Major life events:

• Remodel a kitchen, because you are going to live in that house forever
• Leave a job, say farewells, pack up your office.
• Get a new job with people who all speak English as a Second Language
• Stop traveling to Dothan and Tuscaloosa and start going to China and Thailand
• Sell your home of two+ decades.  Quickly. With very little notice.  Leave your beautiful kitchen
• Pack and Move e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g you own – after you SORT EVERYTHING into “Stay” and “Go.”  Realize that you could have become a Horder.
• Sell your car that you love – to a Georgia Bulldog, no less (GO JACKETS!)
• Pack your suitcases for a 6-8 week stay in multiple places with limited laundry facilities
• Get work visas from the French Embassy in Atlanta.
• Learn a foreign language in an intense one-on-one class for hours every day with an instructor. Have homework, too, at age 55+.
• Move across an ocean to a foreign country
• Be completely open to wherever you are going to find an apartment in a new foreign urban city – knowing that the apartments are ALL tee-ninte-sy (sized for small children)
• Be prepared to share one small car, no garage, walk for groceries, pay $5/ gallon for gas,  and use stairs a lot
• Don’t know when you are leaving, with five suitcases, no plane tickets yet, and not sure where you are sleeping tomorrow night.
• New opportunities, new adventures, and a whole lot of UNKNOWNS

Now do it all at one time.    PRICELESS.    EVERY DAY’S A WINNER!!!!!

The potential buyers have come back with a rather large list of “we want these things fixed” ($$$), AND they want us to lower the price……

.

We’ll see how this little teapot tempest plays out.

My French tutor says my progress is “not bad.  [read: pretty bad]  Your sentence structures are weak, you need to work on your vocabulary, and you have [a strange] accent.”  BUT!  She said I had POTENTIAL!  I’m good with that!  I think my French is better than 99% of all the local Hispanics’ English!  🙂  Here’s the whiteboard snapshot of what I was working on yesterday –  and I have a four hour class today!

The plan is tentatively to make the plane reservations for October 16, arrive the 17th, choose an apartment on the 18th, and Tanner starts work on Friday October 20th.  (Still expect to be in a hotel for several +weeks there.) Can you say whirlwind? Continue reading “The trials and tribulations of selling your house…”

HERE’S MY OUTLOOK.  NEED I SAY MORE????

We’ve just crested the tipping point…..WHEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

House sale – going well so far…but by no means ‘a done deal.’  We have a contract, an appraisal, an inspection, and much to repair. $$$  Workers in and out of the house daily doing various and sundry.  Lots of banging – new roof, new gutters, window frame repairs….amazing all the nitty-gritty underneath and hidden in a house!   (Apartment living is sounding better and better…..)

Need to sell two cars….LMK if you are interested!  2006 Nissan 350Z (vroom vroom) and 2015 Lexus Crossover SUV 350RX, fully loaded.

Our schedule is NUTS and the ‘to do’ list is — well, see for yourself!  

I THINK packers are coming a week from WEDNESDAY–which means DECIDING NOW WHAT GOES AND WHAT STAYS.  How the heck can we possibly make those decisions blindly?!  Eeeeeeee.

This week, hours of French school – repairs and contract negotiations on selling house – “Intercultural training” tomorrow – Expat consultation call on Thursday.  Oh, yeah, one other small detail.  We need to go to the French Consulate in Atlanta ASAP, due to small delays in our visas…..  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I told you no one in France works in August. 🙂

Looks like D-DAY is ~October 15 now….as soon as packers & movers come, we hit the hotel and I’m heading for Tulsa to see Mom, Larry, Myrna, and Cheryl!  Then to Augusta and Atlanta to get bear hugs from our kids.  No crying allowed.  (HA.)  We DID have a great time in Hilton Head on Labor Day Weekend!

Stay safe in this storm!  We expect 55 mph gusts and damaging winds today.  Looks like Brendan will have the same in Atlanta, and probably close to that for Robert & Leslie in Augusta.  Soraya is holed up in Ocala, FL at the hospital where she works.  At least there are generators at the hospital and food!  We are personally so blessed and thankful….and praying for those who didn’t escape the destruction.

FUN FACT OF THE DAY!

Bet you didn’t know…more people speak French in Africa than in Europe!

à bientôt!

PS  Happy birthday, SUSAN!!!!!

Psalm 46:10.  “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  My favorite verse of all time.

Bonjour……Mon marie and I started intensive French School today – with a private tutor for EACH of us, no less.  (That’s really cool.) How long has it been since you really worked out your brain?  Five years ago? Twenty five years ago? My brain has been stretched today and is leaking out of my ears.  🙂   I even had homework.  12 hours of one-on-one for me this week, and about 20 hours for Tanner.  Now THAT’S INTENSE!  The axiom says, “You are never too old to learn….” Yeah, but does Axiom know how to speak French?!?

We have a signed contract on our house!  Which is wonderful and a blessing.  And strangely anti-climatic.  You build up this frenzy of getting everything JUST SO, and then the sugar low hits…….IF the appraisal goes well, and IF the inspection goes well, we’ll be SELLING OUR HOME with a closing date of September 29.  Selling was the goal, but now that we are actually DOING it, what the heck are we doing??????  I think I must be sleepwalking.  Darn that Advil PM.  You know the song, Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell (and later the Counting Crows)?  “Don’t it always seem to go  That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone…”
Continue reading “Brain Dead”

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK.  Now that THAT is out of my system…..

Wish you could have seen me last night, standing on the bed in pj’s banging my wooden back-scratcher on the A/C vent in the ceiling, trying to get the squirrels in the attic to PIPE DOWN!  (Great visual, huh?)

We have a good offer on our house!  In 24 hours!  Not sure if it will all work out, but sooooooo encouraging.  Countdown to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, 8/26 for their reply to our counter-offer………

Now starts the mandatory real-estate-mambo-#5 negotiation dance, so we’ll see what happens!  I’m telling you, God’s hand is everywhere in this.

AND guess what!   Continue reading “You Eat Elephants One Bite at a Time”