More whinging

Isn't "whinging" a great word? It's English. I mean British (or Australian). It means "whining." Americans whine but they don't whinge. I think I'm getting good at both.

I was going to call this post "The Art of Whinging." But then I realized that my whining and whinging is not very artful. I am persistent, though. You have to give me that. The American Heritage Dictionary says "to whinge" means " to complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner." I guess that's me.

Tulipes chez le voisin — the neighbor's tulips

And it's all about the weather. We had 23 mm of rain over the weekend. That's just short of one inch of precip, as they used to say on the U.S. weather reports. And that's a lot for us. It seldom rains hard, but this weekend it rained steadily. Temperature: about 10ºC — 50ºF — at the highest.

We talked to a friend in California yesterday. It's in the 80s there. In North Carolina, where my mother and sister live, it's easily in the 70s in this season. Sigh...

Saturday afternoon: can you see the rainbow?

But just this morning, as I was standing in front of the kitchen sink washing up after making a yogurt tandoori marinade for today's lunchtime chicken, I was thinking: What if this idea of quitting work and moving to France was just one huge mistake? With the plummeting dollar and the pelting rain, a man starts to wonder. Just at that moment the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and flooded the kitchen with the promise of better days. Look! It just happened again.

I think I am being teased.

Anyway, I'm not the only one whinging about the weather. Here's an excerpt from a blog (Alana at Vespers is Nigh) written by a woman who has been in Provence this past week with her husband:

Unfortunately, [my husband] decided that he would get a nasty cold literally the day we got on to the plane for our vacation. It has taken him a few days to get over the worst of it and there really is no better place to completely rest than here in Provence.

The weather has also been a bit gloomy...

Gloomy in Provence? Only in April does that happen. Be warned. Plan to take your trip to Provence in another season. But Alana does put a good spin on it — doesn't she? — with the "no better place to completely rest" than Provence assessment.

And then there's Chris's recent experience of Paris in March (The Best Trip Ever). We met Chris and her husband Frank last year when they spent a week in a gîte near Saint-Aignan. This year, they were in Paris for three weeks. She wrote in one topic on her blog:

In spite of all my whining about the weather, I wouldn't have missed this or changed a thing [about this trip to Paris]. The cold and the rain forced me to forget my long list of things to accomplish here and just savor one day at a time.

Again, some very positive spinning going on there, n'est-ce pas, Chris?

To lift our spirits yesterday, as a cold rain fell steadily,
W. made one of his springtime specialties to lift our spirits.
It's white asparagus rolled in slices of Paris ham and baked into a pie.

By the way, Chris's blog is a good read for when you are getting ready to go to Paris for a few days. A good read anytime, really. Earlier, she wrote this in another posting:

Weather has been on our mind the entire trip.

We’re climate-spoiled Californians who don’t even own things like wool coats, so we didn’t exactly arrive prepared. I brought some light sweaters, so I’ve just been layering like crazy, and I talked Frank into a wool scarf and some gloves. I haven’t been able to convince him to buy a sweater or a warmer coat. He hates to shop for that kind of thing, and insists it would be a waste of money because he’d never wear it at home. So he just toughs it out.

I’ve never seen such changeable weather. In the morning, like today, it will be sunny, crystal clear and cold, very cold. Then the clouds sort of sneak in and the fun starts. It blows, then it rains, then it clears up and hails while the sun shines. Then it rains some more, then clears, then more wind and hail, then it settles in and pours for a while. The one thing it never does is warm up.

Ken on the message board told me to expect the “giboulées de mars,” which I took to be a poetic description of some sort of nice gentle spring showers. Hah! I’ve since googled the term and realized that it describes exactly the sudden heavy rains, sleet, hail, and wind we’ve seen just about every day we’ve been here.

So she admits that I warned her, our friend Chris does. I wish I had been more adamant, more descriptive, in talking about the March weather in Paris (and Saint-Aignan). But you always feel so negative when you tell those kinds of truths.

The other day in Blois we bought a new rug.
Here, Callie isn't yet sure she's happy with it.

It's always darkest before the dawn. Just when you feel the whiniest, the sun breaks through and you feel silly again. Not to mention relieved.