An American in Provence

Happy May Day everyone!

Did a little spring cleaning this morning, and I even got Alain to broom the floor. That's what he calls it. I can't break him of it.

He either says "I'm going to pass the broom" or "I'm brooming", obviously derivations from the french of "passer le balai' or the verb "balayer".

For awhile I tried to get him to use "sweep" but then he started calling it a sweeper, so faced with the choice between broom used as a verb and sweep used as a noun, I decided to go with brooming.

Let's conjugate, shall we?
I am brooming
I broom
I broomed
I was brooming
I will broom

This is always quite a production in our household. I have to run around like crazy, getting everything off the floor before he gets to that room. Then he takes the vacuum, but has the tendency to vacuum up stuff I don't want vacuumed up. Like stuff on top of tables. If he ever vacuums up my jewelry, I will kill him.
(like the time he used our teak salad bowl wedding present as a cutting board for a watermelon.)
So this brooming operation took about an hour.
After which we had a salad lunch, then he left on his motorcycle to go to his parent's house in order to wash and grease his motorcycle, while I stayed home, watched my TV series, sewed, and ate chocolate.
Hey, to each their own.

Happy May!