We went to France with ONLY a Carry-on, and now look what’s happened

FIRST, may I say  HAPPY THANKSGIVING  and THANK YOU to my friends, who write on FB, “like” stuff,  and make me smile a LOT and who I can call “FRIENDS” whether we see each other a lot or a little or not much at all, but only via cyberspace.  It’s okay  – it’s the way of this world, like it or not.  This Thanksgiving will be so different, because it’s an extremely THANKFUL day with all my heart for the love that’s been shown to us by strangers in a foreign land, who don’t even speak my language and I don’t speak theirs.  What they have done for us I can’t even begin to describe, but suffice it to say, what we have had in the last 8 weeks and what we have today we wouldn’t have in any – way- shape- or form had it not been for the goodness and generosity of these new friends.

I am a teeny  bit sad as I take the last of the items from the old apartment.  On the balcony over looking a hilly northern landscape just beyond Paris I glance at twinkling lights in a misty fog, not too cold, and very beautiful.  The last of the cigarette butts stashed in the planter and  left behind by my good friend who was the first to visit me is scooped up and it makes me laugh.  She knows how I feel about smoking, and she knows that I want her to live a long time, but sometimes you just have to let people do what they want to do because all you can do is say it once, and let it drop.  I turn around after sweeping the top terrace where we spent too little time and pass the tall wine cellar with extremely ancient bottles of wine and champagne filling the unlocked cabinet.  I am thinking  how trusting these people were to let us stay here with that treasure!!  🙂   We never opened one!  It wasn’t ours to open, but I’m bemused by their trusting spirit.

I walk by the TV on the floor that my friend tried to get to work because when you’re jet lagged and just can’t sleep there is nothing like the drone of background noise of a television.  It never did work, but it was okay.  We never had a couch, so we sat in lawn chairs for 3 weeks and that wasn’t so bad either.  But sometimes when you come home from whatever work or excursion you’ve just done, there is NOTHING like a COUCH, and sometimes NOTHING like mindless TV to just veg out on, simple as it may sound. Simple simple pleasures. How we take them for granted sometimes.

We are moving as I am writing this to the new semi-permanent apartment across the way from the old temporary apartment. I will miss that roof top terrance, but not the stairs that I had to climb to get up there.  They were circular and lovely to look at and the light streaming down from the rooftop was so pleasant and the terrace itself was spacious and lovely, but I needed FRIENDS, PEOPLE , preferably some that spoke ENGLISH, to entertain and to make full use of it. 🙂

The last of the items from our old apartment is finally in the new one.  But I have made about 7 trips already and I don’t understand how this happens when we only came to France 8 weeks ago with 2 carry-on’s and a backpack!!!  Amazing what you accumulate in such a short time when you have an apartment to put it in….and I haven’t even been shopping!!

Well, off to clean it now and leave it as good or better than when we took possession of it.  I want Madame to be happy, because she certainly made us quite happy.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL – whoever might read this, because I only know of 3 souls that are, ha ha – but just incase the rest of my  cyber friends out there might  be reading – This is a Warm and “Huggy” HAPPY THANKSGIVING to YOU!!!!     🙂