How I Came to Have a Glass of Wine at 9:45 a.m.

Yesterday I washed all of my downstairs windows. I bored myself with speculating about how much it would cost to hire it done, and finally went to Home Depot and bought a combo sponge/squeegee thing on a pole along with a bucket a bottle of "professional" window washing stuff and just did it. Then when the closet remodeling guys finished I sped back to Home Depot and bought a quart of flat white paint and painted all the parts of the closets that needed re-painting. My closet is so fabulous I should throw a party in it. Girlfriends only. We should hire someone who does nails and sit inside at a little table with a white linen tablecloth and have tea and sherry while we get our toes painted.

But I digress.

After the painting I realized there was absolutely no reason for me not to move into the master bedroom now that the floor and the closet are both finished, so I hauled the airbed+dogbed (yes, I've been sleeping on the orthopedic foam that used to belong to my now deceased dogs) up the steps. I might as well move the rest of my stuff up there, too, I said, at sometime around 9:00 p.m., so I did--and mind you, it's not a ton of stuff. A bunch of sweaters, two pairs of pants, two skirts, my favorite cowboy boots, and a bunch of t-shirts and some workout pants that I have not yet worn here in my new location because who needs to work out when you're moving things up and down a flight of stairs? And finally, I vacuumed once again re-cleaning the leavings of a troop of workmen. Oh, they try with their fancy shop-vacs that look like tool-boxes, they do, but, alas.

Am I digressing again?

So after I breathed enough paint fumes for one day, I went to bed.

I woke early to the light that seemed silver as it came in my curtain-less windows and, I woke to the sound of water lapping, because unlike at my old place when one frequently wakes to a police helicopter flying in or out after a shift change, here it's the harbor patrol making their rounds, and after they putter by, the water laps against the boat docks. Invigorated by the idea of waking to lapping water, I hopped up and moved all the now very dusty boxes of books in my garage into the laundry room/entryway and stacked them on the counter while mourning their dustiness. Then I organized the crap (which is not really crap at all) that the former owner left. I have great squares of travertine or tile that looks like travertine; (how do you tell the difference?) I have extra stone tiles, and smaller squares of travertine, and now they are all in one  place, neat and tidy. After that I tore up dozens of cardboard boxes that the wood for my floor came in and fit them into the recycling bin. (I could have had the hauler haul them away with other debris last week, but gosh, no, maybe they would be useful, I thought. Arrgh) Then I thought about all the other things I wanted to do here today.

And I realized the bowl of blueberries I'd had for breakfast left me starving. So I poured out a mound of crackers, spread them thick with my favorite cheese, D'Affinois.....and, well, what does cheese need? Wine. And I thought of years ago, when I was in France for a semester, and how the proprietor/chef of the little hotel where I stayed took took turns taking each of us American students to the open air market  to shop for what he would cook that day, and how afterwards we'd stop in a bar for a breakfast of eggs and steak and red wine. That was how Monsieur Camarani started his day.
One glass, mind you.
It was perfect.
Then--and now.
I ate a yam with butter afterwards, and before I drive back to my old place, I'm going to work some more, and then make a fabulous salad with avocado and strawberries.

Gawd, I've become one of those people who use the Internet to tell the world what they're eating.

Which has some merit if your grow or hunt what you're eating. Or if you're a wonderful cook.

The Not Poisoned Pen

I bought Mr. Ex a pen. A Mont Blanc pen. At the airport in Paris.

A peace offering, I thought. What could be more appropriate than a pen with which he could at long last sign the agreement on the division of our joint assets? Not that I thought we were particularly close to that moment, mind you. But I think if you want something to happen, you might as well see it, I mean really visualize it and so I imagined that fancy pen--shiny black with delicate silver trim in his hands.

I agonized over it a bit. Why buy a gift for the person who has caused me so much misery? Why offer peace? I thought about it over a glass of rosé and then walked back to the boutique where I'd stood staring into the case an hour earlier. I tried out two or three of the pens and bought the one that had the heft and feel of a pen I bought him at the airport in Paris about a decade ago. I'd been there for a week with a girlfriend and when I came home, I wanted to bring him something special. He told me right off the bat that there was something about it that wasn't his style, but eventually he decided he liked it and carried it in his shirt pocket until it broke just a couple of months before we did.

Mont Blanc, in addition to being a pricy pen, is also the name of a mountain in the Alps--the highest peak in Western Europe, in fact. The French like to call this mountain, La Dame Blanche (The White Lady) which has a certain peaceful ring to it.

There's a tunnel that runs beneath Mont Blanc and I like that image, too. The idea of something huge and immovable with a passageway that connects one country to another.

La Dame Blanche, in France, is also the name of a very popular ice cream dessert. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top. Mr. Ex would like that. Of course, Mr Ex will have no idea about these images running merrily through my head.

But I hope he likes the pen.

I see London, I see France, I see Jamie's....

There are various perks to being at a writer's residency. At the Virginia Center for the Arts they change your sheets, bring you fresh towels, vacuum your room, and clean your bathroom. At Vermont Studio Center, there's a serene meditation chapel open 24-7, and wonderful guest writers who preside over small group seminars. Both the VCCA and VSC have talented chefs who lay out dinner each evening in a cozy dinning room where you can hobnob with your fellow artists. People usually come to the table itching to socialize after being holed up in a studio all day writing or drawing or painting or sculpting or composing. It's easy, during a month long residency, to make a new friend or two or if you're an extrovert, maybe even a dozen.

It's different here in Auvillar.

There are only three of us. All writers. We are responsible for our own cooking (except at the Wednesday group dinners) and we share the housekeeping duties in our ancient stone house. We do our own laundry and we don't have a clothes dryer.

So we get to see one another's undies.

I have un petit inferiority complex now...lingerie and writing. http://web.mac.com/jamiecatcallan/iWeb/JamieCatCallan/Home.html

One of these days, I'll have a book and a website. Vraiement! And better underwear.