This is how I’m spending my Christmas and New Year’s holiday! All of this is the result of “just” three hours of work today. I’m glad that these went much quicker — I should be able to finish a good part of the living room by the end of next week. These are the tools and protection I’m using. Always use face protection when removing tile; I can’t insist enough. No matter how careful you are, the tiles break in unpredictable ways and pieces go flying everywhere. My eye protection and face mask have been hit by flying pieces of tile very often. Along those lines, if you have a pet, either don’t let them near the work area at all, or stop working when they’re nearby. Kanoko rests on his cat tree perch to oversee my work, so he’s been fine. I only worked for three hours because that’s all my arms and legs could take. It’s best to kneel (I used a folded-up blanket as a knee pad), which takes its toll, and it’s tiring to pound and lift all the time.

The thick gray line just above Kanoko’s head is not due to broken tile — that’s originally where the living room wall was. The previous owners took it out and put it further back to create the sofa nook. This is both good and bad: the good part is the tomettes aren’t broken; the bad part is there are no tomettes along that line at all!

While I consider tomettes to be a treasure because of their beauty and soft, silky feel, they are also a treasure in the material sense of the word: since tomettes are no longer made, you can only find vintage ones, and hexagonal tomettes cost from 50 to 70 euros per square meter. My living room and bedroom are 35 square meters in all, multiplied by 60 euros makes for 2,100 euros, or about 3,000 US dollars at the current exchange rate (I use xe.com’s currency converter). In comparison, decent-quality modern tiles cost about 20 euros per square meter, or one third of the tomettes’ worth. In short, for 3-4 weeks of tile removal work, I’ll be tripling the value of my floors! (Why did the previous owners tile over these tomettes? Well, since they are “vintage”, there are some French people who don’t like them. I’m assuming that’s what happened, since the previous owners were a young French couple.)

For Christmas I gave myself a new bedroom! What it looked like three months ago, when I got my bed, and here it was just three weeks ago after putting up the drape. Today I finished removing the rest of the parquet and emptied the bedroom so I could thoroughly clean the tomettes. I used savon noir à l’huile de lin — savon noir with linseed oil. It worked wonderfully, even removing paint from the tiles.

As you can see, having a dark floor makes a huge difference in the room’s look. The drape already looks much better; I imagine painting the walls a medium grey will improve things even more, once I have the chance to actually paint. I’m in love with these tomettes and couldn’t be happier with how my bedroom is coming along. I also started removing tile in the living room, where there are tomettes too. It will be a while before that’s finished though — it took an hour just to remove one and a half tiles, and there are about 200 in all! (I’m being extremely careful not to damage the tomettes beneath. With any luck the rest will go more quickly?!)

Sunday cuteness: Yesterday I made some gluten-free spaghetti, and left the strainer in the sink to dry. When I returned to the kitchen, this is what I found. (I had the hardest time not laughing at the beginning; it took immense willpower to stop for the video.)

I had no idea until today, but 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.

The video above is for the sound, not so much the view. It shows the lovely quiet at my place, one of the main reasons I bought this apartment — I’m near Nice city center, major streets, a few dozen yards from a bus stop that serves both Nice and Sophia Antipolis, and yet all you can hear from my apartment are church bells and birds. You’ll need to turn up the volume to hear the bells and birds. (That said, this video does have a car engine at one point, which I barely heard in reality — my phone picks up that range of sound much better than higher frequencies such as bird song.)

As an update for the threatening neighbor, a lot happened this week. First, background I’ve mentioned before but that is important enough to repeat: since I moved in, I tried speaking with the threatening neighbor once (read about it at that link). Because it was clear that she’s irrational and enjoys getting a rise out of people, I have never since engaged her — I never speak to her, never look at her, never even motion to her. In short, I pretend she does not exist. Also, Kanoko and I are entirely shut in: there is a roof covering my entire patio, wood walls on either side, and 1cm-square fencing from ground to roof and side to side. In other words, we cannot leave my patio. She cuts wires that hold my fencing together from time to time (I have witnessed this and have already gone to the police for it) in order to leave things on my patio; I close them back up ASAP.

To summarize what transpired this week, since I don’t want to give the details on my blog for several reasons, I learned that this threatening neighbor does in fact have a history of complaints filed concerning her physical violence and death threats against people and pets in her building, which history spans 18 years. I did not know that she had actually been violent until now. The good news is that with a third party (myself) also witnessing her threats, from a different building, and reporting it to the police, their building management was finally able to lodge an official complaint and request a formal investigation. (Why haven’t other neighbors spoken up? Well, it’s far, very far indeed, from the first time I’ve seen people say nothing when they witness someone else being wronged.) Let’s hope the police investigation is thorough and justice is served.

Also this week, just after the complaint was filed, I found meatballs on my patio two nights in a row after coming home from work. Obviously, with the threats to poison Kanoko, I imagine the meatballs were not just full of good things. Since I didn’t eye-witness their placement on my patio, I am unable to go to the police about it, even though only one neighbor shares and can access the inner courtyard, and that neighbor is the dangerous one. From now until whenever it is safe, I am only letting Kanoko outside when I can keep a direct eye on him. The video above shows what I mean: I sit next to the window and watch him, while reading a book or simply musing. Before, I would let him stay outside while I was on the computer and not necessarily paying close attention, but no longer.

Helpful readers have already suggested surveillance cameras, webcams, walling off the patio. I can’t afford a real surveillance camera; I tried my webcam but its focus is too narrow and I can’t afford a better one; walling off the patio is not an option for several reasons. Mainly, this is what happens when you are faced with truly dangerous, mentally ill people: you cannot entirely protect yourself. Only justice and the police can. You’re safer if you realize this. It’s the first thing you learn in any good self-defense course: learning how to fight is practically useless when faced with a true criminal, a desperate person or a mentally ill one. Your best defense is learning how to run, and run quickly, phoning the police and/or getting somewhere safe. So I wall off my patio? She’s shown evidence of paranoid and delusional thinking (just read about the one time I tried speaking with her or hear her for yourself) and has a history of violence. What’s to keep her from breaking it down or creating holes when she’s already cut my existing fence? I’d still have to scour my patio to make sure she hadn’t done such a thing to leave “gifts”. I’d rather keep my sunlight and be able to actually see what she’s up to. As for a camera, I keep my phone on me at all times now; if she tries anything while I’m home, I’ll film her again.

That was interrupted, as usual (as nearly always), by my neighbor. She had started off by yelling “une belle fille bien baisée ! Va te faire foutre, connasse !” at which point I went to get my camera phone, since Kanoko was also being adorable as I cleaned my patio/terrace. This is what followed. Mostly it’s kitty being funny, then at 35 seconds in, you get to hear my neighbor for yourself and witness what I put up with (though on a small scale, since it’s worse than just these few seconds, of course).

As can be seen, I’m merely on my patio, playing with my kitten. I do not engage her; I never engage her. Today is the first time I’ve dared to try and film. She noticed: she yelled “moi aussi je peux filmer !!” and she did, which I don’t mind, because she caught herself on camera calling me “connasse !” while I remained silent, playing with my kitten. Kanoko and I went inside after I’d finished the film, since I figured the neighbor would come outside. Indeed, the neighbor lady then stormed out and sprayed my entire wall, window, door and all, with her garden hose.

I’m getting pretty tired of this. I forwarded the video to a neighbor in the abusive neighbor’s apartment building so that their management can be made aware, again. (I realize I’ll need to be more careful than usual now, since the filming pissed her off and may escalate things. I’m hoping, however, that seeing how bad she can be — and this is average, not her worst — will help handle the problem.)

This afternoon Kanoko was swatting around a broken piece of ceramic. It was dark red and reminded me very much of traditional Provençal terra cotta tiles, called tomettes. My curiosity was piqued — every so often, you’ll hear a story of someone buying an apartment, pulling up the old floor and discovering tomettes beneath. It even happened to my former landlords, whose floor was gorgeous. Since the parquet in my bedroom was badly laid and I thought I needed to replace it due to the water damage from the adjacent bathroom, I pulled on a corner that was already sticking out.

This is what I found. I jumped; I squealed with joy; I bounded into the kitchen to put on eye protection and returned to the bedroom to pull out as much parquet as I could. It hadn’t been glued, merely laid onto a protective sheet covering the floor. The tomettes are in perfect condition. There’s only one exception: the previous owners broke some tomettes to run… a TV cable. Ugh. (By any chance, do any readers have a few tomettes laying around that I could use to repair this? They’re hard to find. Mine are 11.5cm from point to point; 10cm from side to side.)

Pulling up the parquet brought something else into evidence: the tile elsewhere in my apartment is on top of yet more tomettes!!! Tomorrow I’m going to pull up tile in an out-of-the way corner of my living room to see what’s been done and if it’s recoverable — I certainly hope so. I’m delighted since I had in fact dreamt of redoing my bedroom floor in tomettes, but had to set aside the idea since they’re very expensive. Then today I find that it was already done 60 years ago!

As shown here, my deconstructivist bathroom is coming along nicely. This approach brings to the fore images that evoke universal truths: beneath the persona (paint) and ego (plaster) lie hidden yet vital depths of unconscious communications (pipes) and shadow elements (dark hole in the wall). Cleansing and healing elements also come into play (shower). While modern society would have us believe that humans are two-dimensional, able to be classified and “targeted”, we are reminded of the multitudinous facets in every individual, impossible to contemplate in their whole; impossible to reduce to mere words.

Because my bathroom wall needs to dry before it can be repaired, I decided to tackle paint removal in it today. (I had an extra vacation day that needed to be used, so took today off.) The mold damage before, bubbles after putting on paint remover that made me rather nervous since no such bubbles formed on the same paint when I used the remover in the WC, and the wall after removing the paint but before taking on the plaster.

The photo above shows the bathroom as it is now, with a hole in the corner so that air can get back there and help things dry out.

It seems life has decided that I require a course in different aspects of the French legal system. At the same time. To wit, real estate law and neighborhood law. My personal assignments would be a hidden defect (the shower that caused mold and rot) and a neighbor across from me who shares the courtyard, who threatens to kill my kitten (said kitten is quite literally caged into my patio; he can’t bother anyone besides me), sprays kitten and I with her garden hose, and who has now left excrement and dirty toilet paper on my patio several times.

Yes: excrement and dirty toilet paper. I have photos. I won’t post them, since I doubt anyone wants or needs to be reminded what poo looks like. And no, it was not poo from my cat, since it was far too large, plus I saw her put it on my patio. I could hardly believe my eyes, but there it was, my neighbor woman cutting wires that hold my fencing together while cackling, and then putting her hand through the newly-created hole to drop crap onto my patio.

I went to the commissariat to have another main courante written up, detailing the events I wrote above. (Apart from the dirty toilet paper, because that was what awaited me when I got home from visiting the police.) After speaking with the people in that neighbor’s building (she’s in a different one from mine), their building management was alerted, and is going to bring une plainte before the Procureur de la République, since there’s a long trail of mains courantes preceding mine. This means all parties shall be heard: people from the woman’s building, myself, and the woman concerned.

In these cases I appreciate having my blog — it helps to make such experiences feel less futile. As in, at least I can share my experiences in a way that others can learn from and/or relate to; there are plenty of people in France (just as everywhere) who have neighbor problems, so likely some of them are immigrants/expatriates, and it’s nice to know what actions can be taken when it gets serious. I’m lucky to have neighbors who have lived with the threatening woman for several years and so who were able to guide me; others aren’t that lucky. That said, I do wish it were never this serious. I’m getting sick of having to be on guard every time I let out my kitten; tired of wondering when the neighbor will storm out and start screaming at me when I water my plants; tired of having to pretend I don’t hear her when she does (I refuse to respond to her in any way, it would only make things worse); tired of wondering what kind of insecticide she sprays on her — and thus many of my — plants every two days (that is a fact, not an exaggeration); tired of hearing the foul insults she hurls at all the neighbors; tired of checking my kitten for any signs of poisoning and worrying whether I’ll come home from work to a deathly ill, or worse, dead, kitten one evening because I missed something.

Kanoko turned 6 months old two weeks ago, and is at the veterinarian today, getting neutered and being given an ID tattoo in his ear. (Why you should spay or neuter your pet, et en français, pourquoi faire stériliser son animal.) I weighed him while at the vet’s: 4.5 kilos/10 pounds! That’s a healthy weight for a fully adult cat — normal-sized kittens weigh 3kg/6.5 pounds at 6 months old.

I took the opportunity of a mischief-free apartment to put up the curtain wire over my bedroom storage nook and hang a drape (“before” photo here). The difficulty of this nook is that it’s 2 meters wide, while none of the stores I checked had drapes/curtains wider than 1m60. So I hung a drape sideways! It’s not ideal, but with the tall bed frame bringing things together visually, it works well enough. It will probably look much better once I’ve repainted my bedroom a darkish grey. After considering several color ideas over the last few months, I realized that every time I’d seen a grey room, I’d utterly loved it. It won’t be done for a few months though, since budget priority goes to repairing my bathroom, which will be expensive. It is nice to no longer see the boxes and suitcases, in any case.