A step in the MERDE...@$#&$&^()% !!!

Ok, so I knew that eventually the smooth sailing would stop and I would be uttering the naughty words, or as poor T is accustomed, hearing the rantings and ravings on the other end of a mobile phone as I express, in my oh so lively manner, the injustices of a particular frenchy situation...but day 4 into our adventure wasn't expected...

and yes that is a picture of exactly what you think it is...sometimes a picture IS worth more then any words!...Freya and I were out walking today and the moment I saw this and the feverish thoughts raced through my mind, well, my camera practically took the picture itself....

----------

later, as Freya began to internalize my frustrations, she decided to 'express' her personal opinion about the situation....

and make her own contribution to today's posting!!....Merci my little one for your ever appreciated ability to always lighten your Mama's mood :-)

And so we reach the point in this poo-centric tirade where you are asking, what could ever have prompted such an outburst from our normally calm L?

Welll.......today boys and girls, L & T learned the lesson of Agricultural Law in socialistic, antiquated (insert here medieval origins and Napoleonic updates...and NO updates since before freakin' electricity!!) France. This story could take up pages, so the long and short of it is this: the house comes with 2.5 hectares of land. 1.5 hectares is with the house, our lovely owner purchased an additional 1.0 hectares 5 years after his original land/house purchase and today is selling us the 2.5 hectares. However, in his kind and generous manner 12yrs ago, he let Farmer Jean-Pierre (I'll use my nice name for him here as there may be children educating themselves ;) ) use that 1 hectare to graze his cows and grow corn from time to time since our owner, Mr. C only used the house on weekends/holidays. No written agreement, no lease, no rent...just kindness.....AND STUPIDITY!! As it turns out, in the land of agriculture Farmer J-P gains rights, control, power & money (can you say E.U. subsidies boys and girls?) just because he has been using the land. So, T & I are paying to buy land that a) we can't use, b) we can't take back, c) we must pay the aforementioned Farmer @$$ an indemnity if we do try to reclaim it, d) the laws of the country protect him, him & him e)...I could go on, but I feel that my utter disbelief might reach through the internet and poke you in the eyes that I know are also wide open in utter disbelief!!

wooooosh (large intake of breath)....as usual, T & I managed to research the issue to death in order to be fully informed angry people (ever tried reading articles, sections, laws of 1802 in 76 pages of a foreign language, with outright contraindications and idiocy?--fun fun fun), and decided that the property in question (yes I have a photo--it's the land on the other side of the fence that you see beyond the big tree) ----------------->

is going to just give us a challenge in life--to teach those country folk the M-J way (I'll let you know when I figure out what that is!). But in all actuality the real thing that washes away the anger and injustice (our wondertwin powers did not activate...b/c I for sure would have taken the shape of a can 'o woop @$$...hee hee) is that the beauty of the rest of the place outweighs all the negatives and all it takes is to sit and view the round of photos of everything else that we would...maybe, oh please maybe...own and that would be our little piece of heaven on this earth.

I'm working on getting the rest of those pictures into a slideshow to put up asap...but in the meantime, so as not to leave your visual sensitivities so offended by parisian merde....I shall bid you adieu with an image I took this evening as F and I headed home over the Pont d'Alma bridge. It's a sight I never tire to see and still fills me with joy, though not so much as what we hope to see in the near future....