Saturday, September 30, 2017

A Pale Imitation

I know our departure for France is only three months away, but I still get cravings for French experiences. That's what drove me to La Chatelaine here in Columbus on Friday morning to buy an eclair, which I shared with my husband, but it couldn't touch the luscious goodness of the eclair café (that's a coffee-flavored eclair) that I fell in love with in Quillan, France. There was even a day when I ate three of them!
But while I was at La Chatelaine, I saw a sign for  happy hour "charcuterie" platter only $9.
Charcuterie is usually served on a wooden cutting board with different types of sausages or dried meats, along with cheeses and slices of bread.
The sign, which said "charcuterie, cheese and escargots" inspired me. I had to teach until 2, but I convinced Earl that we should skip lunch and go after I returned home for an early happy hour.
I pictured the delicious charcuterie that we ate the first day we got off the train in Paris.
We had driven our rental car for two hours then sat in the train station a couple hours before taking the train from Monpellier to Paris, so we'd done a lot of sitting. I suggested to Earl that we walk from Gare de Lyon to our hotel in the Latin Quarter. According to MapQuest, it was a 30 minute walk, but a 30 minute walk with a suitcase wheeled behind and a computer game hung on my shoulder is longer than a normal 30-minute walk.
The clouds were dramatic as we first began to walk in the (hopefully) correct direction.

The day looked glorious as we started walking, but quickly turned ominous.

 Just as fat raindrops began to fall on us, we wheeled our suitcases under an awning and settled into an outdoor cafe where we ordered a charcuterie platter.

We were not disappointed.

We ate and drank while the rain passed and then, satiated, we continued our walk to the hotel. 
These memories were dancing in my head as I returned from work yesterday and picked up Earl. Grace was visiting so she came along with us. We settled Earl at an outdoor table since he's still walking with a cane since his knee replacement. 
The waitstaff seemed confused by our request for the charcuterie platter. They called it the "char-took-erie." Then they went to ask the chef and he said he could make it but it would be 15-20 minutes. I shrugged and ordered us salads to eat in the meantime, along with glasses of Côtes du Rhone red wine. 
Then, when the long-awaited charcuterie platter arrived, it looked like this.


Sorry that the picture is half in/half out of the sun, but as you can see, the charcuterie platter has no cheese, no escargot, and barely enough meats to serve two of us -- a pale imitation of the charcuterie platter we had in Paris.
That's okay, in three short months we'll be arriving in Paris again, and I'm already imagining the delightful meals we'll have.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Dreaming of France -- Sunny Montpellier


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 are updates on our plans to move, but I've had a trying weekend, so I'm going to soothe my frustration by just sharing a few photos of France.
We spent just a morning in Montepellier, but look how beautiful and swept clean it is. 
We found a cafe for coffee and tea. The waiters were preparing for lunch, so they were herding
the coffee drinkers into the tables without umbrellas. Luckily,  we got there in time to find some shade. 

This was an unusual building that we saw in the center of Montpellier,. The librarie sauramps is a bookstore and then the tiered building above it is an Ibis hotel, which is a chain in France. 
 You can see that it was a beautiful sunny day. I can't wait to return and have more days like this.
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.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Recovery

We're closing in on two weeks since Earl had his knee replacement surgery.
I'm sure it will all be worth it when we are hiking in the Pyrenees next year, but right now, he's still in a lot of pain.
He went into the hospital planning to have one of the three knee compartments replaced, but with the understanding that if the doctor got in there and saw that there was additional damage, then he would replace the entire knee. And that is what happened. The surgeon said there was a lot of damage to the knee cap.
The first few days, he didn't have much pain, but since he came home, he's been trying to stay ahead of the pain.
Nights are the worst, as he tosses and turns trying to find a comfortable position, or gets up to use the bathroom, his walker clanking along the floor.
After being home for a couple of days, he was dragging the walker along with him while he carried cups of tea or his computer. I suggested he switch to a cane since that seemed like it would be more helpful than just carrying the walker around.
The therapist comes to the house to keep an eye on him and help him get full movement back. She puts him through his paces and assures him that he is making good progress, although he doesn't feel like it.
The other day, the therapist was supposed to be here between 9 and 9:30 a.m. She hadn't arrived, so he moved to the dining room table to work on his computer. He was working on a story for the newspaper, even though he hasn't gone back to work. (Yes, he's that devoted.)
The front door was open so the therapist could come in when she arrived.
Earl grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer to hold against the back of his knee where the swelling is annoying. He was walking without the walker holding the peas, which had melted and then frozen into a solid block again, when he saw the therapist coming up the stairs.
He turned toward me in a panic, not wanting to be caught walking without support.
"Catch the peas," he called as he hoisted the frozen bag toward me.
I looked up in surprise as the solid frozen vegetable caught me square in the chest.
I just put my hand over my heart and let out an ugh noise as the air left my lungs.
He hurried over to his walker as he motioned for the therapist to come in the house.
In addition to the bruise and raised bump on my breastbone,


 the incident sent me to a flashback of a previous injury, which took place at Earl's apartment early in our relationship.
The year was 1988. We both worked as reporters for The Tampa Tribune. Earl had a get together for the reporters as we gathered at his apartment in the Old Northeast section of St. Petersburg, Florida.
I stood on the porch watching two of the guys throwing a Frisbee back and forth in warm spring sunshine before we headed to a spring training baseball game.
I was greeting another arriving reporter when I heard my name called. I turned my head toward Dave who had flung the Frisbee in my direction. As if in slow motion, I twisted around just in time for my nose to meet the plastic disk that sliced through the air. A crunch resounded on the porch as I moved my hands to cover my nose. Picture Marcia from The Brady Bunch.


As you can imagine, my nose was broken. I had one office visit where the doctor tried to fix my nose using a tool like a pair of pliers where he pulled on the bottom and tried to realign the bones.
The bones didn't come together straight though. Instead, they "tent-poled" with the bones forming a pointy peak, picture a witch's nose exaggerated.  The next step was nose surgery, where I received the very aquiline nose that I have now.

So all of that rushed through my mind as I placed my hand over my chest, feeling the bump that rose there.
I had to leave for work right after that, and truthfully, the frozen peas did not cause as much damage as the plastic Frisbee, but it is quite uncomfortable to wear my seat belt, and I don't think Earl is quite apologetic enough for the toss of the frozen peas that landed like an iceball to the heart.
I suppose with the knee pain that he is having, he can be forgiven for not begging my forgiveness. As long as it doesn't happen again.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Stress-free Wardrobe

Does anyone remember that President Obama said he has a limited number of suit colors because he didn't want to have to put any thought into what he wears everyday? He didn't want to spend any brain power deciding on colors and shirts and ties. Here's a version of that story based on his interview with Vanity Fair.
I've kind of taken that theory on this summer with my own wardrobe. Trying to reduce stress as the house went on the market and adult children lost jobs and Earl headed for knee surgery, I sought to eliminate stress about what to wear.
It started with a tshirt dress.


An ombre tshirt dress, of course, I do have a few standards. I mean, what a concept. It's a dress that is an over-sized tshirt, like the kind of tshirt I might sleep in. I saw a male professor teaching class in cargo shorts the other day and decided that a tshirt dress works fine for teaching, too.
So what could be more stress-free than a tshirt dress?
Enter the sweatshirt dress.


This dress is made of sweatshirt material and it has pockets. Perfect for fall weather, right? Okay, I'll pair it with a sweater if it gets chilly, but I think every one who reads my blog knows that I'm prone to hot flashes, so sleeveless works for me.
So it can't get any more comfortable than a sweatshirt dress, right?
Well, hold on:



This sweatshirt dress has the seams on the outside, making it truly the most casual dress I could ever wear.
Also notice the theme with these dresses is that they only fit tight across my chest and shoulders. I can gain weight, I can lose weight and these dresses will still work.
At least that's one decision I won't have to make in the coming months as we continue our march toward moving to France.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Dreaming of France -- Something Beautiful on the Horizon

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.

You all know that I have had quite a week, but that doesn't mean I'm not still dreaming of France. 
It's getting closer, our dreams, and pieces are still falling into place. I'll fill you in when I can, but for now, here's a sunset out of our B&B window in Mireval, France, close to Montepellier. 



And here's a sunrise from our B&B in Quillan.
The days keep passing; the sun rises and the sun sets, and as each day passes, we get closer to making our dreams come true.
Thanks for joining me on this journey.
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.

What a Week

Today is a day for some deep breaths because this week has been a sprint, an emotional sprint anyway.
On Monday, Earl had knee surgery. They hoped to just do one of the three chambers of the knee, but when they began surgery they realized the entire knee needed to be replaced.
It kind of gives me the shivers to imagine a metal part in the knee. I don't know why.
We had to be at the hospital at 5 a.m. But at the last minute, we had two house showings, one at 10:30 a.m. and one at 12:30 p.m., so before we left early that morning, we had to prep the house, everything pristine, lights on, essential oils of peppermint and rosemary dripped onto light bulbs.
I stayed at the hospital until 7:30 a.m. Grace showed up to sit in the waiting room while I ran over to teach an hour and a half class. Then I rushed back in time to meet with the surgeon who explained that Earl had an entire new knee and that all had gone well.
Pshew! What a relief.
I hurried back to teach three more classes.
Grace and her boyfriend, Jack, headed home to make themselves presentable but then Grace got a call that Earl was awake. She returned to the hospital and spent time with him in post-op before he was moved to his room.
When I finished teaching, I arrived at the hospital to see Grace knitting in the corner of Earl's room.

Meanwhile, the entire time of waking up in the dark, preparing the house for the showing, I was worrying about Mom and Dad.
I knew that Hurricane Irma had passed over them during the night, might still be over their Florida home. They live in Central Florida, so aren't in danger of storm surges. They also are hesitant to get on the road with long streams of traffic sitting on the highway headed north, unsure of where they might be able to find gas again. Dad is 80 and Mom is 79 -- luckily, they are both healthy and active.


We had spent the past few days trying to determine the safest room in their house where they should shelter. In Florida, there aren't basements because of the high water table. And the houses are made with big expanses of windows to let the sunshine in.
Mom had taped the sliding glass doors that stretch the length of one wall.
As the sun set on Sunday evening, Mom had texted to my two brothers and me, "More wind and rain. Still have power. Don't know how much worse it will get. The next 10-13 hours will be stressful. Love."
And then, after I had crawled into bed Sunday night, ready for my early awakening on Monday, I received one more text from her: "No power now. Wind is really bad. Prayers."
It just had an ominous tone, like something you would read in a journal founds years later when an explorer didn't make it home.
So, even as I showered and prepped the house Monday morning at 4 a.m., I texted Mom that I didn't want to wake her, but I wanted to know that she was okay.
I don't guess they got very much sleep anyway. "We are still alive. Storm is horrible. Can't see damage yet. I'm in the laundry room. Dad in the recliner. More later."
I texted back, relieved and asked if the interior of the house was intact.
"I guess. Still blowing about 100 miles an hour and dark," she replied.
When the sun rose and the winds finally subsided, she could confirm that the house had held. Some gutters had blown off, including one into the top of a massive tree. The screens enclosing their swimming pool had blown out. Their yard was strewn with broken limbs. But they had made it.
When I talked with them later, they both voiced their concern during the night. They had ridden out other hurricanes in Florida, but this one was different.
"Did it sound like the roof was coming off?" I asked.
"It sounded like the whole second story was coming off," Dad said.
I urged them not to overdo it trying to clean up, but they did. They sent photos of the branches stacked in the front of their yard as they dragged them toward the street. They had no electricity from Sunday night through Friday. The thing they missed most was the air conditioning. That first day after the storm, there was a nice breeze, but then Florida's heat and humidity returned soaring into the 90s.
When I heard about the nursing home where eight people died of heat exhaustion, I called my parents again. Of course, they weren't hearing the news because they had no electricity.
Someone who had power back had loaned them a generator. They were able to hook up a fan to help keep them cool, plus they had the refrigerator plugged in to preserve some food.
When they got too hot, they climbed in the pool and spent time pulling leaves and twigs from the water.
Friday they got power back. Saturday, they were able to play a few holes of golf as the course across the street continued to clean up.
I'm thankful they weathered the storm without too much damage, but with a lot of stress.

Meanwhile, Earl spent two nights in the hospital. On Tuesday I didn't teach until the evening, so I stayed with him from 9-3, talking to doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers. He hoped to get out on Tuesday but his knee wound had too much drainage.
On Wednesday, I had to teach from 8-2, and Earl's cell phone had died. I got hold of him in between my classes. He told me he was in a lot of pain and the nurses were not being responsive. He waited over an hour and half for pain medicine. He needed to get up to use the bathroom but the nurse didn't show up for 30 minutes after his request.
I felt so bad, knowing I wasn't there to advocate for him.
Grace had planned to go, but she woke up with a sore throat and I didn't want her to spread her germs, or get any other germs, at the hospital. Both of my sons were working.
I sent out a message looking for a sub to take my classes so I could go to the hospital but didn't get a response.
I debated a list of people close enough and with a schedule to help out. Finally, I decided to ask Earl's sister. She's an occupational therapist, but she works a varied schedule. She had just finished a home visit and was on her way home to babysit her granddaughter, but her husband could do that. She went to the hospital and helped make sure Earl's needs were met.
The nurses and therapists told Earl he would have to stay another night because of the continued drainage. I ran home and got some things he needed before getting to the hospital at 2:30. As I walked through the parking lot, he called.
"They're letting me go home!" he said.
I turned around and returned the things I was carrying to the car.
So Earl came home Wednesday evening and he's doing really well. He has moved from the walker to using a cane. He's had visits from a home-health nurse and a physical therapist. The physical therapist says he's a couple of weeks ahead of where he should be.
When I went to teach on Friday, he ran the dishwasher and unloaded it. He's not supposed to be up and about that much, but he never has been good at sitting around.
We spent Saturday watching football and vacated the house for an hour for another showing, even though the house is technically off the market while Earl heals.
The pain was worse Saturday night, but I have to remember that it is not a straight line to healing but an ebb and flow with setbacks and great waves forward.
I'm grateful that he's getting better and just dream about the mountains we'll be climbing in France a few months down the road.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

FranceBookTours -- Requiem in Yquem plus Giveaway

Jean-Pierre ALAUX and Noël BALEN

on Tour September 11-22 with REQUIEM-IN-YQUEM cover

Requiem in Yquem

(mystery) Release date: September 12, 2017 at Le French Book 215 pages ISBN: 9781943998104 Website | Goodreads

SYNOPSIS

The intricate taste of greed and remorse. The “addictive” Winemaker Detective series returns with a French mystery set in Sauternes, home of one of the world’s finest dessert wines, Yquem, known to some as liquid gold. In the mist-covered hills of Sauternes, where the wine is luscious and the landscape beguiling, the brutal murder of an elderly couple intrigues the wine expert Benjamin Cooker and awakens memories for his dashing assistant Virgile Lanssien. Drawn into the investigation, the two journey through the storied Sauternes countryside, where the Château d’Yquem has reigned for centuries. Will the murder go unexplained and the killer remain free? The Winemaker Detective’s discernment and incessant curiosity pushes investigators to look deeper, while Virgile rekindles memories of his days at school and questions the meaning of his life. In another satisfying wine novel with a French flair, authors Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen give readers a perfectly intoxicating combination French wine, gourmet meals, and mystery in the gloriously described Sauternes wine region with all the scenery, scents, and sounds of France. This light, fun mystery combines amateur sleuths, food, and wine in a wonderfully French mystery novel that doubles as a travel guide. It is a new kind read on the international mystery and crime scene: a pitch-perfect, wine-infused, French-style cozy mystery.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alaux-Balen
©David Nakache
  Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen, the authors of the Winemaker Detective series are epicures. Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and TV journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. | He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine. He gets a sparkle in his eye when he talks about the Winemaker Detective mystery series, which he coauthors with Noël Balen. Noël lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic, and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his prolific novel and short-story writing.
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ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Sally Pane studied French at State University of New York Oswego and the Sorbonne before receiving her Masters Degree in French Literature from the University of Colorado where she wrote Camus and the Americas: A Thematic Analysis of Three Works Based on His Journaux de Voyage. Her career includes more than twenty years of translating and teaching French and Italian at Berlitz and at University of Colorado Boulder. She has worked in scientific, legal and literary translation; her literary translations include Operatic Arias; Singers Edition, and Reality and the Untheorizable by Clément Rosset, along with a number of titles in the Winemaker Detective series. She also served as the interpreter for the government cabinet of Rwanda and translated for Dian Fossey’s Digit Fund. In addition to her passion for French, she has studied Italian at Colorado University, in Rome and in Siena. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband.
 

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Sunday, September 10, 2017

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.

Friday, September 08, 2017

FranceBookTours -- The Frenchman

Frenchman - banner

CLICK ON THE BANNER TO READ REVIEWS, EXCERPTS, AND GUEST-POST

Make sure you scroll to the bottom where you can enter to win a copy of this book.

Today I'm reviewing The Frenchman by Lise McClendon. Apparently this is one of a series of books about five sisters, called Bennett Sisters Mystery. I haven't read any of the others, but this one stands alone without too much requirement for backstory.
This novel did a good job pulling me into the life of Merle Bennett as she left her job as a lawyer and traveled with her teenage son to France where she owns a house inherited from her late husband. She also has a romance with a Frenchman, Pascal, apparently from a previous novel.
Frenchman-ebook-cover

I enjoyed the writing and the story as Merle tried to create a home in the Dordogne region of France, dealing with vandalism and attempting to connect with standoffish neighbors.  When Merle's son goes back to the U.S. to begin college and Pascal disappears while investigating an undercover wine sting, she is left alone to figure out how to live in a new culture.
Throughout the first half, there wasn't really a mystery, which is fine by me, but it did lack in tension to make me wonder what would happen or what was at stake.
But the tension picked up in the second half and had me turning pages (metaphorically since I read it on Kindle).
I'll have to admit that the book has a more down-to-earth view of France and living life in France as an American transplant than many fictional books set there. It put a little damper on my dreams, but even in the midst of crisis, there was good food and wine.
This book was a pleasant escape with some mystery thrown in to the second half. Definitely worth a read.

Lise McClendon on Tour September 8-21 with

The Frenchman

(mystery) Release date: September 8, 2017 at Thalia Press 278 pages
   

SYNOPSIS

In this 5th installment of the Bennett Sisters Mysteries (beginning with Blackbird Fly), attorney Merle Bennett goes to France for an extended stay to drink in the essence of ‘la France Profonde’ and write her own novel. But the countryside is not as tranquil as she hoped. A missing Frenchman, a sinister one, an elderly one, a thieving one, and a vandalizing one: all conspire to turn Merle’s sojourn of reflection into a nightmare of worry. Where is Pascal, her French boyfriend? Who is the man with the terrible scar? Why is someone spray-painting her little stone house in the Dordogne? And will her novel about the French Revolution – snippets of which are included – give her a soupçon of delight or a frisson of danger?
Works fine as a stand-alone

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frenchman - Lise McClendon
Lise McClendon is the author of fifteen novels of mystery, suspense, and general mayhem plus short stories. Her bestselling Bennett Sisters mystery series began with ‘Blackbird Fly.’ She also writes thrillers as Rory Tate, the latest of which is ‘PLAN X.’ Her short story is included in this fall’s noir anthology, ‘The Obama Inheritance.’ She lives in Montana.
Visit her website
Subscribe to her mailing list
Follow her on Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Buy the book: on Amazon

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Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Ch-ch-changes

The bedroom is still dark as I open the closet door and slip my feet into my brown Maryjane crocs. I can't see them, and I don't need to see them because they lay where they always are when I put them in my closet.
That's when it hits me. Once we move out of this house, how long will it be until I have a home where my shoes are always in the same place?
Me looking as close to anxious as we have a
picture of while traveling in France. 
If we move out at the end of September, we will have three months of patchwork living here in the U.S. before Earl retires. We might stay with friends, or several groups of friends so we don't wear out our welcome. We might share an apartment with Grace and her boyfriend, leaving our things behind in a spare bedroom when we depart for France. We could simply rent AirBnbs for the next three months.
And then, having lived like gypsies in Columbus, we'll be off to France, moving from housesit to housesit, staying with more friends in between or spending nights or weeks at AirBnb properties.
It sounds like a marvelous adventure, and I plan to enjoy it.
But I also need to come to terms with the fact that it might make me anxious, not having a closet door to open, knowing that my brown Maryjane crocs will be there.

P.S. --For those of you worried about my fashion sense in France,  I'm not actually planning on taking my crocs with me -- they're just representational of my realization that nothing will have a set place until we put down roots again.

Monday, September 04, 2017

Isolation

The thing that people frequently ask me about moving to France is how I'll be able to leave my family.
Grace and Tucker drove us to the airport in
May since I had to come straight from work. 
I have to admit that there are days when all three of my children make an appearance at my house, but most of the time, I have to satisfy myself with texts. Phone calls mean that something has gone wrong.
Yesterday, Grace called because she had locked her keys in her car. We didn't have a spare key, but we did have AAA, so I drove down to the Starbucks where she had stranded herself and called AAA. I sat there with her as she sipped her iced coffee with peppermint syrup (she offered to buy me one), until the AAA mechanic showed up and opened her door. Then she was off to rehearsal for the Pirates of Penzance.
Saturday night, we went to see her boyfriend's show Tecumseh. 
Today, Tucker called me. He was working, but he wondered if I could help him figure out how to report the charges on his Firestone credit card that he didn't make. When I got home from the gym, I investigated the bill and told him he needed to write a letter. I also suggested he file a police report, thinking that might get faster service. I'm happy to be here to answer my kids' questions.
Tucker in Earl's chair at the newspaper when he went to work
with one of the videographers. 
Spencer has been out of town since Saturday, so I only receive answers to my texts about when he might be coming home.

My boys celebrating Tucker's 21st birthday. 
That leads us to today, Labor Day. Now, Labor Day isn't a big family holiday, but it's the kind of holiday where families generally plan a cookout, maybe a last day at the pool or some community fireworks.
Earl had to work tonight, so we didn't plan anything, but I figured I might see the kids so I put a roast in the crockpot thinking I could do beef barbecue sandwiches.
Tucker didn't come over after work. Grace was going to come over to do some laundry but a friend stopped by and occupied her day. Spencer still hasn't come home from his weekend away.
Well, family isn't just our kids. We live in town near my husband's sister and brother. The brother and his wife don't like to hang out with the family very much, but the sister generally has a get together. This time, we heard nothing.
My brother is an hour and half away. We haven't seen him and his family since June. I texted to ask if they were doing anything today. Just playing tennis for him, lesson plans for his wife the teacher. My other brother is in Texas and my parents live 16 hours away in Florida, so we can't hang out with them.
So I wonder what people mean about how much I'll miss my family. Sometimes, I'm at home, alone, and I think, I miss my family now.
I want my children to be independent and I know they are going through a period where they don't want to hang out with their parents. I understand that.
But I don't think they get to claim that we should be here, waiting, just in case they decide they need us or want to hang out with us.
Someday when they have children, I know that it will be a different story. We'll definitely want to be here to help them and spend time with our future grandchildren, but until then, I'm putting away my guilt and I'm moving to France.

Sunday, September 03, 2017

Dreaming of France -- Roses


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.

When Earl and I were traveling in May, we drove through a charming town that was wreathed in roses.
We stopped and took some pictures in Camon, France.
 A sign as we drove into town let us know that it celebrated a rose festival, and we soon saw why.
 Nearly every building had a waterfall of roses cascading along its front wall.
I didn't know anything about Camon, but when I looked it up, I learned that it is known as Little Carcassone, which is a famous walled city that we also visited. Apparently Camon first began in 923, growing up around an abbey. It was destroyed by a flood in 1289 and then rebuilt.
 But the things that caught our eyes were the roses. This used to be a big wine growing area, and the roses were planted as an early warning sign. If the roses began to show disease, then the vintners could try to protect the vines, according to Francethisway.com.
The area doesn't have a lot of vineyards anymore, but the roses remain, like a woman adorned in her finest jewels, they drape the city.
Next time we drive through, we're definitely stopping to explore a bit more.
And how long will it be until we are in Camon, France again. Maybe not as long as you think.
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.

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