The French Escape

Fellow author and France lover, Suzie Tullett, is preparing for her latest book, French Escape, to be released.
So she allowed me to do a guest blog explaining how I had escaped to France. You'll find my guest blog here with a picture of me twirling around in the darkened streets of our village.

Take a look at Suzie's blog and consider leaving a comment and ordering some of her novels.
You'll find her at Suzie Tullett
Her novel The French Escape will be released September 20

Dreaming of France -- Goodbyes

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

The goodbyes have begun and it's only my dream of the upcoming life that keeps me going.

Market day in Pezenas, France

We gathered at my house on Friday night with members of the writing group bringing dishes to share. Tomato bisque soup, macaroni and cheese, chicken salad croissants, taco salad, cabbage salad, buffalo chicken dip. Wine and some more wine. And at the end of the evening, hugs and goodbyes.

Writer's Group -- one last hurrah. 

I'll see them again, most of them in the coming weeks. 

Then yesterday, a gathering at my sister-in-law's house with the nieces and nephews. I hugged Ben goodbye. He lives in Dayton finishing his PhD. "I won't see you again," I said. "Not until you come to France."

The great nieces and nephews treat Tucker like a climbing apparatus. 

Benjamin is 2. He won't remember me, except as the aunt who lives in France. 

My boys spending some time outside with their Aunt Shelley --
she may be a bad influence, but they enjoy spending time with her. 

It's all becoming very real.
Then Sunday, after working this weekend to move Spencer out of the house and into his new place,  we took a break from packing to go to a gathering of homeschool friends. It seems silly to say homeschool friends since none of us teach our kids at home any more. Most of our children are in college or graduated from college or working on graduate degrees. Maybe we did something right after all.

Laughs and love with long-time friends.

And for a few hours, we caught up on each other's lives and laughed at memories. I won't see many of these friends again until we revisit the U.S. or they journey to France.

The hugs goodbye were long and accompanied by a few tears.
It's only going to get worse, building toward a crescendo where I must say goodbye to my children and my parents in order to make my dream of living in France come true.

View of Mont Sainte Victoire from Aix en Provence.

I hope I've chosen wisely.

Dreaming of France -- Visa Adventure

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Well, I'm not going to try to build up any suspense. We traveled to Chicago this week and applied for our Visa.
Chicago is about five hours away from us, but it is where we needed to travel for our in-person interview to request a long-stay visa. In general, Americans don't need visas to visit France for three months or less, so we've never had to do this before.
We spent the night with some old friends who live about 20 minutes outside of the city. We took the train in early Thursday morning. Our appointments were not until 11 and 11:10 (we both had to have appointments), but we just commuted when our friend went to work at 8 a.m.

That gave us time to find a place for breakfast.
We were lured into a place that had a chalkboard sign that read "Homemade pastries" but when we got inside, I asked where the pastries were and they had none. What they had instead, was a breakfast buffet that you paid for by weight. Weird, huh?
Once we'd finished, we pulled out our red folder with our documents. I had put mine in order according to the list:
*an application
*a passport-sized photo (no smiling, no glasses)
*a questionaire
*my passport and a photo copy of the identity page
*a letter explaining what I intend to do in France (eat pastries, drink wine, write books)
*a notarized letter promising I won't work in France (at least not a French job)
*a letter explaining my work and showing my paystubs
*proof of means of income -- Earl's retirement savings and the income from the sale of our house
*our marriage license
*proof of accommodation (we included the hotel in Paris where we'll stay along with the two housesits in France and our friend's address in Aix en Provence where we'll go to file our paperwork)
*a processing fee ($115 cash)
*a residence form (since we plan to stay in France for more than 12 months)
*a self-addressed, pre-paid Express envelope from the post office only -- not UPS or FED EX

I also  had a birth certificate, just in case.
After breakfast, we decided to walk to the consulate, which is on Michigan Avenue, down toward the Magnificent Mile. Even though we arrived at the building nearly an hour early, I wanted to go ahead and check in. I felt nervous, jittery.
Earl suggested we get something to drink at the Starbucks on the second floor, but I wanted to head to the 37th floor to the French consulate. So he acquiesced.
The information desk gave us a pass to get through the gates to the elevators. We were supposed to scan the pass and glass doors slid open to let us through. But I scanned my pass and the doors turned red, but I pushed on them anyway. Suddenly, a loud blaring noise rang out and a man with a walkie talkie came rushing toward us calling, "Step back."
They'll never let me into France now, I thought as the man took my pass and scanned it before allowing me through the gates.
A few seconds in the elevator, which made my ears pop as it zipped up to the 37th floor, and we stepped off into France.

Proof that we were in the right place.

Here's me in those same chairs.

A young man, who was returning to the office, told us we should put our passes in a deposit window, like a bank. The two women behind the windows lined up the passes, probably in order of people's appointments.
The office was very small with a television mounted in the corner. It played French food shows the whole time we were there.
A man and two children were there when we arrived, and another man, French, jumped ahead of the line to get his passport, but almost everyone else there was a student getting a visa to study abroad. And the majority of those students were Asian. Perhaps they were studying in the U.S. and wanted to do a study abroad, or maybe they came from countries that needed a visa to visit France.
At a little after 11, the younger woman motioned me up. She didn't try to pronounce my name, but her microphone wasn't working so we hadn't been able to hear her all morning anyway.
I pulled out the packet of papers and asked whether she wanted all of them.
Yes, she nodded. So I slide the inch-thick stack through the window and she slowly went through each one.
She handed me back the extra passport photo and my birth certificate, and the envelope that my $115 cash was in.

Earl took a picture of me standing at the window as I supplied my papers. 

Then she asked to get my fingerprints. They had a machine that didn't require ink or black-tipped fingers, but it was quite contrary. It took several times and kept beeping at me as I tried to get the machine to light up for all four fingers, and then the other hand and then both thumbs.
While we were there, no one else had to do the fingerprint machine. It must only be for people planning to move to France.
The woman then nodded and said I could send my husband up. So Earl replaced me and supplied all of his papers. After his wrangling with the fingerprint machine, we were free to go.
Some of the students applying didn't have what they needed, so the workers had sent them out to get things like cash for the fee or envelopes for mailing the visa. We had all our documentation, so that's a plus.
Earl picked up my coat and held it for me. As I slipped my arms in, I saw the French woman behind the window smile at us.
She thinks we're cute, I thought. Then I wondered if she thought there was no way we were getting a visa to move to France.  
Just because we had all the right forms does not mean that they'll let us move to France. I think our odds would have been much better if we had closed on our house and could show them a bank statement with $150,000 in it. But the closing is not until December and the visa can take a month to arrive. We couldn't risk waiting.
So now we'll check the mailbox starting next week, hoping our visas arrive.
I didn't think about it until recently, but we left our passports there, along with our marriage licenses. I hope we get them both back.

We left the building after pausing for pictures in front of the French flag and their new president 

Happy

Earl and Emmanuel

before we walked to the Nutella cafe across the street. I'm sure it was strategically placed close to the French consulate.

Nutella oveerload

Earl had a Nutella and banana crepe while I had a berry pastry that I didn't realize would be drizzled in Nutella. I think I'd have preferred it without Nutella, but we celebrated because we were a step closer to making our dream come true, where we can eat really pastries without Nutella on them.
Vive la France!
Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. I hope you'll visit each other's blogs and leave comments. Also post your blog info in the Linky below.

Dreaming of France -- Two Months and Counting

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Everything is back on track for our move to France.
We're scheduled to sell our house in early December, live with friends for a few weeks until we finish work, and then head down to Florida for Christmas.
From there, we'll fly to Paris.
Of course, things could fall through, but I have to be hopeful that things will workout and soon I'll see Paris again.

This is the Pont Alexandre III, a bridge over the Seine.
We stayed on the bridge until these lamps were lit. 

Here I am in the Jardins du Luxembourg soaking up the sun. 

Even the clouds are romantic in Paris.  How dramatic.

I've never been in Paris during January, so that will be a new experience. It might be cold, but I have a beautiful gray wool coat with a full skirt and a black faux-fur collar. Plus, if we get cold walking, we can stop inside Laduree for a cup of tea and a pastry,

or even Angelina's for some of their famous hot chocolate.
And the best thing about our move will be that we won't be rushed. We'll have days and weeks and months to explore France.
Thanks for cheering me on as I continue this uphill journey to uproot our lives and settle in France.
Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. I hope you'll visit each other's blogs and leave comments. Also post your blog info in the Linky below.

Dreaming of France - Cooking in France

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I haven't cooked very much in France because I enjoy visiting restaurants while we travel, but once we live there, that will have to change.

Like many people my age and older, I have amassed a number of cookbooks but I can't imagine moving them to France. 

My friend Sheila pointed out that I probably rely on recipes on the web more than cookbooks anymore. And she's right, but there are some favorite recipes that I want to take along. 

That's why I came up with my solution of taking pictures of recipes and bringing them along in my computer. 

Last week, I started the process. 

This recipe has seen a lot of use. It's in a cookie cookbook that belonged to Earl's sister. 

My Southern Living cookbook is also well loved. 

The muffin recipe is hardly legible anymore, and it isn't even my favorite muffin recipe any more.

This apple cider and soy sauce turkey breast is surprisingly tasty. 

Even as I choose which recipes to capture, I'm wondering what I'll do with the cookbooks once I'm finished. I just can't picture throwing them out even though I'll have all the information I need.
I can't really expect one of my kids to take on these mottled cookbooks, can I?
It's another dilemma I didn't expect to face as we prepare for our move to France.

Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. I hope you'll visit each other's blogs and leave comments. Also post your blog info in the Linky below.

Dreaming of France -- Dreams Coming True

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I'm excited to share the latest news with you all about our plans for moving to France in 2018.
I already had shared that we were picked for our first housesit -- only for a week and with a menagerie of animals, but it was a start.
Now, we have housesits for the first three months of 2018!
We'll begin in January staying a week in the Loire, near Normandy. It will be a good transition for us, although we'll be pretty busy taking care of animals that week. The house, in addition to dogs and cats, has a donkey, a mule and chickens.
After that, we'll head to southern France to a charming village where we visited in May. When I found out we had this housesit, I yelped in joy. Three dogs and a few chickens in the beautiful village of Uzès for a month.

Here's the overlook in the village. Somewhere in the hills below is the Pont du Gard. 

Here's the village square where we sat for coffee. A group of children gathered by the
fountain after school before they were led off by some kind of teacher. 

Here's a beautiful cobblestone passage. The village was built up around a dukedom, or duchy. So a tower sits in the middle and much of the rest of the village served as stables or other outbuildings for the castle. 

I call this an arcade. It is lined with shops, like weavers and artists and children's clothing. 

 Uzès is the village just north of the Pont du Gard roman aqueduct. The water from Uzès ran across the Pont du Gard to provide Provence with a steady supply. 

See why I squealed with delight? I'm so excited.

Then at the end of February, after a few months of practicing our French, we'll travel to Surrey, England to housesit for a month for three dogs, including a new puppy named Spud.
It's all working out just as we'd hoped.
Thanks for sharing my joy. Your support and encouragement means so much to me.

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.

Down Time is For Dreaming

My days off this semester are Thursdays and Sundays. I know I don't work a full 40 hours in the office kind of job, but there is just something absolutely freeing about a day without work requirements. (I'll probably do some lesson planning anyway, but the idea that I don't have to is marvelous.)
And today has some lovely things in it already.

Sheila and I re-visited American Girls
 with our grown up daughters last year. 

The first was a two-hour walk with my friend Sheila. I will miss her when we move. We became friends when our kids were little and we both homeschooled. Now, she is the only one of my homeschool mom friends that I see regularly. We try to walk two or three times a week. We generally stop and get coffee to carry with us (another thing I'll miss in France, but being forced to sit down and drink it has its benefits, too). I would say that I have very few secrets from Sheila. She doesn't judge
when my kids have wandered off the proper path to being grown ups, and I don't judge her three kids either, although we are both quick to point out how stupid some of our children's actions are.
The only thing on my schedule for the day was a phone call with someone in France who is looking for a housesitter, so I looked forward to that. I'm sitting here now waiting for her call. Four cats in the Loire Valley.
I also have another interview -- Facetime, so I need to look respectable -- with a couple outside London who need a housesitter for their two dogs and dachshund puppy! Yes, I know that London isn't in France, but one of the benefits of living in France is being able to explore other countries as well. Earl has never been to the U.K., so I thought it would be a good chance to explore.
My day is filled with dreams and searches for airlines and hotels and house sitting opportunities. I love it because I can dream about the endless possibilities.
On the visa front, a friend in Aix en Provence has said we can use her address as our permanent address while we are in France. That means we have to spend time in Aix en Provence to present our papers to the local government. I do love Aix.

The beautiful Cours Mirabeau in Aix en Provence

An attempt at an artsy photo on a morning run in Aix. The telephone wire kind of ruins it. 

So slowly, we are getting all of our necessary documents and we'll keep working toward that visa. As my friend in Aix said, "You go get that visa, girl!"

Dreaming of France -- Firming Up Plans for Our Move

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

There's no turning back now. We have committed to housesitting for someone in France in January. That helps to cement our plans to move. We'll be staying in the Charentes area and taking care of a whole menagerie of animals while the other family goes on vacation. It should definitely be a goo immersion in France.
My husband should retire in December, we'll celebrate Christmas here with our families and then fly to France.
Of course, we still need some dominoes to fall into place -- like selling the house -- but the closer we get to actually moving to France, the more excited I am.
We plan to housesit and rent in some different places to make sure the move is a good fit for us.

It can start with a single housesit, but will hopefully snowball. 

Now we're really dreaming of France. 

How bout you? 

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.

Stress Continues

So, we're a week into selling the house, and I realized this morning, as I was standing in the shower, that I needed to soften my face. Relax! I chided myself.
I have to actually focus on it to stop that scrunched up feeling in the middle around my eyes, nose and mouth.
We had to vacate the house at 9 this morning for a showing, and there is another open house this afternoon. We practically can't live in our house.

Tybs has no problem relaxing in our staged house. White pillows, black cat -- perfect

Our real estate agent had talked up the hot market. She said we would probably be in contract before the first open house last Sunday. We aren't; thus, the scrunched up worry face. What's wrong with our house? Is our price too high? Can we pay off all our bills and buy a house in France at a lower price?
All of these questions constantly swirl around my brain, preventing me from enjoying the sun-kissed day and heavenly breeze.
I had a brief run Saturday morning before I had to teach, and I know that I need more of that - running time.
Meanwhile, Earl and I carried our laptops to Panera this morning and settled in for breakfast and some screen time.
We had talked about driving to my brother's house about 90 minutes away and staying through the open house. I know I would have enjoyed seeing him and my sister-in-law, but the thought of driving back home in the evening, more exhausted than ever, made us cancel that plan.
In addition to the carefully staged setting at home, we have some more turmoil coming our way. Tucker is moving out of his apartment to a new one, but he has to have his things out on Monday and can't move in until Tuesday. He's going to use our garage as the receptacle overnight for all of his belongings. He may or may not sleep at our house that one night of homelessness.
But Spencer, who has been living with Tucker for the past month, will be moving back home. I'm sure it's not what he wants, but until he has a steady job and a bit of money saved up, he'll have a place to sleep and plenty of food. I urged him to take his time and find a job he likes rather than jumping from sales job to sales job that he doesn't like.
He's delivering food for Panera where he will get immediate tips for his everyday needs while he continues to look for a job with a good salary and benefits.
Grace continues her job search. She's receiving unemployment, so she can take her time, as well.
It seems like we have very few stable supports in our family right now.
Yesterday while I was teaching, Tucker texted to ask where everyone was. He had dropped by the house to do laundry. Then when Earl got home after the morning showing, he said Spencer had shown up. I ordered pizza and picked it up on the way home, along with texting Grace that she should come over for pizza. She wanted to do laundry too.

Me taking a selfie with the pizzas, reminding the kids I was alone and hungry. 

When I got home, everyone but Earl had left. I texted the kids and soon they each pulled up and joined me on the patio for pizza and a rare family lunch as the breeze ruffled the umbrella over the table and the cats rubbed against the chair legs, not wanting pizza, but just some attention.
And for a moment, I looked up and remembered how lucky I am.

It's a little pale, but we did see a rainbow last week, which surely is a sign. 

Fears in the Dark of Night

Guys, I'm writing to you all today like a diary, a chance to pour out my fears. 

My eyes popped open suddenly last night, boring into the darkness. But the darkness was broken by flashes of lightning and a loud boom that could have been thunder or the tree at the corner that fell during the night. 

My mind didn't care which. It began racing.

What was I doing? 

Was the house really going on the market in a week? Were we going to leave behind the house we bought 10 years ago, where the children attended school, where Earl and I walked to dance class, where I trudged most days to the coffee shop with my computer bag slung over my arm so that I could tap out books that inevitably focused on my longing for France?

But while I was longing for France, did I forget to find the joy of everyday life in my little burg?

If we sell our house here, the number one school district in central Ohio, we will never be able to afford a house here again. We hope to sell the house for an amount we couldn't afford now. 

I spent some time today trying to figure out how we could keep the house even if Earl retires, and we might be able to, but we would sacrifice that other thing we've been wanting to do -- moving to France, traveling, exploring, having adventures. 

We could stay here, and I could add an extra job to the two teaching jobs I already have. I could convince Grace and Jack to move into the refinished basement where they would only need to share the kitchen upstairs. 

But that would mean giving up our dream. 

Earl would be free to write and travel and explore, but not with me because I would be working more hours. 

Perhaps if we had a place to move to then it wouldn't be so scary. We've sold houses before, but we always knew where we were moving afterwards,  had a warm home waiting for us, but not this time. 

Our plan is to stay in Ohio until December when Earl will retire, yet we have no place to move too if the house does sell. Apparently, homes are selling within hours of going on the market. That would still give us a month or so to find some place to live for the remaining three months, but the pressure has begun to build. 

And then when we go to France, we don't have a house purchased. We thought we'd rent for a few months in different places to figure out where we want to live, but our we endangering our security, our future, by not owning property?

If I share my doubts with Earl, rather than the two of us talking it out, he's quick to come down on a black or white side. "Forget it, we won't go," or, "don't be ridiculous, of course, we're going" when I just need to bounce ideas around. 

And when he tells people we are moving to France, he still says that it is my dream. I thought it was our dream now, but if it's only me then should we be going?  

On top of all the tumultuous thoughts, I fell this morning on the last step of our concrete porch, landing on my left knee and my telephone. The screen cracked on my phone. The bone under my knee, that one that kind of sticks out, is really sticking out now and has turned purple. It swelled up like a bump on someone's head. 

That just gives me an excuse to sit in a recliner and give all the confusing thoughts in my head a chance to run amok. 

Do I take the plunge, take a chance, selling the house and travel around France and other European destinations? Or should we play it safe and find a way to hold onto our little, but expensive, house?

Dreaming of France -- Paris at Night

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I almost took the day off today as we're coming into the home stretch of prepping the house for sale, but I thought I could at least put up a picture, to remind you all that I'm still dreaming of France, which is why I'm getting the house for sale. Soon, I'll be free to move to France.

The golden light, the dark blue sky, the French flag.

This was a shot that I took as we walked home one night.

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.

So Many Towns to Love

It's an embarrassment of riches for us as we travel from beautiful town to beautiful town. How will we possibly choose?
Today, we traveled to Beziers. I didn't expect to like it. It's a bit bigger than a city I planned on moving to, but holy mackerel, I fell for it.
We parked in a parking garage and when we emerged into the town square, really more like a swatch of park that runs the length of most of the downtown, it was filled with veterans and town dignitaries all walking behind a military band. We followed along for awhile.

Meandering through the town filled with traditional French architecture, we took pictures of roof tops before stopping along the parkway for a coffee.

Earl noted that it's a good town to grow old in because in addition to park benches along the way, it had some glider swings at the coffee shop.
The town has a Galeries Lafayette, which is a French department store, and right next door a Casino grocery store. We grabbed some fruit and some chocolate for dinner since Monday is a holiday and we didn't want to be caught without food.  
We went in search of the cathedral which is made from black lava rock, but we never actually made it there. We came out on such a lovely square

 and since the clock on top of the bell tower had already struck 1, we decided to sit down for lunch.
The best meal I've eaten in France this trip -- pillows of pastry envelooping chicken, mushrooms and em-mental cheese. Then came the pork and fries that tasted like fair fries with just a hint of sweetness to them and slightly limp.

After walking through town, enamored of every wrought iron balcony painted a leaf green or periwinkle blue, we made our way back to the car and drove down to the beach, about 25 kilometers away.

So much to consider, but this location seems nearly ideal.