Another week

No, we didn't go over to Limoges to see the Tour de France start last Tuesday. We're hoping that in a coming year the route will go by much closer to home.

Our kitchen stuff is largely unpacked and more or less packed away. Our next big tasks here are to find a proper stove and to find someplace to make us a counter for the new cabinets. The dining room no longer has a huge stack of boxes, although it still has the two bookcases we're taken out of the kitchen. Right now these are holding some of the stuff that will go into the cabinets that will go on the left of the new stove, whenever it arrives. There is not as much cabinet space as we had in Amstelveen, but with the china cabinet we bought and some weeding out, we seem to be managing OK. Yes, we really have to take a kitchen photo in the next days.

We've had two quotes for removing our dead poplars and another (live) tree that's interfering with the big weeping willow. Both were more or less the same, and not breath-taking, so we'll flip a coin and have these taken care of before too long. We've also asked for quotes for putting double-paned windows in our remaining single-paned locations (bathroom window, kitchen window and door, two bedroom windows) and hope this can be done before winter sets in. We fear this price will be breath-taking, but should make for a more comfortable winter environment. We'll also get some quotes for adding insulation in the ceilings and walls where there is little or none right now. Lots of big expenses before winter, it looks like.

We managed to arrange our supplemental health insurance at last. It wasn't quite as hard as we expected, although we noticed on the papers they mailed us that they seem to think Ed is Kaye's concubin, rather than her mari. The day after that visit, Kaye's Carte Vitale arrived, so she's now officially part of the system. Except that when they recorded our family doctor, they recorded him only for Ed and not for Kaye, so this means another Thursday trip to the CPAM office in La Rochefoucauld. We're also wondering why the first form for Ed's Carte Vitale hasn't arrived yet, so this will be another question. Wheels turn very slowly ...

Kaye went to the mairie on Friday to find out the status of our house. It doesn't look like the previous owner had formal permission to make a house of the old stable. We did find a request to add windows and a door to a grange existante, an existing barn. That is not promising. However, the tax authorities classify the house as one in quite good condition, so the mairie thinks we shouldn't have a problem. (Kaye was startled to find that the tax authorities think we have three bedroom, and 113m2 of floor space. We not sure where that other bedroom is hiding, and are pretty sure there's closer to 150m2 of floor space.)

Sunday our disputative neighbor showed up with a builder from Poitiers (surprisingly far away) to discuss our water problems. We had already heard from her gardener (who used to mow our garden also) about what terrible people we were, spreading lies about her barn so we could buy it, how we didn't have permission to build, etc., etc. To our face, she was quite nice and tried to talk our ears off, particularly when she got to complaining about the commune and the people in the hameau. She did misunderstand which side of the house was having problems. When she sent a roofer out a few months ago, he looked only at the side where it is no longer leaking (we hope). Apparently the builder is recommending that she do some work on the barn to make more watertight, so that should help us. He was actually quite sympathetic to us when we explained what was happening. The meeting was not as ugly as we had both expected, considering the things she's been writing and saying. But we realize this is not someone to be trusted in the least.

Before too long, we will go back to the mairie to ask what it takes to get our house "regularized," so at least that issue isn't a problem in the future.

This morning at the top of stairs, Kaye startled another baby lizard. It promptly fell to the ground floor where Ed corralled it and took it outside. We're puzzled why we're having so many babies in the house. If they'd hang around and eat mosquitos and spiders, we might invite them to stay.

Tomorrow we're expecting more visitors, friends from The Netherlands who will be stopping by, a bit out of their way, on their way home from Italy.