Lavage Voiture

Washing a car in France. Notice no trigger. Not a great idea.
Today I decided to do something extra special that we've wanted to do since we arrived but never made the time to do: I washed the car. There is one of those self-service car washes near the Auchan and I was all alone and had lots of 2€ coins in my purse.

I pulled the car into the last empty spot (I did notice that the other three bays were all occupied by women) and got out to read the instructions on the box where you put in your money. Seemed exactly like the ones I have used in the US, just in French. For every 2 euros you get 3 minutes and 20 seconds. You can choose "Lavage (wash), then "Rincage" (rinse), and then to finish some other word that I didn't recognize but assumed was somehow important to the process.

Just to be safe, I put in 4 euros, then I pressed the "Wash" button. The sprayer was sitting in a holder attached to the wall. What I did not realize is that the sprayer piece is not controlled by a trigger like in the states, but just IMMEDIATELY turns on when you press the Wash button. When they say three minutes and twenty seconds they mean it. vite vite!

Those pressure sprayers have A LOT of power. That thing went absolutely beserk twisting and jumping around on the ground, all the while blinding me and drenching me in water! I couldn't help but think it was funny. Although I was not at all happy to be wet, I was laughing while trying to get hold of the darn thing.

USA: Clearly marked! "Squeeze TRIGGER"

I did finally mange to wrestle the sprayer and get control of it and begin washing the car. By the time I got to the third stage of the wash, I was again taken by surprise when the person in the next bay over did the exact same thing! Her sprayer jumped under the wall and tried to attack me, but she managed to get a hold of hers as well.

Dave almost cried when he saw that I had washed the car (and vacuumed it!). It looks great now, except for that giant gash in the side where I ran into a stone wall. But I'll leave that story for another day.

That's Cheddar!

Until now, I don't believe I realized how important Cheddar is in my life. Think of all the tasty cuisine you can make with Cheddar:

Grilled Cheese
Quesadillas
Enchiladas
Baked Potatoes
Broccoli Cheddar Soup
Chili

You may or may not be familiar with the Costco or Sam's club block of Cheddar Cheese. I estimate roughly twelve inches long, four inches high and four inches wide. That's a whole lotta chedda. But if you've got a big chunk of cheddar in your fridge, you can almost always come up with something for dinner.

Which brings me to my point, which is that cheddar is pretty hard to find round these parts. I look every time I go to the store, and four out of five times there is no cheddar. But the other day at le Supermarché Casino I found some! Here it is:

"Cheese, Glorious Cheese!"*

Holding that little chunk in my hand was like holding a brick of gold. That small brick of cheese represented a treasure trove of options! Images of happy children eating grilled cheese and soup, a smiling husband wolfing down a plate of enchiladas, or myself savoring a slice with a Fuji apple (Fuji's are almost as rare as cheddar!). But you must choose wisely with such a rare resource! I went for the grilled cheese as a child not crying over what horrible slop I have made for dinner is worth as much as that chunk of cheese, which in euros was €4.44. That's $6.51.

Every gooey bite of toasty bread smothered in butter melted in my mouth. I don't blame Abby for asking if she could eat Carter's untouched sandwich. We were all eying it with watering mouths. I won't say who got the prize, but I will say, it was CHEDDAR!



*no offense to all the GREAT French cheeses

The Fact(ure) Don't Lie

One of the reasons things are expensive around here is because the dollar is weaker than it's ever been. If you had purchased a house in France, Spain or Portugal six years ago, even if it hadn't appreciated at all that whole time, in dollars it would now be worth twice what you paid for it.

But it's not just the exchange rate that makes things expensive. There is something here called "TVA" (Taxe à la Valeur Ajouté) that is added onto every transaction. It's really just a sales tax, but they call it "Value Added Tax" to make it sound like you get something for it, when in fact you get nothing. The problem is that TVA is 20%. TWENTY.

The photo is a facture, or receipt, taken today from McDonald's, where we took the kids to have lunch so they could eat disgusting food, which they love. Notice the 19.6% added to the facture. That's TVA for you. I can't wait to buy a car. By the way, if you want a Happy Meal (pronounced "un appy meel"), you can call the number on the facture. It's right there at the top. But you'll pay taxes up the wazoo.

I Feel Poor

Last week we took the BMW (pronounced bay em doob-le-vay) to have the mirror fixed. (You know, the one I broke when it smacked against someone else's mirror?). When it was ready, Dave asked me to drop him off at Garage Raymondou.

On the way to the garage we were having a discussion about how diesel (gazol) fuel (sold by the litre) is so great and even though it is expensive to fill up the car here (and even though gazol being dispensed gives off a smell so bad that it makes you feel faint), we don't have to do it very often. Dave remarked that the Trafic gets great gas mileage and we have not had to fill the tank since we drove through Lyon in late August. I gently reminded him that I DETEST driving the Trafic (since it's basically the equivalent of a school bus) and the only reason we haven't had to fill the tank is because I only drive the BMW. "Which reminds me, I said, the gas light went on yesterday, so we need to fill it up again."

I dropped Dave off and drove directly home, although the route is LESS than direct! Lots of speed bumps and hills. I often feel nauseous driving here, and I am not even pregnant! Thank goodness for that, by the way.

I had been home for fifteen minutes or so (enough time to be seriously involved in a game of Goober's Lab on Webkinz) when I received a call from Dave: "Hi, I ran out of gas." He told me he was on his way to fill up the car when it sputtered and died, and that he had managed to push the car out of the road into the parking lot of Chez Franck, a pizza place. "Can you bring the gas can and come get me?"

I had to laugh, because there was only one time in my life that I have run out of gas. I was in high school and was driving myself to church because my family had already left. I had this REALLY old truck that was given to me by a family for whom I used to babysit. I loved having the independence of this truck, but there was a rust hole in the floor and it occasionally took twenty minutes to get the engine to turn over. I had just crested a small hill in the road and as I began the descent I could feel the truck lose power. So strange to go from power and control to coasting. Anyway, I managed to coast all the way into the parking lot of a gas station very close to the church. I just left it there. Nobody was going to steal that hunk of junk. It had holes in the floorboards. You could literally see glimpses of the ground below as you drove around. I'm not kidding.

But I digress . . . I picked up Dave and we filled up the gas can, as well as the Trafic. I snapped this picture of the gas pump after I filled up the Trafic, but before the gas can. By the time we filled up the BMW again, we were feeling really, really poor. Keep in mind that one euro equals 1.4186 dollars! Do the math.