Tonight I am not a happy camper. For those of you not in the know (and that’s honestly not because I don’t love you, but because I don’t have space for all of you), we’re holding Melanie’s baptism on the 16^th. We’ve been really excited about this because finally we're going to be able to baptize one of our children in Marc’s village, in the church his ancestors built, the same church where les Poulot have been baptized for centuries. We weren’t able to do this for either of older monkeys because they hold mass in this church only twice a year and we were never able to line things up to do it there. The 16^th is also the village fête, so we’ve got entertainment built right in—rides for everyone! Just what you need after a ‘light’ sit-down, post-sprinkling lunch.

On the 15^th of August we had a mini-tempest blow through. It only lasted about ten minutes, but it did a lot of damage. A LOT. Like it ripped up part of the roof on our new house (covered by insurance!! so we weren’t one bit sad about that), broke out windows and punched through shutters all over the place. It was such a strong storm that the stained pillars in the front of our house are no longer stained—they’ve been hail-blasted. But it also hit the roof of the church pretty hard.

Pretty hard…HA! A few of the roof tiles got broken and a few others flew off. So they mayor has all but condemned the place. No Mass. No baptism. We’ve been kicked out of our church and told to go next door. To ANOTHER village.

I’m so pissed off I don’t know what to do. It’s not like we’re going to get another shot at this (oh God, please not). And it’s not like the damn roof is going to fall in on us (I’m not getting married again, ferchrissake—it’s a baptism—not exactly something God would bring the roof down on me for).

All of this for a few roof tiles…

Does this man not realize how many people I now have to call, how many plans will need to be changed…for a few fucking tiles?

I need some booze.