Note: Journaling is a great way to build your stories. When you keep a journal you can record details that would be long forgotten if you let days pass. Then when you look back at your pages, you relive those moments and your stories emerge. Sometimes journals can be stories in themselves.

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Wake up and go upstairs to try to hook up, realize it is my computer.

Contact Isabelle, she is wonderful. Isabelle’s assistant, Allison, arrives and we try mine again, she loans me the tiny laptop (petite ordinateur).

Go to the market near my apartment and get some chicken and carrots for dinner. Buy a striped shirt, classic and cheap, 10 Euros. The market is very long. Also get some cheese and yogurt too.

I go to Giverny and tour with the former Ambassador to Belgium from Thailand, they live in Bangkok. His wife is an avid gardener, very sweet. I am in the front seat with the tour guide. He has a microphone and is something of a smart aleck. However he knows a lot about the region and points out interesting things along the way.

At Giverny, the tulips are in bloom and the wisteria just starting. The kitchen is as I remember it from when Mike and I went here years ago, all robin’s egg blue with the big stove, the colorful, friendly-looking tile. An expanse of kitchen that I could envision several cooks laughing and creating wonderful meals in. And out the window, the ever-present garden. The pond beyond, with the bridge where the ambassador told me if I walk across and make a wish, it will come true. Of course I did that and bumped right into a woman posing for a picture as I was looking out over the water and thinking of my wish and not watching what I was doing. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I blurted out. “It’s OK,” she said and smiled.

Receive a call from my sister Carol in the van on the way back! And also a call from Bill to make arrangements for dinner on Friday.

Stay up late writing, getting used to the tiny laptop. Sample some of the wine I had purchased.

Sleep like a rock and oversleep.