The luggage arrives

Amanda said when the alarm went off at 8am I got up and turned it off and went back to bed. I don't remember any of this.

While I slept in Amanda went on a short walk, cleared weeds from the rose garden, and watered the fruit trees. She was still wearing the same pants she arrived in and was sweating in the heat. There was no sign of her luggage and the last interaction with the airlines suggested it wouldn't be delivered until Monday (it was Saturday). I got up an hour later and borrowed Ja's scythe to cut a path through the overgrown brambles down the steep hill to the stream. There were thin vines with sharp thorns that caught on your shoes and left bloody cuts along your legs.

I removed as much as I could, standing on the free end and hooking the dull tool around the root and where it was thick I swung the scythe like a machete. Picking my way down the steep path, I wondered what my obituary would say when I slipped and impaled myself on the hand tool.

The stream below the house runs over bare rock sheltered by the low hanging branches of fig trees. I stripped down and soaked in the cool water. It had the effect of lowering my core temperature and making it comfortable in the hot air for a few hours. Walking down the steep path and jumping in the stream became the thing to do every time I got too hot at the house.

After gardening, Amanda went upstairs to make her daily call to the airline baggage company. They told her they had the luggage with them in Nice and it might be faster if she came down to pick it up. She asked them if the courier would show up to take it away and they told her they didn't know. Still she was desperate for her luggage so we took Ja's keys and got into his car.

I hadn't brought my drivers license because I thought I would only need my passport for identification. Amanda had her drivers license but couldn't drive stick shift. Ja said the French authorities often stopped cars to ask for identification because they were cracking down on African immigrants. Driving without a license could get the car impounded so we decided I would get the car turned around and pulled over to the side of the road where Amanda could practice for a while.

We stalled the car a few times but she was getting better and we'd pulled out the gps unit to plot our course when I got a call from Jason's friend Lucille. We'd given the airline her number because she could communicate with them better. She said she just got a call saying the courier had picked up the luggage and was bringing it to the house.

Ja's house is some distance from the road and we didn't expect the courier to make the hike so after parking the car Amanda took at seat on the side of the road to wait until he arrived. An hour later the courier (who could not speak any English) called Lucille again and said he would be showing up anywhere from 2-4pm and would call when he arrived. Hours passed before Lucille got another call. He was lost in Menton and thinking about heading back to the airport. She yelled at him until he agreed to drive up the road and accompanied Amanda back out to the head of the road to wait for the backpack. He drove up, handed it over without a word, and sped off.

Reunited with her medication and clean clothes, Amanda changed and started researching our planned trip into Italy while I read French comic books in the cool den. After a while we went down to the swimming hole to play on the rope swing, collect dragonfly exoskeletons, and stalk bullfrogs.

We had the miracle fruit tasting party before heading out into the backyard to make hamburgers, smores, and popcorn. Half the people we invited dropped out at the last minute so we had a lot of extra food. Miracle fruit makes sour flavors taste sweet so we tried lots of normally sour foods like pomegranate, pineapple, lime, lemon, and balsamic vinegar. An orange tastes impossibly sweet under the effects of miracle fruit and eating lemons makes me a little nervous because I worry what so much acidic fruit is doing to my stomach. Because so many people dropped out, we ate until we were full and the effect was starting to wear off.

Earlier in the day, while Ja was at the butchers buying hamburger meat, I prepared and baked hamburger buns. The recipe called for powdered milk but he had none so I used regular milk instead. Ja didn't have a large enough bowl so I prepared the dough in two batches and I was just starting the second batch when Lucille arrived with some powdered milk. Unfortunately I had already measured all the ingredients and I forgot to add the powdered milk to the second batch until I'd already set both loaves aside to rise.

I considered making a third batch with the right recipe but decided instead to make a thick paste of the powdered milk and knead it into the already finished dough with a little extra flour. Unfortunately I added this milk paste to the wrong loaf, leaving me with one super milky loaf and one without any milk at all. Somehow the buns still turned out ok and the burgers were great. The smores and kettle corn were also a hit.

After dinner Carlos brought out two boxes of pastries and some boudin blanc. He insisted we each eat two or three pastries and by the end of the evening I was starting to feel uncomfortably full. We chased fireflies and geckos and even if I couldn't participate, I could generally follow the flow of French conversation (though the off-hand jokes went over my head).