Dreaming of France -- Like Dominoes

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.

Aargh! My life is too crazy. Every week I forget about my Dreaming of France meme until I see that Sim has already posted hers and is waiting for me.
I wonder what could be distracting me?
This weekend, I started to feel some anxiety as I realized everything that has to be accomplished for us to move to France in about 86 days.
So the house is in contract. The final hurdle is Tuesday when the appraiser comes. If that all goes well, we close on the sale of our house in early November, and I have already scheduled our appointment with the French consulate to apply for a long-stay visa.
So my mind whirrs with the thoughts of:
Whipping the house back into staged shape before the appraiser arrives
Cleaning out the house once the sale is final
Helping Spencer find an apartment
Moving ourselves out and in with friends for a temporary stay
Collecting all the necessary paperwork for our French Visa
Finding affordable plane tickets and places to stay during our first days in France
Leaving the kids behind

That's all. Nothing much else going on in my brain, except beautiful dreams of how lovely our life will be in France if we can get everything else under control.

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.

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!"