A year

Summer has come and gone. And I haven't blogged.

I've been to Morocco and the States and Paris and Monaco, and I didn't blog.

We've been working on the garden, and working on the house, and making lots of plans for future work on the house, and I didn't blog.

We very nearly got our pool working, and then didn't, and I didn't blog.

We painted the pink pillars brown... but still. I got blog-lazy.

We had Neil and Britt visit, and Ole and Marion and her family, and my mom, twice, and Claude. And I didn't blog it.

We built from scratch a very content-intensive site for Kurt. It was good to sink our 63 teeth into a real project. But I didn't blog it.

I even promised -- repeatedly -- to blog, and I didn't blog.

All the time, I think I'm going to do it. I'm gonna write about stuff. Usually I resolve to do it while driving, or when I'm cycling across the vineyard to get Kepler at school. But then my will evaporates. Sorry about that.

But today, I feel like I have to. I don't even really feel like sitting here and writing about our life, but I feel somehow obligated to at least commemorate the fact that exactly one year ago today, we signed on, and then moved into, our house.

A year living in the orbit of mars.

So how's it going?

The House

If you had told me a year ago exactly how far along we'd be now in our plans, I'd have said, "no way: we'd have to be farther along than that." But if you ask me now how much I knew a year ago about doing stuff to houses, I'd say, "almost nothing." Things take time, and before you can even start to think about the Step A, you have first to contend with the unforeseen infrastructural issues that Step A requires.

We knocked through a wall, which I showed you. We got the exterior stone done, as you saw. We got a whole new roof, which I didn't blog. We got a new septic tank dug, which I didn't bother blogging about either. And we've done lots of gardening. And so far, that's pretty much it.

But look a little deeper: knocking through that wall: that's a step toward our near-future of knocking through several more. The new roof is preliminary to eliminating several of the ceilings to loft-height, and to making a few rooms in the attic as well. The septic tank, which isn't even connected to anything yet, is a major hurdle overcome in the imminent construction of our new downstairs bathroom (on which work is supposed to start in a few weeks), and in the projected relocation of the kitchen. And the stone... well, it looks really really nice. It certainly makes the neighbors like us better.

So there has been progress, if slow progess.

As I mentioned, the new bathroom is going in soon. Our friend Richard-the-posh-English-builder is doing it. Lately we've been all a-flurry sourcing stuff. A sink, a steam generator (:)), a matching toilet and bidet, nice taps, a dental spit-sink, lots of old-style terra-cotta tiles, and on and on. Who'd've though a bathroom could require so many pre-planned detailed bits?

And for my mom's and Claude's recent visit, we sanded and painted a beautiful sitting-room for their downstairs suite, as well as painting and glorifying the downstairs toilet. Truly the only two rooms in the house which feel finished.

Upstairs, however, we've been moving slower. We're still solid with our existing ideas about turning the front bedroom into a kitchen and knocking out some walls through to the fireplace, then converting the current kitchen into a TV lounge. The major amendment to those plans is our recent desire to eliminate Kepler's playroom walls as well, creating of nearly the whole floor a huge open space, including playspace. All the bedrooms would be upstairs or downstairs, with living day-space on the vast open middle floor.

But for that part of it, we have hired an architect to make sure we're making the most of the space, and to help with the fiddly bits like wiring planning and radiators. We are pretty sure of what we'd like to do, but to be certain it'll not collapse when we do it, and to maybe see another viewpoint, we're working with this guy for a while. He designed a bookstore in Castillon, the nearby town, and as soon as we walked in and saw how he had made a gorgeous modern space out of an old stone building, respecting all the existing detail while using modern materials, we immediately asked the proprietress who had done it. Her cousin the architect. Et voila. We've met with him once, and I'll keep you posted on the progress with that. (I swear I will).

And a year later, we still love our house. With all the delays and frustrations of it, we love it. It has oodles of character, and it's ours. And with so many things we still want to do, what's not to love?

Society

We have friends. Crazy, eh? We are more friendly than neighborly with several of our neighbors, none of whom speak any English and some of whom have kids. In town, we've inevitably become friends with Helen, whose 6 year old Alienor is the only other English kid in Montcaret. The teachers, who are Kepler's teachers this year and next and who used to be our neighbors, have moved to the next village over, but we're still friends with them. Kepler seems to easily understand that he shouldn't call Audrey "Maitresse" when we're at their house, and that he shouldn't call Maitresse "Audrey" when at school. ...and we have friends farther away as well, in Bordeaux and near Castillon... I'm not going to sit here and list every person I can think of, so suffice it to say that we're being regularly social anyway, since not being so is always one of the fears in moving to a place where you don't know anyone.

Our French I think has gotten much better since we arrived, but at times it's very frustrating. Climb and plateau is the model, I know, but sometimes the plateaux feel like valleys. Deep valleys. We do have friends who don't speak any English and we're perfectly capable of spending whole evenings in French with them; but of course it's still easier to be with anglophones. Sarah has signed up for a class in Bergerac. I'm thinking of doing a conversation exchange in Ste-Foy.

Kepler, on the other hand, is now in his 3rd week of all-day school. 9 to 4:30. Incredibly long days, but his French, already pretty good considering, is going to get perfect this year, I think. He's spending more waking time now in French than in English! He seems to understand everything he hears already, and his grammar is improving all the time. Sometimes, we hear him playing with his toys, making them speak to each other in French. Last night he was taking in French in his sleep. Processing all that new info. Such a sanguine little trooper. And of course, in school now, he has more friends than we do.

A year. People look at us like they're used to seeing us now, which is nice. I went to the local grocery the other day unsure if the change in my pockets would be enough to cover what I was after. And, despite their "Don't even think about asking for credit" sign on the wall, they offered me credit. Turns out my pocketful of coppers was enough... but they offered. We're starting to be regulars here. Sweet.

And so that's it. We're happy. In a lot of ways it still feels like we're just getting on our feet, and in others it seems like we've been here a long time. But that's good. It's comfortable without becoming boring. There's always something to do, there's always more potential in the system to discover. Thinking forward several years from now, I can easily tell that we haven't even scratched the surface of our experience here yet. And I'm looking forward to it.

Life here in the orbit of mars just keeps spiralling around. Thank god we didn't choose to live in the orbit of pluto instead! (or should I say "asteroid 134340"?) Of course, a true year in the orbit of mars takes 687 earth days... I'll keep you posted how it goes before then, though. I promise :)