Before I get into the nightmare problem my son has, I want to fast forward a bit, to the trip home from the doctor. I give up folks, really I do. I have terrible rotten luck and now it seems to be creeping away from me and onto those who surround me, like a cloud of mustard gas.

The road was pretty much abandoned on the way back last night. Our doctors’ offices are in Froncles, a whopping 5 kilometers from here. Most of the way is ‘major’ highway (meaning it’s not one of those 1.5 lane country roads I managed to scare my 10-foot tall bulletproof brother on).

Last night it was raining—yeah I know, this is Haute Marne, when is it not raining in winter? There was a nice steady drizzle coming down, enough to make life miserable, but not much more than that.

Unless you’re in front of me on the highway.

The car I was following took a sharp right turn into the ditch.

Fortunately he wasn’t speeding (I was in fact grumbling that he needed to shit or get off the pot, so to speak), and both he and his wife were properly belted in. The car didn’t even seem to have any major breakage, other than it was just high centered on the cement support for the ditch from hell.

I stopped, of course. That whole ‘you see an accident, you stop’ thing that’s an obligation where I come from is seen as completely optional here. I just don’t understand the French! But I’m not here to rant. I stopped, with Muppet in the car, on a normally busy highway (we weren’t yet at ‘rush-ha-ha-ha-hour’ but I’m sure you can imagine how nervous I was leaving my car on the side of the road with a toddler in it considering how graced I’ve been lately) and ran as fast as a fat pregnant woman can back to the scene.

Mrs. Decked-out-in-fur-and-enough-perfume-to-kill-a-giant was noticeably shaken, and as it was drizzling and cold, I ran back and got my car so she could sit someplace warm and dry while we waited for the gendarmerie to show up, who we had to call on my phone since for some unknown reason no one else wanted to take responsibility for making the call (WTF people!? Dear Lord, please do not let me ever have a bad accident in this country.)

An hour later (pretty fast service considering they had to come a whole 15 kilometers! Service abounds in all areas of life) they showed up, four of them all in the same van. I explained that I was directly behind the car when it turned hard to the right, and the head gendarme told the younger, very cute, very yummy gendarme to get my information. (Yes, I know it was for the accident report, but damn, having a gorgeous man ask for my phone number felt nice even in that situation. I’ve sunk so low…)

During all this, the other ‘witness’, who just happened to be another civil servant with a blinky-blinky on his car that he’d used to advise other drivers to slow the fuck down and who had been playing host to Mr. My-wife-wears-real-fur-you-can-go-to-hell, drove off…without a word…and with Mr. Accident Victim’s handbag, including his license, ID, and credit cards.

The mustard cloud of bad luck strikes again…

Oh, and the itchy rashy thingy? Turns out my son has fleas—not your regular blame the cat or dog type fleas. No, that kind doesn’t usually bother humans, and considering how little exposure our animals get to the great outdoors it’s unlikely we’d be infested with those nice critters. Nope, he’s got a case of wood fleas, little bastards that make their homes in hardwood flooring and are, in the doctor’s words, a nightmare to get rid of. Lovely.

Now we’ve got to rip everything out of all the rooms with wood floors (everywhere but the kitchen and bath, thankyaverymuch), clean the floors with bleach, wait a week, and redo until the little bastards are gone. And when they are, we get to redo the floors, wax and all, because bleach tends to ruin the finish of hardwood for some reason.

So, lots more work with wonderful chemicals. Fun. But where in hell am I supposed to put all this stuff in the meantime?