A few years ago I wrote a series of blogs about counting my blessings over the Christmas period. It was as always a hard winter in France and Christmas was a very pared down affair, although that was, and will continue to be, a good thing in this house. The simplicity of our Christmas enabled me to see the small simple blessings like a cup of tea in the morning.
Fast forward to current times and Monday night just gone, as I lay in my new bed absolutely exhausted after sleeping on the floor for 2 nights. As I lay there I realised how blessed I was to have a bed, and my thoughts led me to think of how if I had to sleep on the floor for an indefinite amount of nights my health would definitely be affected. And I felt blessed, and I said thank you to ‘life’ for giving me the abilities and the tenacity to be in this position.
I found my eyes filling with tears when I thought of all the people sleeping on the floor, from older people to street children, and all those in-between, and I felt humbled.
Moisy
If you think others will like my blog please share
Picking up from my last post in this series it was January 2019, and we had lived in France nearly four years. That January was hard, RD had not been paid for a job he had done and we were down to our last bones, literally, on my birthday we had five euros to our name. But we had learned that what you need will come if you just believe and on that evening my tablet pinged informing me that I had made an Etsy sale of over one hundred euro, we were solvent again until our pensions went into our account. Our belief had not failed us, it was another of the lessons we had learned ‘what you need will come.’
The next morning as we sat drinking our tea I felt a surge of anger and drive and I looked at RD and said “Fuck it’ you aren’t working via someone else anymore you’re advertising and working for yourself. Add to that your not cutting corners when you are asked to save them money, if they don’t want a good job done they can get someone else to do it. We are not going to be like other people out here, we’re having an ethos and that ethos will be ‘if a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing well.’”
I had seen so many times how people would undercut others to get the work instead, but then do a very bad job. It would have been so easy to be like them but that was the crux, that was the test: no matter how hard don’t get sucked into the same mindset as the others, rise above it, have faith that keeping your integrity and principles will get you what you need. God did we learn that lesson well!
So that very day I redesigned our Facebook page, and I advertised RD as available for work on the local sites. Within an hour he had a job to start, with a person who came to be our friend. She had been let down and ripped off before by other people in the area, but once RD had spent three days with her the trust had been built and she gave him a fabulous review which I could then use to further promote our service. Life had spurred me on to do what I had the skill to do.
In the next two day I set up a website with our ethos ‘If A Jobs Worth Doing It’s Worth Doing Well’ and I advertised us on the local sites twice a week.
Now it was common for other English in the area to then comment negatively on other people’s posts, and believe me I had my fair share of that. But I was not prepared to be bullied by others, as I was back in ‘work mode’. If they were rude I would answer them brusquely and professionally, they could never respond because more often they were lying or just being negative. On one post a lady put that ‘it would be good if you answered your emails.’ Now I was in charge of all admin, and trust me when I say I am always on top of it. I went back through any contact confirming that no email had been received, so I told her so, in firm professional and businesslike way, also advising her that she was being rude in her tone. It was clear she was lying, but at that point other people took interest and answered her, appreciating the fact that I had put a stop to the nastiness. From there RD got a job with a lovely couple, who were respected in the area. We stood by our principles and they gave him another fabulous review, and work took off from there.
But France is tough, for every euro you earn you have to pay a minimum of 25% in social security, irrespective of any costs that are not taken into account, and before any tax is deducted. This meant that very often RD was working for less than a euro an hour. We survived that year, stuck to our principles and even refused work when people wanted us to cut corners. RD did some fabulous work and we built a client base and even had work in the winter (so hard in France).
But still it was difficult and still the discussion around whether to stay went on. One sunny day in March we walked down our road, looking out across the valleys and agreed that ‘Life would show us the way.’
It was in the Spring that year that I bought ‘The Book Of Awakening’ by Mark Nepo, and RD would read a passage most mornings as we drank our early morning tea. We found that each passage seemed to resonate with our thoughts at that time, and more and more we questioned what we were doing. But still we stayed.
As work came in we took it that the message from Life was to stay in France. But I think Life is more subtle than that at times, so over time we realised how we were still struggling, it wasn’t as hard, but it was still a struggle. We loved our French neighbours, and French friends, we loved our home and it’s location, and there were times we were confused as to the message life was sending. Now I know that Life was showing us, as it so often does, that even with fairly regular work in France it was still an existence. More than anything it was challenging us to still be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves did we want to ‘just exist?’
Over the course of the year we met people who would say how difficult it was to live in the old stone houses, and how they had sold up because of the problems. They look lovely but they are hard work. Then I cleaned a lady’s house who was returning to the UK, after living in France for ten years. When I asked her why she was leaving she explained that she felt life went in ten year cycles, and that we should always consider change as the cycle grows old. It resonated with me and I knew that Life meeting her was one of Life’s messages.
In the summer we read March the 7th passage from ‘The Book Of Awakening’ entitled ‘Let Go Of The Rice’. It is one of the things that changed the way I look at life, or should I say ‘us’. It said it all, how monkeys are caught in traps because they do not believe that what they need will come, because they live in fear, and consequently lose their lives when all they had to do was ‘let go of the rice.’ And that was it, we understood and we started to look at houses in Ireland.
In the August of that year I was ill, I have written how we had no health insurance and how it frightened me. It was life asking me to consider what we would do, whether France was really the right place for us. It’s bad enough being ill, add the complications of language and it is multiplied a thousand times. To reinforce its message Life sent us work with people whose husbands had suffered strokes, or sadly deteriorated from Dementia, and all of them were having horrendous problems in the French system. I found myself questioning how we would survive (there’s that word again!) as we got older. When chopping our own wood no-longer became an option, when RD could no-longer work. I couldn’t find work in France, no matter how I tried, not enough to support us. I questioned whether I wanted to grow old in France, and after I was ill in the August those doubts began to build, but still we persevered, until in the end, as she so often does Life started to hit us round the head to make us listen……
More to come…
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
I don’t do being ill well! I have always been of the ilk that I just get on with it whenever I can. Staying in bed when I am ill just makes me feel worse, and whenever possible I have got up and got dressed. But…..
Way back in 2014 I was walking on our decking, which was about three feet off the ground, a plank gave way and my right leg went through it. I cannot begin to tell you how much that hurt. On inspection RD could see how the plank had worn and got out his trusty tools to fix it, and I left him to it. That evening, as the World Cup Opening Ceremony was under way and RD was ensconced on the sofa with a beer in hand, I went back out onto the decking to check my baby cucumbers and went through the exact same piece of decking again! By now the pain was excruciating and when I then saw RD’s trusty tools still there on the decking I cannot begin to tell you what I called him, or should I say screamed at him but I am pretty sure that it had the word ‘fucking’ in it! I refer to this incident as the ‘the time RD tried to kill me.’
Over the course of that year I went to the Doctor at least five times and each time I explained (given that I am a qualified aerobic teacher, although looking at the size of my arse you would never believe that now!) that I thought that the injury was muscular and not joint related. But I was ignored and sent for many x-rays on my knee. In the end I gave up and put up with the niggling pain and intermittent swelling of my leg. That was until Christmas of that year when I danced a little jig and found myself in so much pain that I had to crawl up the stairs to bed that night. It was enough to drive me back to the doctors where a newly qualified doctor actually listened and referred me to a physio, hurrah!
The physio was great, pronounced that I had basically squashed my psoas muscle, pushing it up my leg and he gave me a set of exercises which I promptly did. He was brilliant and also gave a fab arse massage, much to RD’s distress who asked my friend Mary if he did the same to her when she visited him, and when she said ‘no’ RD looked at me as if to say ‘see he doesn’t massage her arse!’ It might have had something to do with the fact that she had a shoulder injury. 😂
Alas I had to leave physio after only three months because we moved to France to our beautiful but wibbly wobbly garden on a hill. The unevenness of the garden combined with lifting heavy loads then proceeded to aggravate my leg more and more as each year went by. I found I couldn’t walk down the stairs unless it was sideways like a crab, but I put up with it and just sucked it up, trying to ignore that it seemed to be getting worse and worse.
Eventually I looked up why I had such a pain in my butt every time I walked down the stairs or stood up, and found that it was highly likely that I had not only damaged my psoas but also my piriformis, one of the smallest muscles in the body and one of the most painful if it is damaged. The good old piriformis runs across the sciatic nerve, or sometimes the sciatic nerve runs through the piriformis, but needless to say when the muscle swells the pain is excruciating. Carrying things aggravates the piriformis, heels aggravate the piriformis, uneven ground aggravates it, in fact sitting aggravates it, walking aggravates it, basically if you have piriformis syndrome (and all my symptoms pretty much tick all the boxes) your well and truly up shit creek without a paddle.
Like I said I don’t ‘do ill’ well, so I just got on with it, looking up stretches which helped and just soldiering on. But then the move from France to Ireland was basically a game changer what with lifting heavy items, and going and up and down stairs with them; add that I then I decided to get fit when I arrived in Ireland: walking at least a mile and a half a day (who wouldn’t with the fabulous views around us?) I basically pushed the injury too far.
I was losing this fight, but still I carried on: I bought a hiking stick to try and help when we had to just step onto the beach, because I couldn’t even step on the beach! Something that RD found so hilarious he took photos of my trying to climb up onto the dunes.
A few weeks after these photos were taken I actually bought myself a walking stick in Lidl because I couldn’t walk around the shop I was in so much pain, and I’m not going to lie at that point it started to get to me.
That’s why I haven’t been blogging or writing in any way, because in the end the pain was constant no matter what I was doing I couldn’t actually think straight. I couldn’t even walk my beloved puppies around the garden. Add to this RD got a short term job and wasn’t here so I persevered hoping to God that the dogs didn’t pull me because they would simply pull me over! Poor RD he was working all day, driving a long drive to and from work, doing all the shopping and then walking the dogs.
For me the biggest thing was how much chronic,constant pain begins to affect you mentally. You literally cannot focus, terrified to move but still in pain anyway and I began to feel old, and trapped, despite the excitement of our new adventure. Out here on a peninsular with no car, not even being able to walk outside my own front door, was awful and I thought of a lovely lady I used to care for who was in a wheelchair and I understood how important her daily trips were to her more than ever. It was an eye opener for me, of how people live with this all their lives, and I was grateful for my strength and counted my blessings that I would fight this.
Ever proactive (I won’t be beaten, although there have been times over the last four weeks when I thought I was) I looked up more stretches and exercises, and despite the pain I was in I made myself do them three or four times a day. I sat on a hot water bottle, religiously, and I booked an appointment with a chiropractic, who although she was incredibly rude and a bit dodgy she massaged exactly where the pain was radiating from and over the following few days the pain began to subside. I took note, and now I get RD to do massage the same place, now his job has ended, and he realises that the physio was doing exactly what he was meant to do.
I am now eighty per cent better. The pain is not constant, but I persevere with all the exercises and stretches and know that this is what I will have to do from here on in, as well as attend a chiropractic probably once a month, or at the least a masseuse ‘. I still cannot lift anything even remotely heavy, or walk my beloved puppies, because it may well aggravate the muscle again, and my hamstrings and knee ligaments are sore from the pain that had been radiating down the back of my leg for let’s be honest at least the last three months.
I am going to try as of today to walk with the dogs whilst RD holds the strong little buggers, wish me luck.
Rosie
More to come now I can think straight
If you think others will like my blog please share
We have lived here in Ireland just over a month now. Even though we arrived on the 31st given the Journey we had we technically didn’t start living here until the 1st of January, and how time has flown what with all the things we have had to, and still are, sorting out. So much so that I have not given myself that ‘time out’ that I need to ground myself again.
I can be quite driven (I may have mentioned that before) it is one of the things that made me ill years ago, and despite having many processes available to me to slow myself down, like journalling, and reading Mark Nepo or M Scott Peck, or Byron Katie and many more, or allow myself time to just sit and embroider, the urge to create our ‘new life’ has overtaken me and I haven’t done nearly as much of that as I should.
We do take the dogs out every day, and the beautiful scenery around me and watching Harley turn into a puppy again when he hits the beach and Wiglet turn into King Canute, barking at the waves has been a joy; but it still hasn’t stopped my ‘drive’ and I am acutely aware that I need to reign it in or I won’t be able to give myself space to understand what we really need.
Welshies loving The Wild Atlantic Way in Donegal
Yesterday we were busy still trying to open a bank account (ID in any country is just a nightmare, it really is a ‘computer says know’ thing), ordering essentials for our new life, and shopping, when I realised when I got home after a busy day that I was spending too much time watching TV, or searching the internet for information that we needed, and hadn’t been giving myself that ‘time out’ that we all need.
January on The Wild Atlantic Way Donegal
So today I said to RD that I am having a spiritual day: reading Mark Nepo, blogging, reading last Saturday’s newspapers, doing some embroidery staying off searching the internet for ‘stuff.’ My brain needs a time out from trying to control my new life, and thereby allowing my new life to come to me.
So we are off for our hours walk down to the beach, the fire is already lit, and Mark Nepo is waiting to be read. And RD has decided to join me.
Beautiful Donegal Ireland
It’s so easy to be driven, especially when you’re trying to set up a new life and your thinking of the million things you need to do, so I am reminding myself today that what will be will be, and to live in the moment.
This will be my next writer to read.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
There are so many things for us to sort out: bank accounts, house buying, paying French bills, social security numbers (you can’t do anything in Ireland without a social security number) but also, just to add to it, we need Irish driving licences because Ireland will no longer accept a UK driving licence because of Brexit! Add the pandemic into the mix, with half of the institutions you have to go to shut and it’s a joy. But, as someone said to us ‘you do like a big move don’t you?
And why not! Keeps us entertained 😂
Now since living in France, despite trying to get a social security number for five years I was never successful. We’re not the kind of folks who go to the doctor at the drop of a hat so no worries there, but due to the bureaucracy and lack of resources I was not able to get a referral to an eye consultant for the Glaucoma that I had developed at thirty-eight. Neither did I go to the opticians, because you can’t just go to the opticians in France you need a referral and two other hoops to jump through, so I gave up! I would also add to that how I kidded myself that because I was no longer staring at a computer twelve hours a day the Glaucoma had miraculously disappeared. The stories we tell ourselves sometimes!
So on arrival in Ireland the first thing I did was book an opticians appointment for us both. I had promised a lovely client of mine that I would, and she was very dear to me so I needed to keep my word. Also because we needed a report to enable us to get our licences, and the fact that my glasses were now nearly six years old, and I am officially myopic, the opticians appointments were my priority.
On arrival I was seen first. I knew I was in trouble when I could hardly see any of the field of vision test in my left eye. I had the photos of the back of my eye taken as well and halfway through my test the lovely optician informed my pressures were so high she was worried I was going to have ‘a bleed’ and that she was sending me as an emergency referral to the eye clinic there and then. Thank God they speak English, thank God we moved here when we did! She also explained that she believed I had already had a small bleed, that would not have necessarily affected my vision, but given that my pressures were dangerously high I need to go, and I need to go now. In addition she couldn’t sign off my form for my driving licence, something I had always feared since my initial diagnosis, that would no longer have the freedom that driving gave me.
Poor RD his appointment was cancelled and he had to drive like the wind to the hospital in the next county Sligo. On the way he was very quiet and confessed that he was really worried about me. I however was very calm, and explained to him that we could look at the drama, and the negative possibilities, and thereby build it up into a crises or, as I was seeing it, we could see our good fortune: that out of all of the things I had to organise ‘life’ had told me to book the opticians appointment first. That we had now moved to Ireland just in time, as it appeared, to save my eyesight; and that I was now in a country where I could speak the language (never under-estimate that). I actually saw myself as blessed.
When I explained it to him, RD commented that he hadn’t thought of it that way, and now looking at it that way his stresses were less.
On arrival at the hospital, after going through two road checks to ensure our journey was essential, off I went into the hospital. They were absolutely brilliant, no questions as to why I had let my glaucoma get out of hand, no judgement, in fact a lot of understanding. We were where we were, judgement was not going to help.
I was dispatched three and a half hours later with eye drops that make your eyelashes grow (always a half full girl) and we set off in the dark January night for our three hour journey home through the mountains. At this point I will introduce my other blessing that day: RD. He waited in the cold for three hours, walking the puppies who we had thought we could take for a walk around Donegal town, and had brought with us. There were no facilities in this pandemic time for him to even buy a coffee, luckily I brought him one out from the little coffee shop in the hospital, that I passed on my way out. He then drove home in the pitch black, a total of six hours driving that day, with never a word of complaint.
The following week we went back to complete our eye tests. I had religiously applied my drops every day, and I had never allowed my brain to wonder ‘what if?’ I know that what will be, will be, and negative thoughts can bring negative things your way, so I have strong enough processes now to stop my brain going down that road. By the end of the test my eyes had improved sufficiently for my form to get my licence to be signed off. When I asked the young optician (everyone’s young to me now!) if my pressures and eyesight had improved, or was that wishful thinking, he said he thought it was wishful thinking but would check anyway. In fact my field of vision had improved dramatically, my prescription has also reduced and my pressures had gone from dangerously high to within normal parameters, in a week! Even he was shocked. I wasn’t, I was just grateful.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
Nearly three years ago (in March next year) I wrote about our youngest cat Tilly, and how we had lost her. She went out one day, and never came back. We were heartbroken, and every time I drive past the woods in our lane I think of Tilly.
Last week we had all of the animals vaccinated, including the rabies jab. We smiled and chatted about our naughty black kitten, and how we wished we were taking her with us, despite the huge expense! We hoped she was with someone who loved her, or hadn’t suffered if she had left this mortal coil. We knew she had always been a free spirit, and naughty (which is why we love her so), and that there was a high likelihood that she would not live a long life.
Last night Tilly came back to our garden! Harley the Welshie was barking incessantly and wouldn’t come in, no matter what we did to persuade him. So poor old RD had to put his trainers on and trudge off up the chemin to the very farthest part of our garden where he found Harley who was clearly barking at something up the huge oak tree. When RD shone the torch there she was, Tinky Tiny Tilly, from Tinky Tiny Tilly Land. RD was adamant it was her, because she responded to her name and closed her eyes in love at him, and let out her little meow that only she could do. He grabbed Harley, and was frantically calling me. In the meantime I was going into the garden to look for him, he called me and I blindly made my way up the chemin in the pitch black, but Tilly was so spooked she ran off like a Jack Rabbit before I could get there.
There we stood in our jimby jamby’s and dressing gowns in the pouring of rain frantically calling her, whilst the dogs were locked indoors.
Daisy Pussy Upsy was Tilly’s bestest friend, and she joined us sniffing inquisitively up the tree, at the bottom of the tree, and at the part if the fence where Tilly had made her exit. She even went out again later looking for her.
I am convinced now it was Tilly, but what do we do? We leave this house a week on Sunday. Even if she had come back today it would be too late to take her to Ireland, she needs twenty-two days minimum before she can travel. We are in turmoil, we can’t stay, but the thought of leaving her behind is beyond our comprehension.
We have been searching for her today, but no sign; and are just about to go back out in the dark, when she must feel safer, to call her whilst the Welshies remain indoors. If we find her between now and when we leave we will get her jabbed and put her in the cattery to settle her, and RD will come back earlier than planned from Ireland to collect Tilly and our furniture. I have also asked our lovely immoblier and friend Aidan, if I can give him her passport, and if she turns up after we have left will he arrange for her to go into the cattery and get her jabbed. It’s all we can do.
We strongly believe that life will show us the way. For Tilly to come home now, as if to say don’t forget me, is surely a sign. Or was she just coming to say goodbye?
Come home Til Til ❤️🥲
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
I am currently sitting in bed, it’s 11.45 in the morning and we have allowed ourselves a morning lie in. It’s a busy time.
We have a very atmospheric sky today, and the pictures above are what I can see from my vantage point as I write this.
I am surrounded by sleeping Welshies and RD snoring away, and after our scare last weekend I have again been reminded to only ever live in the here and now.
This will be our second move in six years. In fact in our twenty- two, almost twenty- three years of being together we have moved four times, this will be our fifth move.
Over the week as well as frantically taking as many photos of the fabulous sunsets we are blessed with, I have been packing up our belongings and I was making decisions about what to keep and what to let go. As part of this I was boxing up the shoes that we had, supposedly, decided we were taking with us, after letting so many pairs go; and as I did so I found myself putting additional pairs in the clothing bag for charity. In fact it was as if I was having an epiphany: you HAVE to let go of the old to make room for the new.
The shoes weren’t the only things that led to this. I have my son’s cot in the barn, he is thirty-one years old, why the hell did I ship it to France? I know why, we were moving to another country and for the first time I would not have my son near to me, that first Christmas without him being there was a hard lesson. But now it’s what it is, he has his life, and I want him to live it, and I have learned to let go of the idea that we always have to be together.
Then there is a blue top that belonged to my mum, it was her favourite top, she wore it often. After she died I kept it, and dutifully moved it three times. I thought when we came here I had let it go, but no, when I sorted our cupboard at the top of the stairs there it was again, buried in amongst all the clothes we have never worn in five years. I let it go this time, with all the other clothes. Only this time was different: this time I held it up and said to RD ‘This is not my mum, this is a top. My mum is in my memories.’
After that I was then on a roll: the fridge magnets we bought in Disney twenty- seven years ago (when I was married to my first husband ffs!) off they went to the great dechetterie (dump in French) in the sky. Sentimental mugs, faux flowers, old earrings, and watches and bracelets, tarnished, were in the bin before they knew it.
All of this got me thinking is life really just one big on-going lesson about learning to let go? Is life really just a lesson in learning about why we hold on to things which then enables us to let them go?
I understand why I bought so many things from our old house with me. I loved that house, I found it hard leave it, and so I bought the things I could from it, because it was too hard to let it all go at once. But as the years passed here I realised I didn’t want to re-create my past, that I need to make something new. My old house had gone, and I was then ready to let the things associated with it go too. There are some things I love that I will take with me because I love the item itself, or the memory it conjures up.
As I packed away my thoughts developed further and I found myself asking does that apply to everything in life? Including the loved ones we have lost? Someone once said to me ‘every time you cry about your mum, you pull her back, and you never let her spirit free.’ I found it difficult to understand at first, but after reading and learning and listening and reflecting it becomes clearer every day.
When my mum was dying she promised she would come back for each and every one of us, so when my beloved Westie dog died I thought I would feel my mum’s presence, and my heartbreak was even more compounded when I didn’t.
I understand now that it was never going to be, because we are all spirits learning what we need to learn in each lifetime, and we then move on to the next stage of our enlightenment. Perhaps those who love us stay near for a time, but eventually they have to let us go, to enable us to grow.
Then there are the friendships that come and go, and sometimes come back again after we have all learned and evolved. I believe the right people migrate back to you, as I have written about often. But more importantly how often does life show us that we need to let the relationships go? Show us, as we evolve, that they weren’t what we thought they were at all? That the people were not what we thought? Or, thinking even more deeply, perhaps they were, and it is us who have changed.
I think that is one of the hardest lessons of all, we don’t want to see negatives in those we have spent so much of our life with. But if we are able to objectively, it can enable us to decide whether to still have the person in our life or not, without rancour or pain. It’s just what it is.
Letting go of pain, letting go of hurt, just letting go without bitterness, is probably one of the hardest things to do. When RD left me I learned from writing my journal that if I allowed myself to be consumed in bitterness I would be destroyed. That was nearly fourteen years ago, now I use what I learned to help some others who find themselves where I was, but now I also know it applies to so many things in life. But I can only help ‘some’ because the others do not want to ‘let go.’ And so they continue to suffer in pain. That experience has taught me to let go of the hope that I could help everyone. I can’t, people can only ever help themselves.
I have learned over the past five years that we cannot have the sunny side of life all the time. The Tao has taught me that where there is good there is bad, where there is love there is heartache, where there is life there is death. I had to remind myself of that last week when Harley was ill, I had to say it as a mantra, and despite the pain I felt, it gave me comfort and strength and it has made me live every day this week cherishing every small moment.
It’s amazing isn’t it, what you learn as you unpack and pack your life up again? And the time will come, in the near future, when we let this house go, and this adventure go, and we ‘let go,of the rice.’ (Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening
Have a good Sunday folks.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
It’s a blowy, blustery day here in France. One of those types of days that I love: when the rain is blown in and literally back out again by the ferocity of the wind, and the trees are waving away like demented stick giants frantically trying to tell us something.
I found the quote at the beginning of the post, today. As always, at a time when I needed to be reminded. What we will need will come. Selling houses are always such stressful times.
I reminded RD last night as we lay in our pretty little bedroom cuddling, with the lights sparkling away, and the Welshies gently snoring, that despite what we think we want, we must remember to live in the here and now: with our lovely house, with it’s stunning views, because that is all we have. As I lay in the night listening to the rain hitting the shutters I was reminded that this was one of the first things I loved about living here: that noise of the rain being flung about by the wind, knocking at the shutters as if asking to come into the safe and warm.
I think selling houses gets you so caught up in the planning for the future that you can often lose sight of the fact that you’re not really living your current moment. It was timely that the quote was sent my way today.
We had ordered some wood for the winter, knowing that despite the pending move nothing is certain and that we still need it for the here and now. With RD working it was down to me to take delivery and decant into our log store.
It was just what I needed: to be out in the blowey blustery day working, whilst I let the wind clear my mind. Nature was kind to me, the sun came out and the rain blew on by. I took some time to watch as the leaves dancing in the air as if some mad puppet master had control of them, at one point it looked as if they were marching in a line.
Now after a few hours work I sit here….
It is one of my favourite places to sit, and I am listening to the wind blowing through the trees, the sun is streaming through the window and I am again counting my blessings.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
The start of a new day in France. As always I am inspired by the sunrises over the vallees, and cherishing every one. I will share as many as I can with you before we go..
I should be on the boat now returning to my job, but as always life showed me the way and a mutual decision was reached that I will not return, but that monies owed will be paid. I cannot tell you the relief I feel, and although we will lose some money I will trust my belief that what we need will come. I have followed Mark Nepo’s advice and I have ‘Let go of the rice.’
Last night RD and I realised It is probably for the best because we only have eight weeks left in this house, if not less. Despite being busy these last two weeks clearing out the barn, taking all the things we humans tend to harbour for years but will never use to the dechetterie (rubbish dump).
There is still a lot of clearing out to do. One half of our barn has been completed, just the other half to start today!
I have also been busy selling things we don’t need, we have learned the lesson well in: don’t move stuff to another country just ‘in case’. It costs way too much and we are resolute that what we need must all fit into a Luton van.
We are moving ourselves this time, otherwise it will mean that we will have spent up 12,000€ on moving! Too much!
I have also arranged accommodations in Ireland, with flexible dates until they are confirmed, and checked out accommodation here for the (hopefully) only ten days we will need to remain here. I am ready to go now.
In France when you sell your house on the day you sign on the dotted line you hand the keys to the new owner. There is no going back to finalise, that is it, you have to be out and the house has to be empty on the day. So we will need to book into accommodation before the final day. It will be a poignant time when we close the door.
In addition to the barn I have cleared out our armoire of the things that were put in it five years ago, added to and never used. Why do we do it? Have drawers full of crap?
Trust me these are the empty drawers, they were full to overflowing before. Now some drawers are empty with only a few things we are taking with us put back. We asked ourselves yesterday why it takes a move to clear our lives of clutter. A new lesson I will try and remember: have a yearly clear out LET GO.
The plan is that once the dates have been confirmed everything that is in our cupboards is coming with us and simply needs to be wrapped and packed. (I say simply😁)
I have applied the same principle to our fabulous French buffet, lovingly painted by me and now a storage facility for all the things that need to be packed. I just can’t wait for the date now.
So the animals are looking at us questionably, they know that things are abreast.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
It’s been coming for some time, life has been screaming at me for some time, but I got caught up on the hamster wheel of money.
I placed a cosmic order in August, explained how I do have faith, and that what you need will come, but explained how I was afraid; and I asked that I was shown what we needed would come. I was shown, but I didn’t stick to my part of the bargain and I went back. Life tapped me on the back, to remind me of our side of the bargain I felt guilty for reneging. It has shown me over and over again since I came back that we will get what we need. Why did I not believe? So yesterday I did, and changes were made.
Last night RD took a beer out from a Euros pack (special offer, because the Euros didn’t take place) and the first beer, second beer and third beer were for this country.
Do you think life is trying to tell us something? I think so….
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
