Kitty Chat

Sooo.... I was just sharpening a slightly dull knife in preparation to make creamy garlic mushrooms finished with cognac, when my hand slipped and I gashed my thumb right underneath the knuckle.

This is how I found myself last night at Pontivy Hospital one year and two days after the last time I was there. This time I walked in instead of being taken there in an Ambulance.

At 7.30, I booked into Reception. By 8 pm, I was being seen by a Triage nurse who soaked my thumb in Betadine. By 8.45, thumb suitably soaked, I was seen by the Doctor who wanted to know when I had my last Tetanus shot.

Erm... probably 12 years ago when I broke my leg?

Tsk. Tsk. You must have one every 10 years, regular, like a Mammogram or a Pap Smear every two years.

Erm.... lets not talk about when I had my last Pap either.....

So they took a sample of blood, found I had the Tetanus antibodies so just need the vaccine, or booster, not the serum. Got that. Now, this cut is quite deep, it needs stitches. Do you want an anesthesia? Or shall I just do it quickly? I will be fast...

(I thought of my friend out in the waiting room with my kittens...)

Oh, go on, lets do it without painkiller, I'll just be butch about it...

Four stitches and 10 minutes later, I walked out with my new French Immunization Card. Hilary cooked us all dinner so I didn't have to go back and do it.

So again, a glowing recommendation for the French Health System! And for Tranquility in Pontivy!

Today is a cool, rainy, drizzly day here in Bretagne. Ooohhh... Love it!

I am feeling extremely happy today. I had a wonderful weekend. On Saturday we went to Pont-Aven and the coast. Yesterday we spent the day at the lake. The girls were ecstatic... two days running and all that water to swim in! I did lots of yummy meals as well. I will write them up and post them in the next few days.

Thursday we go back to the UK and I face the music with the soon-to-be-ex-husband. Until then I will just have to try to stay happy-chappie.

(Sorry Tomcat. Haven't been able to access the Internet until today so didn't see your posting about calling you. I will call you soon at 7pm my time, maybe tonight! Love from Mommy Kitty)

Here I am, helping a friend out at their house, cleaning and tidying, trying to help them get a flat ready to rent out... and using their wireless connection (technology is grand, innit?)

Fresh breeze blowing as I am sitting in the gazebo and enjoying life in Plouguernevel. Honestly, the weather in 22 is different than in 56! It's slightly cooler!

I haven't moved, so don't worry...

...went very well.

A few months back, I heard from a friend of mine from San Diego who has just discovered she has Breast Cancer. This rather shook me up because she is about 5 years younger than me. They begin breast screening a lot earlier in the USA, 35 in California so since one of my Aunts has had breast cancer, as did my Grandmother, and cancer runs in my family, I thought it would be prudent to be checked as soon as I could. On my first screening, they picked up a 'shadow' that they said they would need to monitor over the coming years. In Vermont, they decided to do a core biopsy as the 'mass' looked suspicious. No cancer cells were found, however again they said I would need to 'keep an eye on it'.

So my mammogram yesterday has taken place after I have lost close to 8 stone... thats a heck of a lot of mass.

I have felt these lumps after I started doing a breast self-exam again. They are clustered around my right nipple and they feel like little dried peas.  When I told my doctor and he felt them he said this was something I had to take care of right away. He called the Radiologist there and then and got the next appointment for me, 14v days later. You have to have a mammogram within the 10 days after you begin your menses, luckily I keep track of when I have my menses and the appointment date was bang on 10 days.

My appointment yesterday was at 10.45. I was in a room getting undressed by 10.47 and having the mammogramm minutes later. I was taken into another room to wait and the consultenet came in 10 minutes later with my film already processed! He looked over all four films with a magnifying glass and then we got down to discussing my lumps. 'They are calceres. Calcium deposits or calcifications which are usually non-cancerous and quite common in women.' They looked like a cluster of little pale and bright white planets and are probably the 'shadow' that was seen all those years ago. They are large, large enough to be felt, which is unusual but large calcifications are rarely cancerous, he told me. 'Come back to see us in two years and guard your films most preciously!'

Oh yes... indeed I will!

The entire procedure took just over 35 minutes and the total cost? 66.47€ But my Mutuelle covers 100% so I wasn't out of pocket at all. My insurance co-pay in California alone was more than that and that was back in 1993 or so.

So I have a clean bill of health, breast-wise at least. I was so relieved I wanted to text or e-mail everyone I knew but restrained myself to just one dear friend...

Kitty is one happy girl today. Thank God I live here in France. The whole thing would have taken weeks on the NHS!

Tomorrow I go for my Mammogram in Pontivy. I am anxious, I admit it. I am all alone in this. However, I need to keep a positive outlook.

I will post on how it goes tomorrow.

(Big cleansing breath...)

Double Chocolate Guilt Cake

This cake is divine! You only need a small sliver served with a good cup of proper coffee to round off any meal to perfection.

Now you could serve it with just a bit of slightly sweetened vanilla chantilly cream... but isn't that just gilding the lily?

Well, here you go, here is the recipe that I keep banging on about all the time! Enjoy! If you ever come to my café, you will be able to eat it there!

3 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut
1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

For ganache frosting
1 pound fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

Special equipment
two 10- by 2-inch round cake pans

Sometimes… not often, mind you… but sometimes… I am really lucky.

For some reason, understood only by ‘men who do complicated computer things’, the technician at the Pontivy Library in the Computer Suite has decided to grant me special treatment. This is wicked cool…

I have been going into the Pontivy Médiathèque for a few months now. It is first come, first served and since it is free to all, there is always a queue of pre-adolescent Asian boys who have been standing there for hours to get a space so they can go online and play some Computer Game like San Andreas or Hellboy or, what? SimCity 2005? No idea. I don’t understand these new computer games. Look, I couldn’t even get past the tower in Myst… I am not like my son, I am not a hardcore gamer. I am a wanna-be gamer. My experience is limited to Spider Solitaire, Space Invaders, Pong, Ms. Pac-man and, well… the original Sim-City. My son is bringing his laptop at Christmas, I am hoping he will show me the finer points of, erm, Earthworm Jim… or the like…

So, I figure I will give this Commodore A1200 (circa January 1993, but it’s still new, in the original box, never used) I just received to my eldest daughter (who is seven) and let her figure out C/C++… I have a tutorial… she needs a challenge. She will probably tell me it needs COBAL. Or an upgrade.

(Please don’t laugh at me; I really do have no idea about these things. I know lots of words, though…)

Anyway, what this nice technician at the Pontivy Médiathèque has done is to hook up my laptop to the Pontivy Library’s LAN or Local Area Network. This means I can go into the library with my laptop and just dive into the network using their connection. Faster than ADSL, let me tell you. THEN, because it is so crowded in the computer suite and I have had to share his desk with my laptop, he took me upstairs to a private room and has set up a connection up there for me, my own private computer space! AND even though the computer suite is closed for three weeks for his vacances, I can STILL go up into my little private room and use their LAN as he OK’ed it with the other Librarians! Isn’t that cool?

The fact that I do not have to sit in a room with slew of hot, sweaty, adolescent boys who have yet to discover the bird-pulling benefits of personal hygiene, is an even greater benefit to my delicate olfactory sense. Why is it that most French men just plain stink? A mixture of body odour, garlic, Gauloises, old sweat and jeans that should have been washed two days ago. And their socks that smell of Limburger cheese. It’s just vile.

Please understand I have nothing against sweat. Sweat that forms on a clean body is full of natural pheromones and contains chemical transmitters that either turn us on or turn us off. If you want to know if you are ideally suited to someone of the opposite sex, all you need do is sniff his or her (clean, freshly washed) armpit. If it makes you go ‘yuck’, then this person is not for you, the ‘chemistry’ isn’t there.

On the other hand, if the person’s armpit smells oddly pleasant or makes you go all wobbly and weak in the knees, Bingo! Honest, it works. The brain is looking for matches for certain transmitters and is subconsciously looking for ‘missing links’ it can fill in, in its genetic code. So, when you mate, you have a better offspring. When you find the right person, you will never be able to get enough of that person’s natural, unvarnished scent. You will crave it as it’s heady and frightfully, mind-blowingly sexy. Wow.

See, it’s all about sex, really, isn’t it?

(Honestly Kitty, how you can link from talking about computers to sex is beyond belief...)