Surrounded, Alone

This week I got to hold a power tool. H and I went to La Creuse to help out a friend finish his house, and I got to hold a power tool. And I got to hold a power tool!!!

Creuse Control.

On our first afternoon I mixed cement for the walls with my own elbow grease, old-skül style, but the next morning JM (le house-owner) trusted me enough to manage a hand tool ON MY OWN.... it didn't last though, because H got curious and wanted to play with my toy. If you've ever had a little brother, you'd know how hard it is to fend them off when they see you playing with a new toy. What H had at the time was a battery-operated screwdriver, and mine was bigger and decidedly more badass. 

So this here's the instrument of my husband's tool-envy... it's a Peugeot drill with a mixer attachment. 

They used this once to make a big cake. Maybe big enough to fit a stripper.

It was a weekend of discovery: learning to work a drill, digesting new words, and finally unraveling (firsthand) the mystery of how the French modernize century-old structures - a lesson badly needed by politicians with an edifice complex back home in the Philippines.

For a while, the house was basically just 300 year-old stable walls and a few logs sticking out of the ground -- Not much insulation and up to now, not a lot of the sockets work. There was a big storm on the day we drove to JM's, and it battered on for two days. While working on the wall, I saw the tarp between us and the roof flapping violently with every icy gust of wind. The only reason we didn't freeze to death was because the house is heated geo-thermally. But the weather was also great for snoozing - I sneaked out for an after-lunch cat nap once and woke up at five in the afternoon, just in time for aperatifs...

But to be fair, I snoozed after finishing a second wall on my own... For which I totally deserved this cold bottle of beer, chilled in the 5°C garage still full of construction supplies and furniture. It's so manly, I can feel the hair growing on my chest as I type! Figuratively.

The Beer of Prestige!

My H, screwing with some homes.

JM showed me a slideshow of the house's "evolution" from its primal state to what is shaping up to be quite a charming house; and I have to say it looked like a completely nutty scheme to begin with. Borrowing a crane to burrow leagues into the ground for eco-friendly heating was actually one of the more easy parts.


For starters, he and P decided they would take on this project on their own, with well-meaning friends coming over on their free weekends to help out. This gave H a plenty good excuse to play weekend carpenter and work on his musk... This also explains why the house has been under construction FOR TWO YEARS.


But this weekend, things had really begun to come together; and in a few days they can say hello to their new set of stairs. After that it would be harder to keep the inquisitive little boy downstairs away from the exciting world of hammers and nails upstairs.

Gael-force storm.

Since most of us grownups were busy on the upper floor, this little man kept calling me to go down and play. 

And even though I really liked playing carpenter too, I couldn't say no to arguably the cutest four-year old boy alive:

Gael.

He wasn't really crying, he was acting for the camera. 

This was how I bribed him to finish his dinner.

H also got him to call me "Tita" which is "auntie" in Tagalog.

If you saw him for yourself he might also remind you of Michael J Fox, the Family Ties years. A tiny man trying to act a little older than his years, charming his way through everything, not Raeganist yet but then it's too early to tell anyway. His cheek was red because he tumbled off something a day earlier, but he probably charmed his way out of being scolded for that too.

He lives in a house full of adults, having been born more than ten years after his siblings. So if he tries to act like an adult you only have to look around to see why.

Looking for mushrooms in the woods.

We came across this giant cow and he had the balls to feed it grass
and call it "mignon," which is French for "cute."

It was the little monsieur who gave me my birthday present, a recipe notebook from his parents who might have noticed I have latent culinary gifts. 

Watching his favorite movie, "Cars."

I would usually sit with him in his little corner next to the dining area, playing with toy cars or watching DVDs, because with him I didn't need to speak too much French. Most of the words I know are l'imperatif or command words like "stop that" so we could more or less communicate. (And since he spun like a whirlwind most of the time, the word "arrêtes!" came in very handy.)

Although the people my age do try to speak in English for my sake and I try to speak French for theirs, we all get headaches from trying because we both dig ever so deep into our heads for the words. I can hardly count the number of dinner hours I spent just looking at people talking around me. H tries his best to translate because he was in my shoes before, retro-verso, when he was studying in London; but when the conversation is good and arguments become really animated he can't translate as fast.

For three months I've sat through scandalous secrets, foolish conjectures and subversive babble without even realizing. And it still frustrates me that I couldn't jump into the conversation and astonish them with my insight - or lack thereof.  So, like Gael, I am surrounded - but I feel so very, very alone.