About

I am an architect. I bought my first house, a teardown that I fixed up well enough to sell on to a USC professor, when I was 21. I moved to San Francisco and bought a Victorian: fixed it up, sold it. Married an amazing man who lived in a nearly derelict mid-century modern with potential, definite potential. We realized the potential and got a fixer apartment in Paris. Are you noticing a pattern? Well, don’t get too comfortable. Mr. Wonderful died, in our perfect house, he died. The house you see above is our California house, nearly packed up, my life there well and truly over.

It was time for a new house, too many memories in the old one, but I needed to change things up. So the new fixer, the principal topic of this blog, is mid-century too — mid-19th century — in the French countryside. This blog is about my move from the super-fashionable Berkeley hills to Vendée, the downmarket and nearly unknown flats of west France. While I am at it, the situation being what it is, I write about rebuilding myself and my life in general.

The good news is that, though you never really get over the death of someone you love so much, you can do okay. I bought my little Westie, Jacques, just after I moved here. He has been wonderful, a constant source of joy. The renovation has kept me too busy to dwell too much on what I left behind. And, a couple of years after I arrived I thought well, why not the occasional cup of coffee with a live available male, here and there, nothing serious.  That lasted about two weeks, which is how long it took me to meet the man I lived with for a good five years, until he, too, died. I lucked out, even so. I cherish the time we had together.

Of course I love to shop. This house is certainly a shopping opportunity. (Just ignore that strangled choking sound. My bank account gets that way, sometimes.) So, a few visits to the brocantes, play with the dog, a little gardening , a little needlework and a slow reknit of a thoroughly exploded life. Thank you for being here. I am glad you have found my blog and hope you will join what I like to think of as a cult following.

Also: Everything on this site is copyrighted by someone. The theme is copyrighted by its owner. Every word of my copy and every image not credited to someone else is copyright by me. If you want to use something, thank you, I am flattered. Please remember to give me a Creative Commons citation.

Data Protection Info: This is not a commercial site: no ads, no affiliate links, nothing. It’s an old-school blog, kind of the opposite of Facebook. I ask for your email address when you subscribe to the blog and use the information only for that purpose. I don’t see my subscriber list. WordPress actually manages it. They may set a cookie so you don’t have to sign in every time to comment — I love comments — but I have no access to them or to the info they contain. I don’t even know for sure whether they set cookies. If you have a WordPress account, you can sign up through that. I’m basically hapless when it comes to tracking and all. I play with site analytics, but not very well. I have no non-Wordpress list of your information. You can unsubscribe at any time, though I hope you will stay with me. If you unsubscribe, your info will be gone from my records.