Gonfaron, Provence - Working

After spending the first couple of days building some shelves for the garage, Simon and I are now helping John to transform an attic space in the 18^th century stone farm house into livable quarters. We've knocked down plaster to expose the stone walls and then prepared them for repointing. The latter involves scraping away the old mortar – well, dried mud really – to create the space for new mortar. We've also started creating openings in the walls for windows (there are none currently), using old logs for lintels, which will remain exposed. This process involves hauling bags of rocks and plaster debris up and down two flights of spiral stairs. It's been quite awhile since I did such dirty, physical work, but the hours aren't long so I can't really complain. And it's rewarding to see the space transforming. The other stone walls in the house that have already been restored are just beautiful, especially in combination with the rustic exposed beams.

Our work schedule, as well as pretty much everything else around here, revolves around the twins. For two such small humans they seem to have tremendous clout. We don't start work until after the girls are up, dressed, and had their breakfast, usually not until 9:30 or so. Then we work for two or three hours and break for lunch. After lunch the twins have their nap, during which all noise-producing work is halted. We don't start up again until they've risen from their nap, which is usually around 4:00pm, but sometimes even later. So our afternoon work session only lasts an hour or two until the kids' dinner time. If they sleep in long enough we sometimes don't even bother going back to work in the afternoon. Come dinner time the twins eat their's first, then it's bath time, storytime, and off to bed. Unless we stay up to watch a video ourselves, we adults tend to retire to their rooms fairly early also.

In a way I'd prefer to just keep working in the morning until we've put in our hours and are done for the day, then clean up, have lunch, and have the rest of the day free, rather than sit around for four hours in the middle of the day while covered in sweat, dirt, and plaster dust. But I wouldn't trade roles with Deborah, who has been putting in much longer hours helping out with child-minding, cooking, cleaning, and a bit of home organization/decorating. She does it all. The twins are well-behaved and Deborah is quite fond of them, but they are two-year olds afterall, and not beyond the occasional irrational outburst or unrelenting demand to watch Dora the Explorer for the 700^th time. Actually the videos are a godsend when Deborah tires of racing around the back terrace and singing songs from The Wizard of Oz. She can just park them in front of the TV, start up Finding Nemo and they sit unmoving, silent and slack jawed as they stare up at the screen (“kiddie heroin”, John calls it). Deborah says she will cry when she has to leave the girls, but at the same time she is glad she is infertile. So am I.

What the finished stone walls look like
(photo from John and Jill's HelpX ad)