wood stove

Hell Has Frozen Over.

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

This morning, I was sitting on the balcony drinking coffee reflecting that had I never moved to France, I wouldn’t be sitting outside in December drinking coffee. The reason is that it was 38 degrees (Fahrenheit) out there, and I was wearing only a short, thin sleeveless nightdress under my robe, no socks. My feet and legs were exposed. I could feel the cold, but it wasn’t bothering me… not only that, but I was enjoying the crisp aridity of the cold. In addition to being acclimated to colder climates now, my adventures of the last few years have made me realize that an absence of moisture in the air makes cold more tolerable as well as heat. This is what they call “brisk,” I thought to myself. It’s wonderful! Yes… this was ME, Kristi, thinking to myself that it felt wonderful to sit outside in 38 degrees. I know. Hell has frozen over.

I’d always been overly sensitive to cold. Those of you who’ve known me for years know me as the girl who grabs a jacket and cranks the heat the minute the temps drop to 70. Now, I’m the girl who sees a gorgeous, clear sunny blue sky, puts on a robe and heads outside to enjoy the chill with a cup of coffee.*

We have not yet turned on the heat in our apartment, and we’re not sure that we’re ever going to. It doesn’t seem necessary.

This is what living in a drafty little house in the French Alpes does to you. We spent the last two winters – not even just winter, we’re talking end of September through April, even May one year – huddled under blankets, shoving wood into a wood-burning stove, counting the pieces with dismay as we calculated how many days we had left until the next tree had to be cut… and still, we were cold. Cold, cold, cold. It was damp, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and settles there. When I look back on it, it’s no wonder that I was able to get by in Berlin (which was very cold) a year ago October in just a thin pleather jacket. My internal thermostat had been effectively set to “tolerate the cold or die, you wimp.”

What I think is interesting is that my body is still set to cold-weather survival mode. Will I acclimate back after a while? This time next year, will I complain about the cold when it gets down to 70, pile on layers of clothing and turn on the heat?

On another note, something interesting happened the other night. We’d just finished eating dinner when Callaghan suddenly remembered that we had cheese in the fridge, leftover from Thanksgiving. Mom had sent it back with us when we left California.

“Cheeeeese!!!” my French husband exclaimed with delight. He got up, went to the kitchen and returned with a plate holding bread and cheese. Then he sat down, regarding the plate with concern.

“We don’t have a microwave,” he informed me.

“No, we don’t,” I verified, having lived in the apartment as long as he has. “You can use the oven. Actually, maybe we should think about getting a toaster ov…”

But Callaghan was up and running to his studio office.

“I know what I’m going to do!”

I waited, half not wanting to know.

“It’s under control! I have THIS!” He reappeared, blow-torch in hand. “This will do it.”

You know I had to grab my camera to get a picture of the ensuing act of violence on the unsuspecting slice of cheese.

 

Why yes, that would be a blow-torch Callaghan is using to melt the cheese on his bread.

Why yes, that would be a blow-torch Callaghan is using to melt the cheese on his bread.

 

Secrets of a French chef revealed! You’re welcome, and Happy Friday, Everyone!

—–

*Oddly, I still suffer in air-conditioning… my fingers and toes turn blue in manufactured cold. Eh. The human body is weird.

Revenge of the French Zombie Spiders?

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Today, I unwittingly set the stage for a zombie attack unlike any that has ever been seen in movie theatres.

Let me explain.

I was raised Buddhist, and I’ve been a practicing Buddhist throughout most of my adult life. All of that came to an end when I moved to France. This is because Buddhists are not supposed to Kill Any Living Thing, and I’ve been killing all kinds of living things since I moved here.

We have rodents of various sorts in our house. And we have flies and other winged bugs. We also have ants and spiders.  This might make it sound like I suck, but believe me, I keep a clean house. It’s just that we live in the wilderness, so it’s hard to prevent the critter invasion. It’s just a part of life here.

Of these, the spiders are the worst. They’re large and active and there are a lot of them. I mean, there are hoards of them. For some reason, they’re all up on the ceiling; they build highways for themselves that you can admire when you look up. And I do look up. I look up because I know the spiders are there, and I need to keep an eye on their activities at all times.

Getting rid of them has been an adventure in itself. You can’t escort spiders out when they’re on the ceiling. I mean, you can’t get up on a ladder with a piece of thin cardboard and a cup and slide the cardboard carefully under the spider with the cup on top and cover him and carry him outside to set him free. Okay, so you can… but you can’t. When there are 15 spiders on the ceiling and there’s one ladder and one you with your one measly set of upper body muscles with no upper body muscle reserve to take over when the first set of muscles start to burn from doing stuff repetitively over your head and your neck starts to ache, it just doesn’t work. So I had to think of a different way of getting rid of the spiders. Killing them was the only answer.

My killing instrument of choice is the vacuum cleaner. It’s the easiest. I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for me (Buddhists do believe in a kind of hell, in a complicated, philosophical way). I must have murdered hundreds of spiders by now, and I hate to think about the last moments of their little spidery lives, violently pulled into a pitch-black canister where they frantically try to escape and eventually suffocate to death.

Today, though, something happened that exponentially increased the horror. Today’s batch of spiders got cremated alive inside the vacuum cleaner bag.

It was an accident. It’s December, and we live in the Alpes, where it’s very cold. Like most people around here, we rely on a wood stove to heat up our little house. The fire requires maintenance throughout the day, which Callaghan the Husband provides. Nothing much has ever happened until this morning when Callaghan took the vacuum hose from me to suck up the ash and cinder that had just fallen out of the stove when he opened it up. You see? It was the overlapping circumstance of him tending to the fire at the same time that I was vacuuming spiders. You can probably guess where this is going… he accidentally vacuumed up some hot ember and set the vacuum cleaner on fire, and we didn’t even realize it until we smelled something burning and looked over to see smoke pouring out of the canister.

Callaghan hastily took the vacuum cleaner outside (meaning, he took two long strides to the door – that’s how small our house is) and opened the canister out on the terrace. He placed the bag on the freezing wet terrace floor, poured water on it and came in. Half an hour later, the bag was still smoking, so he broke the ice that covered the top of a full pail of water and submerged the vacuum bag.

Now, we have a bag of spider ashes frozen into a block of ice after the bodies had burned for 30 minutes. I’m saddened by the idea that the spiders met their end in this horrific way, sucked up and burned alive. Their only crime was that they were in the wrong place.

I would say that on the bright side, we know for sure that these particular spiders aren’t coming back, but the possibility exists that the ashes will gather themselves into zombie spiders and break free from their icy prison to get revenge, because they will certainly be angry with us for torching them. And who knows how an angry (and hungry, since zombies are hungry by definition) hoard of zombie spiders will launch its attack? Hell, who knows how French zombie spiders will behave? Is my French even good enough for me to reason with them?

I don’t want to find out. I guess we’ll continue adding to our emergency supply of water, since stocking up on water pretty much covers your ass in any sort of situation. Beyond that, I don’t know.