The Roots of Our Labor

Yay! Our very first veggie from this year's garden. It's a lonely little guy, since no one else even comes close to being ripe, yet. He's a cutie, though, isn't he? I guess it may not look like much to you, but to me, it's a sign of yummy things to come. It's a really good thing that we aren't depending on the garden for our food yet, though. Dinner would have been a really sad affair on that day. First, I took a bite to taste. Then, I passed it to my husband. He took a bite and started to pass it back to me, when the kids decided they needed to be a part of the fun. It's a pretty reasonably-sized radish, but it doesn't really go very far for a family of four.

Oh, and for anyone who is interested, I've started seeing carrots popping up. I'm really excited about that, because I wasn't really sure they'd come up at all, since the seeds were a bit old. And, a really nice surprise that I found while weeding in the root veggie area are tons of wild tomato plants. That's where we planted them last year, and they were prolific enough that we had too many to eat. This meant that some fell off and apparently left enough seeds to start a good crop for this year. They'll have to be transplanted elsewhere in the garden soon, but how great is that when the vegetables do your work for you?

And, for those of you peeing your pants in anticipation of what kind of car we've decided on - STOP (because that's gross, and you're too old for that kind of behavior). For those of you who have guessed - you're all wrong. I think I'll leave you in suspense a little longer... Alright, maybe not.

Now, it's not a sure thing that we'll get this car, because we haven't even heard back from the insurance company about the dead one yet (for all we know they could opt for that .1% chance of fixing it). The insurance expert was due to go by the garage to take a little look at it yesterday, but he was a no-show. The mechanic called them and found out he'll be coming by on Thursday, instead. That, of course, probably means that we won't find anything out from the insurance company till next week (though I'm still hoping for Friday).

Soooooo, without further ado (drumroll please), the car we have decided on and hope to be able to get is this kind. In case you're reading this after the expiration of that particular page (because, I don't know when that'll be), we're hoping to get a BMW 525 tds wagon. It obviously won't be the exact one in the picture, because it seems to have been sold, but it'll be something like that. So, many of you were right about the wagon part - just not the brand. After MUCH research online, the BMW is the safest, sturdiest, most fuel efficient, most reliable wagon in our price range. So, that's what we're going with (hopefully).

Now that we've come up with something we're happy with, let's all collectively cross our fingers that the insurance company does total our car for a decent amount of money to get us started, and that we find our ideal car at the right price. You may have to keep them crossed a little while, given the speed at which insurance adjusters move here in France. There is surely some kind of equation to calculate this speed. It's most likely a function of the desperate need of the accident victim combined with the amount of money paid in premiums, or some such nonsense. All of that is probably then multiplied by the laziness of the insurance company employees. Math was never my strong suit, though, so I can't for the life of me figure out the equation needed to predict how long this will take. Anybody else have any idea on this?