Take a deep breath, this is the way it ends…
When we left off in blog post number 49, there were still many loose ends to tie up and I had suggested to you that you might wish to read my murder mystery, since it would likely take less time to read this psychoanalytic page/turner than it would for my plumbers to return and finish their job and for me to finish blog post number 50. I was going to recommend that you tackle my memoir, since it seems that it’s going
to be a long haul before these dudes are able to figure out how to regulate the new thermostat, which was where we began in the first place with the ancient one.
That said, I have hope and I’m writing to you in real time each day as things develop. I now have been able to turn down the target number on the thermostat to 15°C, but there still isn’t a room in the house where Mickey doesn’t stretch out on the heated floor and snooze in comfort. Ted was brilliant in his attempts to temporarily solve the problem in the way he had before all this fuss: he partially turned off some valves and managed to turn our sauna back into an apartment.
However, in the meantime we did manage to leave home for a lovely evening out, at the home of our friends Richard and Claudine for dinner on Thursday night. Unexpectedly, that morning we received an email from our mutual friends, Alain and Monique, who had also been invited for the evening which promised to be a terrific reunion. They requested that we conduct an auto-test for Covid in the interest of keeping all of us safe.
A bit clumsy at first, we were finally able to get tests with actual results that were undeniably negative. I asked, “Do we bring the cards along or is it the honor system?” The honor system it was, and everyone was relieved and reassured.
We ate, drank, and had heated and humorous conversation and even a bit of harmless disagreement until after midnight when we were all reminded that Alain, Monique and Richard had to be up early that next morning and Ted and I were expecting Jeffrey to the rescue after the week with the plumbers.
I drove Evie effortlessly through the nearly empty streets along the river. But just before we reached the Pont de Concorde--our bridge across the water to toward home— Ted realized that he had left his cell phone on the table. When we arrived home, Claudine called to tell Ted (as if he hadn’t noticed) and we made a date to drive back to Charenton midday Friday. We were happy to take Evie back out in the sun again and came home to make a pot of Chicken curry to have with brown rice that evening.
We contacted Samuel from the Chauffage company, and he promised to come at the end of the day on Monday. By then we had overcome our disappointment and we enjoyed our dinner and a wonderful performance of one of my favorites, Wagner’s
Parsifal starring Jonas Kaufman in the title role and Elīna Garanča as Kundry. It was broadcast from The Vienna Staatsoper on Arte and we put our feet up, sat back in the best seats in the house. After over five delicious hours, we happily fell into bed.
Saturday after breakfast, Ted alerted me to the beautiful day outside, with bright blue skies and a few white Magritte clouds and temperatures that were just right for us polar bears..
We decided to take a walk through the gardens of the Tuileries and to cross the bridge over the river to the Quai D’Orsay for a stroll along the Seine until we reached rue de Bac, where one of our favorite bistros serves all day. Les Antiquaires, bar, café, bistrot and restaurant in the 7ème has been in business 'forever' on a street that used to be filled with Antique Shops, which was how it got its name.
It has the most good humored waiters who love to practice magic tricks with the dishes they bring to the tables. The menu is varied in delicious traditional French food and wines from all regions.
It is It authentic and colorful in it’s period style and it even has a secret toilette on the ground floor for ladies with high-heels and those of us who don’t do well going down one floor on the usual steep winding stairs. After our scrumptious supper, we decided to walk back home along the Quai and through the Place de Concorde toward the Eglise de Madeleine and finally back to our warm and inviting home, where our little Mickey rolled and rolled with joy on the warm stone floors in the vestibule, grateful to realize our return in just five hours.
I remembered the years after our Siegfried died and how we longed for this wonderful welcome home from our furry friend. We feel so content again with our little Mickey (no longer a mousey cat) and amazed at the progress he's made in just two years, arriving in our home just before Christmas of 2019 as a feral kitten of six months who had been abandoned in a cardboard box in a park in Normandy. He was now a fully grown and socialized member of the family.We can’t imagine our lives without him. He is such a good sport even those days when we had no heat in the apartment. Now things are much better for all of us.
Sunday, Ted and I decided to consult a YouTube tutorial on how to set the thermastats on our Frisquet System. Every few hours we reduced the setting to lower the Ambient temperature of the apartment. We felt somewhat close to comfortable at 15°C. Tuesday morning, Samuel of Chaudier fame, arrived to settle the confusion with the thermastats. We thought we would forever have to face the strange fact that setting the thermostat on 14°C keeps the ambient temperature of the apartment at around 22°C, an anomalous ratio perhaps due to the fact that the heat comes up from under the floor. This arrangement suits Mickey to a tee, because as the heat rises, the floors are always warmish. But Samuel was not content. He read through the entire operating manual, returned to the water heater to check the settings, and found to his surprise that Jean (the original installation engineer) had set the temperature of the water heater to manual. Thus it mattered not what we did to adjust the temperature with the thermostats, they actually had no effect on the ambient temperature. To make a very long story shorter, all is now coordinated -- 20°C =20°C -- and on Friday, Samuel will return to patch and paint the utility room, which was necessarily badly mangled and mutilated in the process of the work done. Whew!!
Now we can prepare for a 5-day journey we had planned three months ago, to a lovely Inn on a peninsula of Lake Annecy in the Haute-Savoie in France, with a view of the snowy Alps in the distance and the Pine trees and expansive waters just outside our suite We only hoped for some sun and not too much rain. A biento!
Simply, envy. Looking forward to the report of your trip!