The cold water coming out of our faucets here in Saint-Aignan has a temperature of 83.6ºF. That's warm enough to take a comfortable shower in.
We are back to sleeping on the sofa in the living room (me) and the bed in the guest room (W.) The loft overhead, our family room, is an oven.
The temperature outside at 6 p.m. hit 102ºF a couple of days ago. Today's forecast: 95 to 98 ºF. It's about 93ºF up in the loft now (5:30 p.m.).
I went to see my médecin traitant (GP or Primary Care physician) a few days ago. I had a lot of things to talk to him about, most notably my eyes and eyesight. I've been having vision problems for at least the past six months. I had cataract surgery two years ago. At first, I was thrilled with the result, which was much clearer vision, especially in my left eye, which has always been much stronger than my right eye. At the time, I was disappointed that the vision in my right eye — the weak one — was not improved much, if at all, after the cataract surgery.
When the surgery was finished in 2024 (two sessions, one for each eye, in June and then in September that year) the ophthalmologist wrote me a new prescription for my eyeglasses. I got that filled, and all went pretty well for about a year. The vision in my right eye was still fuzzy, but the new lenses in my glasses seemed to correct my vision overall. I was happy.
Things have changed in 2026. My left eye, formerly the strong one, has been in decline for several months. I can't remember exactly when it started. When I first noticed the decline, it didn't alarm me too much, because I could still function.
During the session when the eye doctor gave me the new prescription for glasses, he told me that in two years' time, I would need to call his office and make a follow-up appointment so that he could examine my eyes to see if all was going well. If I noticed a decline in my overall vision, I should let him know. He said that his examination would show him if one of my eyes, or maybe both, might need an adjustment that would come in the form of a laser operation to return my eyesight to its earlier improved vision (after the cataract operations).
When I realized two or three months ago that vision through my formerly healthy left eye was in a tailspin and getting a little fuzzier every day, I called the ophthalmology clinic up at the hospital in Blois and asked for an appointment with the doctor who had performed the cataract surgery. The woman who answered my call said she couldn't give me an appointment earlier than October, and I would need to call back in July to make the October appointment.
So I called back a few days ago and was told that the doctor could see me on September 9. I tried to explain to the woman on the phone that I really needed an appointment in July or August, she interrupted me and said she couldn't help me. It was Sept. 9 or nothing,, she said, adding that my doctor was going to be on vacation for all of the month of August, and she had no July appointments left to give out. I accepted the September appointment.
Meanwhile, I am having big problems with my close-up vision. My right eye seems clearer and crisper than my left eye, which is strange. The left eye has always been the clear-vision one. Now I have a hard time reading text displayed on my laptop, as well as with the text in the dictionaries and cookbooks I look things up in nearly every day at one point or another. My long-distance vision is fine. I can see to walk around the house and yard, to drive my car (I don't go fast or far), and to watch television.
You might have noticed that some of my recent blog posts come up in a larger font than the one I used to use. That makes it easier for me when it comes to typing and proofreading text for my blog posts. However, it doesn't help when it comes to posting photos. That requires editing the computer code that Blogger gives me to do the formatting. I haven't yet figured out how to enlarge that nerdy text.
So there you have it. I'm sort of half blind for the moment. It doesn't help that I have pollen allergies that also affect my eyesight. Maybe in the autumn things will be better. Meanwhile, don't expect to see daily posts on my blog . But don't forget me. I'll still post once in a while using the larger font. I'll keep you posted if there's any news...
No news is good news. I'm in that mode. We're having beautiful, cool mornings right now, so we are taking advantage of them by doing some yard work (Walt) and some cooking (Ken),which is mostly salads and sandwiches to eat in the afternoon. Plus some ice cream.
Have you heard about the riots in Paris when the LIDL grocery store chain announced it had ordered thousands of portable AC units and electric fans from China and was selling them at a discount. The LIDL stores were overwhelmed by big crowds of bargain-chasers. The latest twist this story takes in that people were buying air-conditioners and electric fans at deep discounts and promptly listing them on on-line sales sites (the best known of which is called Le Bon Coin) at three or four times what they had paid for them at LIDL.
We were finally able to sleep upstairs in the loft last night. It was warm up there, but it wasn't an oven the way it had been for a week or more. Now I'm shivering because it feels cold in the house.
After seven days of high temps over 98º, this morning it's below 70º outside and in the greenhouse. It's still close to 80º up in the loft.The sun is still shining and Accuweather predicts highs between 86º and 93º for the next seven days. That's still hot in my book.
I woke up this morning to strong winds and storm clouds. That was after going to bed (going to sofa?) last night during a thunderstorm. We are still under a weather warning for extremely high temperatures, but I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I took the photo above very early this morning from our north-facing living room window. You can't see the wind, of course, but you can almost see the trees swaying.We are facing one more week of high temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit, including three more days of temperatures over 100.Then we'll get a week with highs in the 80s. And finally, a week with highs in the 70s, in early July.
Last night I had the guest bedroom and Walt tried to sleep on the sofa in the living room. It was hot when I went to bed, but sometime before midnight I threw the windows open and there was some movement of air, so I was able to sleep. Walt says the sofa is too soft for good sleeping, and he ended up going back upstairs for a while. We have a big fan up there. He turned that on and opened some windows, but he said he was still uncomfortably warm.
Downstairs in the guest room, I got about four hours of sleep. Then I got up at 4:30 to let Tasha to do her business and then to feed her. Walt heard me and the dog, so he came downstairs to see what we were doing. She's fed, I told him. And I said he should go lie down on the guestroom bed, close to a big window that was wide open. There was some movement of air from the back yard, but you could hardly call it a breeze. Anyway, he got two or three hours of shut-eye. I finished opening windows all around the house and took a little snooze on the living room sofa.
This morning Walt went down to the garage and succeeded in locating an air mattress we used to use on camping trips in California. We pumped it up and it seems to holds air. I hope Walt will be able to sleep on it tonight. The bad news is that today and tonight are supposed to be even hotter than yesterday and last night. It's already getting warm and muggy this morning.
...in degrees Fahrenheit. These are Accuweather predictions
for Saint-Aignan from June 22 to June 28, 2010.
Sunday - 104º
Monday - 110º
Tuesday - 109º
Wednesday - 110º
Thursday - 108º
Friday - 99º
Saturday - 93º
Views of the vineyard under such clear skies are nice, but you can see how the grass along the dirt road is dry and turning brown. Weather forecasts for the next 10 days in the Loire Valley say that we'll have two days with a high temperature of 94ºF, and eight days with temperatures ranging from 95 and — gasp! —
Here's what we have to look forward to, weatherwise, stating tomorrow. This is a 10 day forecast that I grabbed off the Accuweather web site. I modified the settings so that the text would display in English and the temperatures in Fahrenheit. Rignt now I'm airing out the house and letting cool morning air in before it gets hot outwide (high today 88ºF). We'll close the windows and shutters later this morning to keep the sun and heat out. We'll be spending a lot of time indoors over the week to come.
If nobody else picks them, I will. Just a few.
It was October in 1989 and Walt and I were starting a road trip from Grenoble to Toulouse and then north to Paris via Saint-Aignan and Chartres. (Little did we know that one day we'd end up living in Saint-Aignan, a place we had never even heard of back then. But that's another story.)
One of our first stops was the pont du Gard, an enormous Roman aqueduct about 30 minutes by west of Avignon by car. Not only did we see it from afar, but we climbed stairs up to the bridge's top level and walked the length of it. It was impressive and it felt more than slightly dangerous because there was nothing to prevent you from tripping and falling from up there into the river or onto the rocks 50 meters (164 ft.) below.
Walt took these pictures of the Pont du Gard. I'm not even sure that I traveled with, or even owned, a camera in those days. I found Walt's 1989 photos on my hard disk yesterday morning. Neither of us is in any of the pictures.
This a photo of the north (left) and the west-facing sides (right) of our house, which overlook the back yard. I took it yesterday morning.
I don't think I took this photo of Montpoupon; I think our friend Sue from California did when
Our neighbor who is the mayor of the village we live in gave me some sad news a couple of days ago. Her daughter has passed away. She was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. She was not a smoker. Then the cancer spread to her brain and she had a stroke. She was in her early 50s and has left behind her husband and three children, the eldest about 20 years old. I met her a few times over the years but didn't really know her. She lived about three hours from Saint-Aignan. Her mother and father who live here have spent a lot of time on the road driving there from here and then back for months. They are both nearing age 80 and are exhausted, I'm sure.
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A few weeks ago, I had a collision with our mailbox. It was mounted on one of the posts that frame our front gate. I was taking the car and the dog out for a ride in the vineyard early one morning (long story...), and was turning right coming through the gate. Usually I turn left, which is the way down the hill we live on and to places like Saint-Aignan, Montrichard, and Blois, Anyway, I misjudged the space I needed to make that right turn. The result was a long but not very deep scratch on both of the car's passenger-side doors. I hope it doesn't start rusting. The mailbox didn't survive. We bought a new mailbox at the local hardware store and our landscape contractor was good enough to mount the new box on the fence post for us. All in all, the incident was a five or six day ordeal. I'm sad about the car, which is nearly 20 years old and is only now starting to show its age.
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Meanwhile, I've been having a lot of problems with my eyes and eyesight since the beginning of the year. I have spent a lot of time worrying and complaining that I can't figure out what the problem is. Does it have to do with the cataract operations I had in 2024? Or am I just suffering because of pollen allergies? We had a few months of rain nearly every day in the spring, and that weather pattern has changed only recently. I spent a lot of time trying to get my eye doctor on the telephone. When I had the cataract surgery in 2024, the doctor told me I would need to contact him again in two years' time for a follow-up appointment to see how my eyesight has evolved and which would probably lead to a laser procedure to make sure lens implants I have had since then are doing to job. I asked him if his office would notify me that it was time for the check-up, because I might forget. He looked at me like I was crazy and just said Non! So when my vision went blurry earlier this year, I figured it was time to make an appointment. But I couldn't get anyone on the phone. On some days my vision was better than on others, so I couldn't be sure if allergies were the problem, or something else. I finally got somebody on the phone last week. She located my file and quickly told me that the follow-up appointment would be scheduled for the month of October. I'll need to call back for an appointment in July, not before. I hope I don't have to live with blurry vision until October.
