Au Cochonnet Marin

When you are a homeowner, it pays to be a handyman. Besides saving a little money, it is satisfying to be able to fix some little things around the house without having to rely on a professional. All you need is time… plenty of time.

Replacing a faucet for instance is a no-brainer. All you need to do is turn off the water, disconnect the cold and warm ducts, remove the faucet, and install a new one in the reverse order. A piece of cake, right? Well not exactly… especially if you lack practice.

In theory, most of the little things that need fixing, look relatively easy to accomplish. But if you don’t have the experience, a simple little job can turn into a hellish affair.

 Recently we purchased a relatively large TV set and we thought that it would look good hanging above our fireplace. All we needed to do was to assemble a metal bracket, set it on the wall and hang the television on it. It looked pretty easy…

But these large flat screens are relatively heavy and need to be anchored securely on the wall before you can sit back and enjoy a flick.

All I needed to do was to find the studs located behind the sheetrock and securely screw the frame onto them. But the studs loitering at the back of the wall happened to be difficult to pinpoint and my new Zircon L50 StudSensor was of no great help. It kept giving me erratic indications and the edges of the studs kept moving to new places at each new attempt.

I am pretty sure that a professional would have located the studs within minutes, but as a person who does it once in a blue moon, I failed miserably. After puncturing the wall with probably a dozen holes, I was finally able to hang the frame. Alleluia, praise YouTube!

Moral of the story:

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.  – Anton Chekhov

 If you want to be proficient at whatever you do (pétanque included), practice, practice, and practice again. Everything becomes easy after you have performed the same task a hundred times.

But the problem is, how many TV sets am I going to hang a wall in the coming years? Should I continue to practice, just in case?

Alain

This year again, on January 6, I couldn’t share the traditional Galette des Rois with my friends and this really irked me. All of this is because of the enduring pandemic and the lasting irresponsibility of some ignorant yoyos. They are as afraid of a little jab in the arm as the people in the Middle Ages were afraid of “sneezing out their souls.”

In the time of the plague, sneezing could mean that a person was infected and would be next to die. But it was also believed that when you sneezed, it gave the Devil the opportunity to enter your body and steal your soul. Saying “God bless you” was supposed to protect you and prevent Satan from invading your organism.

All this non-sense was of course debunked a long time ago, just as the claptrap about vaccines was. But some people obviously still fear that the Devil will slither into their bodies through the jab of a tiny needle.

l my friends does not need a needle to enter your body and pollute your soul. He uses obedient evil-inclined individuals to do his dirty work.

On January 6, 2021, he used a flawed President and his goons to launch an attack on American democracy. The plot failed, but it does not mean that it cannot happen again. On 8-9 November 1923, Hitler and his Nazi supporters tried to seize power in Germany. They failed, but 10 years later they succeeded and launched a series of wars that killed over 70 million people around the world.

Satan is watching and laughing at the stupidity of some earthlings. They are his unwitting tools, and he knows it. Given a chance they will swallow any fabrication uttered by some power-hungry individuals.

I bet that most people would not mind a national mandatory order to get vaccinated or get fined a substantial amount of money. Some people are pretty obtuse, but they still understand and respect moolah.

You see what cheating me out of my little celebration can make me do or say? Depriving me of my Galette des Rois is like taking a meaty bone back from a bulldog. He won’t let you do it without a fight. So, blast the nincompoops who refuse to get vaccinated and prolong our misery indefinitely.

But at the same time, I also want to thank the scores of people who remembered my birthday and send me greetings and flowers. They are my kind of people, and I secured a place in Paradise for them all. When you will arrive up there, just mention my name and they will let you in.

Glad to see you Saint Pete will say. Alain called me on my private line and told me to expect you. Enjoy your stay, and by the way… you don’t have to wear masks here. Everybody and everything is kosher. And you can have as much Champagne and Galette des Rois as you want.

Bienvenue au paradis mes amis !

Alain

Pain can be like a moody lover. It may appear and disappear suddenly without ever offering any explanations.  But it can also become a permanent, unpleasant guest. And as Benjamin Franklin once said, “a bad guest is like fish; after three days it begins to smell.” After a few months of free-loading, my guest started to really stink.

According to Medical News Today, “Pain is an unpleasant sensation and emotional experience that links to tissue damage. It allows the body to react and prevent further tissue damage. People feel pain when a signal travels through nerve fibers to the brain for interpretation.”

 But sometimes your doctor and your brain are not in synch, and he fails to diagnose your problem. He will go by what he was taught in Medical School (and by what his hospital dictates) and will propose various tests and innocuous remedies. A little bit like searching for a dime in the dark.

When everything fails and the pain stubbornly refuses to go, you will try any remedy (often not condoned by the medical establishment) to make the pain disappear.

One day, while talking to a friend, he mentioned CBD-based products. Why not after all? A little research on the Internet led me to Charlotte’s Web (FDA-registered facility) and its trove of goods.

When you log in, the site offers a little questionnaire that will lead you to some products that might help. On the site, you click on “Product finder” and it will guide you to what you want. After a little reflection, I settled for a “back and neck pain relief ointment” and it came by mail a few days after I ordered it.

This ointment (with a strong smell of camphor and menthol) was kneaded into my lower back, and after just a few days I started to feel some relief. After about 10 days, the pain decreased significantly… and strangely retreated to a small area below my right shoulder blade.  It probably did not like the smell or the discomfort of the product and tried to find a more comfortable location to annoy me. But it is not as bad as the previous discomfort, and I think that eventually, the pain will vanish.

I don’t believe that I am “cured” but I feel definitely better, and I would recommend this product to anybody feeling my frustrating kind of pain. The very cautious medical establishment has not (yet) endorsed this product, so don’t ask your doctor to prescribe it. He won’t. But I tried it and I can testify that it brought some definite relief.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Buddha

Alain