Good Job ‘Murica.
Ok, got that off my chest.

Ok, life update here. A little tired and a little raw.

1) Been here 2 years 3 months. Going on 2 years in the formerly new home. Still not done with it, some places still need paint.

2) The current theme is alternate universe. That is where I think I am living, but less so every day. Everything now feels familiar, but it doesn’t feel like it should feel familiar, if that makes any kind of sense.

I know my way around town, I know where to go to get things, but some of the things I need are foreign feeling still. Never owned a rivet gun, now I have one. Needed Jam jars to make fly traps, easy peasy, the grocery stores and some hardware and farming stores sell canning supplies. You can’t walk into a store without seeing canning supplies, carvest is around the corner.

3) We have friends, lots of fiends, like if I met a really cool person I wanted to hang with I would have to sleep less to make more time. We meet in the middle of the week because we are retired.

4)I am volunteering at a local Fab Lab. I am teaching little kids about robotics.

The natives are slowly accepting me, I feel like Jane Goodall. The have even taught me some expressions!

I just have to be careful of making eye contact…

5) I applied for a teacher’s position at a local technical school… 2nd interview done, waiting on a call back…

6) I have almost entirely stopped photographing things. Before we arrived I thought I might buy a nice printer, maybe even take tours of people around to key places, instead I cannot bear to stop looking at the landscape. Why ruin the moment taking a picture.

7) Similar to 6, when we round a corner, turn into a striking vista, my wife and I sometimes exclaim out loud “Gahhhgh, my eyes are burning at the sight of this vista, it is hideous!” in an entirely facetious way.

8) There is a frenetic sort of energy, an attempt to get as many summer time events in before the early sunsets, icy roads and dampening gloom of winter settles in on the area.

9)You goddamn uneducated hillbillies. You goddamn dirty rednecks. You ruined it for everyone. It wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is, but now you really do need to make “Murica great again.

10) I just needed to squeeze number 9 in there.

11) This blog feels weird. I have been here long enough that “wearemovingtofrance” doesn’t feel like it fits anymore. Not in a worn out pair of shoes way, more like you at too much cheese for to long and now your jeans don’t fit and your diabetic cankles won’t even squeeze through the cuff of the legs.

11) There are so many English here. I am writing a book about them.
English not British. There is a difference.
When a Brit meets another Brit, they are trying to ascertain how northern each other is.
The more Northern you are, the less likely you are to be posh.
Posh is what it is all about.

12) Read the book if I ever publish it. There are 2 others in the queue. One on innovation and one on photography. That’s what winter is for.

13) Bug Du Jour.
The last few weeks it is flies. The complaints around the village indicate that either we are all filthy people here or the village is simply overrun with flies.

I supercharged my electric flyswatter. I looked at the components and determined I could drive it with 4 Volts, not the standard 3 from 2 AA batteries.

Flies pop and crackle, though that is a health hazard. If you can smell it, you are bringing fly vapor into your nose and lungs.

I have been 3D printing different fly trap parts.

I have been looking at lasers as a solution. (though lasers are often a solution, they may not be an appropriate solution)

I have a 50,000 Volt power supply I am going to intermarry with a steel-wire grid of death with some beer (bait) mixed with grenadine (again, bait). If this is your favorite Shandy, you may be a housefly.

14) Allergy Season.
Allergy season had me turning into a fucking hagfish. Fascinating read, disgusting comparison to a human being, yet there I was. Imagine going through 2 kleenex boxes in a day… while on antihistamines.

Found a treatment, 3 year protocol. That shit is going to cost me 8 euros a year (for the shipping). You know who would pay $6500 for that sweet sweet allergy treatment? You know who you are. The hapless victims of the 3rd Reich V2.0, that’s who (assuming you aren’t locked up for being brown, or non-cisgen. )

15) Having fun is exhausting.
Not sure what day it is. Wake up, check the event calendar, likely something like get together with friends, go somewhere like a vide-grenier, brocant, noodling around somewhere, gourmande marche, or a friends house again. We had 2 social items on the calendar today. I talked with 9 people I know, and met 4 more people.

Do you know how draining that is on a cave dwelling tinkering gnome?

16) I am glad I know how to use a 3D printer. I have solved so many little things (like fly traps) and appliance handles, fridge door closers, cat door accessories.

Yay me.

17) My French is getting better. Duolingo isn’t getting me there. Speaking French is.

18) The real estate agent lied.
Shocking
They can build on the field behind the house. Farmers can pretty much do what they want, like build a solar barn. It is not huge, It is not a piggery, slaughterhouse (abattoir) or a poultry farm.
I guess that is some consolation.

19) We were early to the allergist appointment. Went across the street to a store that sold fresh meat, confections, veggies, plants, traps, seeds, wellies, shoes, protective clothing, tractor hitch supplies, Some what looked like hydraulic fittings, canning jars. We left confused with a basil plant and a roll of fly paper.

20) I have not seen since we arrived: a coal roller, little family member stickers in the shape of assault rifles, a rifle shaped toilet plunger (what is fucking wrong with you if you need that?) and a lot of other idiotic shit you buy to make yourself feel better as fascision sweeps the nation.

21) There was an ICE raid in some fields near where we lived, They rounded people up because they were brown. One guy almost died.

When the Nazi’s fled France, they shot up my village and executed the Mayor’s son. You don’t see a lot of German tourists down here because they remember fascism so hard that the local children and grandchildren of the survivors can’t look at the children and grandchildren of a people whose government committed these acts.

Put Alligator alley aside, put the 1/4 of a million planned ankle bracelets for brown people aside, put the trans rights aside and the critical roles they filled in the military aside. Put the new presidential edict surrounding increased abilities to lock you up and put you away for homelessness aside.

How are you going to be seen as an American?

22) I think I may be coming down off my soapbox…

23) I think I am done.