The Little Words Mean the Most

A hole in the roof

Bulletin from our house in France. It started with a drip. Which started with a pinhole in the skylight on the top floor. Which we'd never have noticed had Natalie and Ben not been sleeping there. Ah, young love: very alert to drips inside the nest.

So we called Paul Thomas, our plumber and everyman. He took to the roof in a brief interval between storm bands and spotted the flaw.

But tragedy happened: the open skylight slipped and crashed. Its custom-bent plastic pane, egg-yolk yellow, polymer chains blasted to fragility by decades of sun, split up the middle. We'd started with a pinhole. Suddenly now we had a full-blown hole to the sky, on the top floor of our house in France. And the near-term forecast promised downpours.

My limit is about three days without attentive hygiene before I start to smell in my crannies. I was at my limit and had no intention of venturing out in public. But needs must: Paul and I raced off to Bricomarche, a French DIY store in the next town. I was the wallet, he was the talent. We found a piece of thermoformable replacement plastic. For a second we considered buying a second piece, just in case something went awry. But, non: confidence reigned. Just the one piece, then. We sped off to Paul's workshop a few miles away.

Cutting the plastic went well enough. Thermoforming the plastic, using a heat gun and a couple of boards, went well enough; we needed a curved edge on two sides to fit the channels of the skylight. We'd measured amply, hoping an extra few centimeters would make a better seal. You know what? We were wrong about that. The plastic cracked as we squeezed it in, an afternoon's work a waste.

We stared at our failure for a few moments, then jumped back in Paul's van, heading for the store to buy a second piece of plastic. This time, make a story short, we didn't fracture it. And returned to install the repaired skylight a few minutes before rain started to pour. All's well that ends well. At least I got to see Paul's house-in-progress: a masterpiece domestic renovation of a former distillery in a village of 600 souls.

In France, waiting for the rain to exit

Welcome to the sodden south of France. Reading the Financial Times and International Herald Tribune, honeysuckle pruned to within an inch of its life (I mean that), bridges to our garage lifted so we don't flood the neighbors (on the fence about that), Campari and soda downed, Haut Gleon poured, laundry in, teasey sun.... Pluey, pluey, go away, returnez-vous some mudder day.

France office May 2008

Looking from the kitchen into the living room, through the massive limestone arches supporting www.ourhouseinfrance.com: my writing desk is against the back wall, which is part of the old ramparts. Today's work: a communications audit for a U.S. community foundation. Tomorrow's work: preparing to train a large state university system how to write the cases for a $1 billion campaign. It's so much nicer to work within a block of the vineyards.

Normal crazy

Twilight. In our front door garden: eight baby rabbits bounce around. The size of chocolate bunnies. Probably still smell of the womb.

Today's toffee delight was a brain-damaged board member, built to make strong ED's weep. Filthy rich. With a wolf spider's personality: she sets her trap, she springs her trap. It's all about, I guess, the gotchas. Other human items in the room are simply fuel for her ego's eternal flame.

It is the rare person whose absence shockingly improves the mood. And yet, when Barbara wandered off, to manage her family's real estate empire by Blackberry, people had a great time: they laughed, they shared, they rejoiced in their vision.

Then she returned. Gloom returned. Secretly despise her? Sure. But she has real money. Rule #1 in board work: don't piss off the real money. Even if the particular sack of cash is a human snot rag.

I had to endure this idiot. I approve this message:

I write on beautiful paper

And that's sometimes my inspiration.

For note pads I use Levenger pads, what the company calls Notationery. It has faintly printed boxes at the top of each perforated sheet: for topic, date, file under, and page. It has a narrow left-hand vertical column for making annotations. And it comes in a variety of colors. I started with legal yellow. That's still my default. But I also have a deep tint of robin's-egg blue and a pale flour cream that reminds me of something personal and secret. I write better on these note pads. I do all my outlines on note pads, where I can brainstorm freely with a pen.

The other place I get note pads is a southern French city called Montpellier. We have a house 45 minutes from there. Montpellier has a distinguished botanical garden, just reopened; its gate to the old city center is a miniature Arc de Triomphe; the first medical school in medieval Europe started here, in part because it was a Mediterranean port and close to the Arab world, where medicine was far advanced in the Middle Ages; it is the European headquarters of IBM; it is a conspicuously young city -- if you are a 20-something or 30-something and want to feel in the majority, like this world is your world, go to Montpellier. The clothes shopping there for women is superlative. And it's better than average for men; but you have to hunt. I bought a pair of dress boots there never seen outside France; they're made by an old (and small) French ski boot company.

But I digress. In the middle of 'ancien" Montpellier is Trait (see www.ourhouseinfrance.com for this and other shopping opportunities; under "day trips"). Trait is an branch of a Parisian company that makes custom note pads, and other paper and stationery related supplies. Trait (24, rue de l' Aiguillerie, 04 67 02 79 54) is down a narrow alley with a lot of other intriguing shops. We always drop a hundred euros there, buying beautiful notebooks, pens, handmade paper, gifts, weird greeting cards. Oh: go. Just a block away is the world's most delightful and curious toy store; absolutely one of a kind.

Calgary road food

Calgary, May 7, Simone and I present to the AFP chapter. Night before, Tony and Erna Myers host a home-cooked cedar-planked salmon feast and St. Mary's University MA in Philanthropy and Development reunion. Is demon prankster Guy Mallabone North America's best college fundraiser? He's doing amazing things at SAIT. Inquiring minds want to know: What is Lorie showing Candace?

 

Barely

Holding on. I now have 13 versions of All Along the Watchtower on my iPod. For every occasion.

This was my worst air trip yet. And that includes the puke-inducing migraines and the drunk Brit episode.

On the second leg of our journey to Winnipeg for a speaking engagement, Simone, my co-presenter, realized she'd left her U.S. passport behind. The airline would not board her for Canada, citing potential $50,000 fines. The U.S. consul in Winnipeg tried to intervene. The airline refused. Simone headed in tears for the O'Hare Hilton. I boarded for Winnipeg.

My true destination? Panic. I had three hours of material for a six-hour gig.

Happy ending though. YAY! United pulled through. Simone's passport arrived via cockpit express at O'Hare early next morning. She landed in Winnipeg a little after noon. The Winnipeggers (yay, Leslie!) performed like a precision drill team: urgent cell phones, racing car rides, the lot. Simone strode in to applause and took up her duties. Brilliant, too. Top of her game.

Okay.

Yet somehow .... leaving Canada, dragging my luggage around downtown Winnipeg, merrily photographing Nutty Club signs (from a certain view, the mascot did look deranged), already late for the plane, I picked up traces of explosive materials.

Security detained me. A deliberate, skeptical bunch they were. The pat-down was so intimate and frank that he and I really should have married (sigh). Simone was dancing from one foot to the other. Volcanologists know the signs. She kept trying out her objections on me. She's a hater: of bureaucracy, of poor management.

"Oh, please, my honey," I'd whisper, "please don't say that." We boarded frantically at the very last moment. I'd departed her in Chicago. She was fully prepared to depart me in Winnipeg. "Let's go home." We both said it.

Home in Rhode Island, where at this time of year the mating frogs sound like the bed springs of the metal gods, is where I discovered that the U.S. Transportation Security Adminstration (TSA), an arm of Homeland Security, for whom's mission I should be grateful, had slipped a note into my luggage, letting me know that, despite the Winnipeg rush, they'd been vigilant and rifled my unclean underwear. "To protect you and your fellow passengers, the TSA is required by law to inspect all checked luggage." The card said.

They'd yanked out my gloves. Packed on the chance that ambient Winnipeg's temperature fell below sufferable (it did not). TSA returned just one, you classic dipsh*ts. It was the left glove, my right-brained hand. Maybe it was a statement, from the sinistral side.

Do gloves exist to get lost? This particular pair was an indulgence, hand-stitched by a second-generation glovemaker in Millau, France; cost me around 90 euros; $135. What's the sound of one expensive glove clapping?

But then. Today, one of America's foremost charities phoned BEGGING for my help with a $500 million case. Which group has vowed to reverse global warming? I now know. Balance achieved. Lost gloves. Found cause.