the email and saw the word 'Congratulations!' Any message that begins with that as a subject must involve someone wanting some money. But no, they were notifying us that the picture of our beloved Honey Bee Island that we had posted online some time ago had been viewed by nearly 6,000 people to date and they wanted us to upload more.

Still, I am not taking any chances. I won't dare type you-know-who's name in my browser. No sir, not me.

We built it so,
they came.

Classy, cool and very old. The village, that is.

This month, we had yet another couple from our old village in Brittany come visit for several days. Philippe and Evelyn came to the island a few years ago and wanted to check out our new digs here. It was their first visit to this part of France so there was much to show them. Among the places visited was the village of St Paul De Vence.

The professor

We have British friends who live here who returned to England for a month. She has been teaching an English class to a bunch of Frenchie's for some time and asked if we could substitute for two classes during her absence.

Teaching is not my thing and certainly not the English language but we were glad to step in to keep the ship afloat for a short spell. The 2 hour 'class' is mostly conversation and I think they are reading a book together to drum up some new vocabulary and generally use it for teachable moments.

I decided that I would take the first hour of the class and turn it over to my pro for the second. I started by telling them that this would be a different kind of class and that if they didn't like it -or me-, not to worry, the good teacher would be back shortly and they would never have to see the likes of me again. How's that for an into?

I also told them I would not teach them a single new word as I know they already knew many, nor would I teach any grammar as I didn't have a clue about any of it anyway. What I would do, I promised them, is to teach them how to properly pronounce over a 1000 words they already knew, in two lessons. I meant it.

Anyone who hears the typical French person speaking English knows well the mispronunciation of the 'TH' sounding words, like "This, That, Them, There, Those, The". Invariably, they say "Dis, Dat, Dem, Dere, Dose, Duh" as the 'TH' sound is simply not part of the French language.

I displayed images of the cross section of the mouth, showing both the correct and incorrect position of the tongue when speaking any 'TH' word, and a printed list of 50 words to practice on. The thing about practice is that they HAVE been practicing for years, probably thinking that just repeating the same mis-pronunciation would cause it to improve somehow.

I started by giving everyone a mini chocolate and added one for every correct pronunciation...but took one back for every sloppy effort. I found that getting chocolate was not much of an incentive but having one taken away in front of others was.

I mentioned that I have no experience teaching. The last time I can remember giving directions was years ago in prison. "Hey, s**ithead, get your fat a** over here or I'll put you in Bubba's cell. He says he likes little white boys who are real tight..."

Now, being a gentle, sensitive, caring millennial man, I thought that a different approach was called for.

March, 2018

No, we are not dostadning 

That is what the Swedes call removing unnecessary things to make your home nice and orderly when you think that the time is coming closer for you to leave the planet, to save precious time for our loved ones after you are gone. Translated, it means "death cleaning".  

My bucket list is far too long for me to contemplate an early departure but we have made an effort to reverse the American trend to be pack rats. Each time we return 'home', wherever that may be at the time, we have an opportunity to take a fresh look at all our stuff and decide if it has seen a better day and should reside in someone else's closet.

We too have things that we have hung onto for far too long and occasionally reinforces the 'let's keep it just in case' mindset when years later we do find a need or purpose for it. The one thing we seem unable to part with are pictures. OK, maybe pics of our exes are the exception :) Striking the right balance is challenging, but we are making the effort. The thing is, it takes a lot of stuff to do all the things we want to do.

It's not an easy life we lead.

Welcome to our modest abode

We often have great off the wall experiences wherever we happen to be, but this one definitely stood out. Last summer, we were puttering about when a friend docked his boat at our island, unannounced. Fair enough, but he had 6 people with him who came to visit at his suggestion and decided our place would be just fine to stop for a glass of wine.

You know you are on good terms with friends when they feel comfortable enough to do that kind of thing with nary a second thought. Turned out that the folks that were with him were all Turks (you know, from Turkey) with limited English but with a translator. The story was that the leader of the pack had just bought a local private school and was here with his entourage to see to its launch, so to speak.

Some of his administrative staff were going to be coming and going for a while so he rented our friend's island home for the year. Seems that the good fellow owned other schools too. As in hundreds of them, from K to universities all over the world in dozens of countries with a total of some 190,000 students.

 
Mr. Man was clearly a big dog. It was at this point that our friend quietly mentioned that the fellow just happened to be a Billionaire. That is spelled with a "B". Not being able to count that high, I ran into the house to Google it up (it's a thousand times a million dollars) and quickly returned with adoption papers for him to sign in the event that the subject should inadvertently come up. Any wonder why I suffer from low self-esteem? As hard as it was for me to admit, I was seriously outclassed.

He was a most unassuming fellow who was curious about everything (he pretty much took a self-guided tour of our cabin) right down to the functioning of our Swedish composting toilet system. He didn't even flinch when I broached the subject of the attempted political coup in his country. Wise way beyond my years, his focus was to spend the rest of his life providing as many free scholarships as he could to needy students all over the world, to educate them and turn them into responsible productive citizens. With his billions and my hundreds, we could surely make things happen.  

After barely 10 minutes of conversation, he invited Janice and I to visit him when we returned to Europe. Not wanting to look to anxious, I resisted the urge to run inside to pack. This might not be a big deal to you, but breaking bread with billionaires is out of our league and all jokes aside, we saw it as a great opportunity to understand what makes this kind of man tick...ok, and to see his country from the deck of his 104-foot (34 meter) yacht. Alas, the initial invitation was not extended beyond our initial meeting. Pity.

The moral of the story is don't invite us to visit you unless you really mean it, because we will show up.

This month's news

Janice, the arborist, climbing up to trim one of our 100+ trees.  I told her that female arborists excite me. Janice says that just her breathing excites me. Point well made.

Other than working our buns off on our current projects, we have made time for a serious amount of goofing off. All work and no play makes us seriously cranky. This month we attended the Menton (name of city) Lemon Festival. Think of it like the New Year's Rose Bowl parade, with floats, costumes, parades and the like, only here it lasts 2 weeks. 

There are numerous festivals in this area (they have never heard of a party they didn't love) for all manners of reasons and occasions. The lemon festival though, was new to us and not a disappointment. We walked through about 20 of the static displays, some as tall as 50 feet (17 M) and up to 100 feet (35 M) long. The name 'Lemon Festival' is partially correct as they use both lemons and oranges to create the floats and displays. 

As seen above, the 145 tons of fruit used are all held by rubber bands, preserving them to prevent rot and to allow them to be removed after the event and sold for consumption, for commercial buyers to make orange juice, marmalade, limoncello or donated to charitable organizations.

Next, we had friends John and Claire and 3 of the kids from our old stomping grounds in Brittany who planned to join us for a week-long visit. We had not seen them since we sold our home there and we planned to catch up. Unfortunately, we had massive storms that prevented the plane they were scheduled to take from arriving from Geneva and they were re-scheduled for a flight 3 days later. This killed their trip.

Days later, island friends, regular Epistle entries and fellow party animals, Ian and Lyne who have a second home nearby, showed up for a few days and joined us to take the short drive to 'La Turbie'. It is the Roman trophy erected to Emperor Augustus above the hills overlooking Monaco.

Speaking of the dynamic duo, they will accompany us next year where we have already reserved a place to stay on the canals in Venice Italy, for the world-renowned carnival there. Meanwhile, we put our new pizza oven to work.

The Epistle loses a reader

For the first time ever, we had a reader who wrote asking to be removed as a recipient of our monthly newsletter. He is a neighbor in California who said that he wanted to be removed because he did not care for our politics. 

I am well aware that not everyone shares my (our) point of view on all manner of things and that is fair enough. I try not to be particularly offensive to anyone, albeit not always successfully. This is not a news magazine intended for public consumption, but our monthly letter to family and friends, sharing our news about where we are and what we have been up to in the past month. I am not trying to build up sales figures here.

Each month, there is often a bunch of blah-blah-blah about what we have built or renovated because, well, that is what we do. Other than that, as you know, we write about how our lives are affected by where we are and what is happening around us.

I want to keep it real and transparent. I have no problem with anyone reading it and thinking "...there goes Michael, again" but I want to -and I will- write what I think without the PC police diluting the content. I know some will not agree with my point of view on all subjects and that's OK, because I don't necessarily agree with theirs. Friends accept each other's foibles. Family has no choice.

The good news is that I am sincerely and genuinely sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings by what I write. The bad news is that I still mean every word of it. You get this blog because I believe you have expressed an interest in keeping you in our monthly loop. We do not want to ever foist ourselves on anyone, so if that is not the case or you are losing sleep over my insensitivity, I will renew my offer to remove you from the mailing list for 4 easy payments of just $29.95 ...

"...There goes Michael, again" 

News of little use: The chip

I like my salsa and chips like my women. Blazing hot. Of course, in this household, I seem to be (understandably) the only one to appreciate that kind of prison humor because, I don' t really think like that, right honey?

...Right.

Still, I have come across an interesting challenge. Seems that the Paqui tortilla chip company will sell you one (not a typo) chip for a mere $79.  Reportedly the hottest tortilla chip in the world, it is a blistering spicy chip to rival the NYPD pepper spray. If you chose to indulge, please report back, as it will surely be Epistle worthy.

https://www.amazon.com/Paqui-Carolina-Madness-Challenge-Tortilla/dp/B01M748NRN