I had planned to stay in this house for a while and buy Theo out. But the divorce is not making any progress, due to the attorneys’ lack of ANY sense of urgency. I think in the end, selling both houses (in France and in Spain) will make it easier.
Anyway, my change of heart just ‘happened.’ The possibility of selling has been bubbling in the back of my brain for a while now, and you all know how much I love this place and how much effort I’ve put into it. But I woke up one morning and I was READY. I said to myself, this is a GREAT house…a great house for someone else to enjoy.
I called the realtor and 9 days later, it was on the market. It’s in the upper price tier for the area, but there are plenty of expats and Parisians with cash looking for country houses. The high-speed train connecting Paris to Bordeaux has increased sales, so fingers crossed, we get a good price for this place.
I’m ready for a new adventure. I seriously have the ‘7 year itch’ (even though it’s been 8 years). While I’ve thoroughly enjoyed bringing life back to this ancient property and was honored to be its custodian for these years, I’m ready to leave the memories I’ve made here in the past and move on. I feel it’s the healthiest thing to do right now.
As far as my future plans, who knows? I want to stay in France, as I still have 9 years left on my 10 year residency card. I am anxious to have the opportunity to drive around France, staying in different departments and explore neighborhoods until I find something that feels right. I’ve been looking on the internet at houses and realize how accustomed I have become to the peace and quiet of life in the countryside, the fresh air, the chirping birds, the privacy. So perhaps I will find something else in this area and be able to keep in touch with the broad circle of friends I have made, or perhaps I will really jump off the cliff and move to a completely different area and start from scratch. Either way, I am confident that I will find my groove.
Since you never know who might know someone…who might know someone…that might be looking for a fabulous property in France, here’s the link to the listing:
My next little blog project will be to do a before-and-after montage, just so that I have it to reminisce about my journey during my tenure here at Le Coudeau.
A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period – When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay –
A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament.
— Emily Dickinson
A shot from this afternoon’s walk after three grey days of rain. The breeze, the clouds, the smells, all simply FULL of spring. My favourite time of year.
This field of early grain reminded me of when I was a young teenager. After school, I would ride my bike to the neighbor’s field, taking my guitar on my back, take off my shoes and walk with the cool earth under my feet and plop down in the middle of the short greens and strum and sing in the spring breeze. All alone. In my teenage glory. Some of my best memories ever.
My jeans that I wore yesterday were not dirty, so decided to wear them again today, because I knew I planned to do a little planting in the garden. So the jeans are already a size too big. And I’ve lost a little weight. And they’ve been worn for a day.
Well, I was headed down to the lower garden, which is quite a trek. Instead of loading the stuff in the wheelbarrow, I just grabbed them in my arms and my hands, but it was quite a lot of small plants, bucket of dirt, small shovel, etc.
Well, I’m walking along and my jeans start to slip. Of course, my hands are occupied. They’re off my waist and heading for my hips. I tried to wiggle them up by doing a little twisting dance. Unsuccessful. If you know me, you know I’m pretty ‘straight’ in the middle, with my hips almost the same size as my waist.
With each step, they wiggle a little further down. I contemplate whether to stop and put down all the myriad of things that I have arranged in the crook of my arm and in my hands to pull them up. Nope, not stubborn old me! I continue.
Before I know it they are way down my hips and I start to crack up, in the middle of the field. Thinking I be lookin’ like the Gansta Rap Star Cindy! At that point, I had no choice but to unload all the pieces and pull them up, hoping I could make it the rest of the way without them ending up around my ankles! Ah, just another day in paradise.
Donning her Coq Hardi hat left from France’s hope of taking the World Cup, Juliette showed up at my New Year’s party making a fool of herself!
Had a wonderful beginning to what I’m confident will be one of the best years of my life. Surrounded with good friends at my home, we ate, we talked, we drank, and we laughed to welcome the first day of the year. Greeted with unseasonably warm, dry weather, we ushered in 2023, which promises great change for me personally.
Suddenly single at 62 is an eye-opener, but I am not afraid. Forging ahead with eyes wide open and ready to embrace my next chapter. Wanted to wish all of you in my circle great hope, good health, and happiness in the coming months.
As the end of the year approaches, I want to share some news with you and let you know how the blog is changing.
Many of you already know that Theo and I are separated and have decided that our path forward will be on different tracks. For many reasons, we have grown apart. We did not arrive at this decision quickly and we are working together to make the transition as seamless as possible. I plan to stay in France and Theo has relocated to our lovely home in Denia, Spain.
We ask for your kind understanding and please know that it is a mature parting of ways, we still care for each other’s safety and happiness, but no longer want to live together. We had 20 great years together, and we have no regrets, but sometimes good things do end.
Sooo, the blog will be about me, Me, and ME from now on…not that it hasn’t been that way from the beginning. 😜 If you like, please hop on board with my new journey to rediscover life at 62—it may not be the wildest ride, but I promise to dig deep and share my discoveries along the way.
I am working on renaming and rebranding the site, but until my term ends, you can still find me at theoandcindy.com. Thank you for your good wishes.
After months of agonizing over the dogs, we decided to rehome them here in Spain. I’m glad to announce that we have successfully found fantastic forever homes for both of our furry ones.
Gaston has gone to a life on the Mediterranean beachfront in Gandia. His new parents are from Uruguay and have a deep background in dog rescue and training. They absolutely adore him and we felt it was a perfect fit.
Josephine just left us yesterday and has a new younger brother, along with a wonderful new family in Javea. The doggie personalities mesh very well, they love to play together, and it’s exactly what both of them needed. Josie already loves her new mom and we are confident that the whole family is going to love her too.
Our house is really quiet now, but we will get used to it. We realized after a year of trying with these dogs, that we simply didn’t have the energy for the exercise they required or the bandwidth for the training (and the two dogs together fought like it was WWIII most of the time). Now they are happy like clams in their new homes.
We couldn’t have done it without the selfless support from local rescue groups, who took genuine interest in getting the word out about rehoming our pups. Please, folks, donate to your local animal rescue organisations—they do so much more than you know.
And now we have peace and freedom. Of course, we will schmooze over every dog on the street and in every cafe…!!!
I bought this handmade Indian patchwork blanket a zillion years ago at an estate sale in California, because I thought it was stunning. Fast forward 15-20 years— it came to France from the US because I never found a use for it there, then recently brought it to Spain, thinking it could create a Moroccan/Bohemian type of vibe somewhere in the house here.
I thought of hanging it as a wall hanging to act as a headboard in the larger guest bedroom, but it’s humid here by the sea and I had nightmares of mushrooms growing behind it in our absence!
So I threw it on the queen-size bed in the smaller guest bedroom and thought it looked good. But it was weird—very heavy, not at all soft, and too delicate in case kids ever stayed in there. And so I came up with the idea to make a big tall headboard and use it as my upholstery fabric. Hmm, in a country where I don’t speak the language and don’t know where to source anything…courageous or stupid? But I was on a mission, so step aside!!!
I hated the furniture set that came with the house in this bedroom (still working on replacing those nightstands) and wanted to come up with something beautiful. I was looking for something with a hint of Morocco and decided to make a tall and curvy headboard, using my blanket as the fabric. To get the tall height without hitting those sconces, I settled on a curvy stepped shape to not only add some exoticism, but cleverly ‘miss’ the lamps.
[On a tangent here, but if you’re not familiar with the way they light houses in Spain, just let me tell you how many wall sconces I removed in this house. They don’t ‘do’ ceiling lights, so there were wall sconces with ugly shiny silver fixtures with blinding halogen bulbs literally everywhere. The two sconce electrical outlets in this room were the two I DIDN’T destroy. And these lamps I put up were supposed to be for the guest bath upstairs, but stuck out too far from the wall for the door to open fully — an entire blog dedicated to my jewel of a teeny guest bath still to come. But I digress.]
And so my project began by asking our neighbor and good friend, Willi, for some help. With a cardboard template from me, he agreed to buy the wood and cut it out for me. Then he took me to a local upholstery shop, where we picked up a huge 2 meter square piece of thick foam. They had applied the fluffy Dacron (without me requesting them to do so).
My cardboard template.
The wood cutout.
I am fortunate to have a large empty room downstairs in which to do projects like this (formerly a huge broken sauna lived in there). So once Willi delivered the wood backing cutout, I laid it down on my foam and drew around the shape.
I needed to cut out the shape of the foam without cutting through the Dacron, because it needed to wrap around the outside of the foam to soften the edges. I used an old bread knife to cut the foam, stopping just when I got to the Dacron and it worked very well. Then I very carefully peeled the extra foam off the Dacron, to preserve the integrity of the Dacron as much as possible.
Trimming the excess Dacron.
Thorough stapling of wrapped Dacron over foam .
With the headboard face down, I started to staple around the edges with the electric stapler I borrowed from Willi. After the first staples were in, I secured it with more staples and cut off the excess.
Then I had to decide how to arrange the blanket on the piece. I had a trolley on wheels left by the previous owners (for the sauna paraphernalia, no doubt) and carefully hefted the heavy piece to balance on the small table.
I then arranged the piece the way I wanted it and started to secure it by wrapping it firmly around the board and stapling it to the back. All the kneeling and crawling involved to staple the headboard balanced on this little table made my ass SO SORE the next day! And I must admit, I felt like a criminal cutting this fabulous fabric art piece.
Once the blanket was well attached, I flipped the whole piece back over onto the floor and continued to staple it securely. When I was almost finished, the staple gun jammed. I could not get it fixed, so I immediately ordered another one from Amazon Prime. So, as antsy as I was to finish the project, I had to wait. But good ole Amazon Prime came the very next morning with my new stapler, and voilà, I got ‘er done.
The clam bed ate the bedding!
Then Theo and I carried the beast to the bedroom, but still needed to roll out the rug, so we took apart the bed and look what I found? Now understand that I’ve already given away enough bedding for a small village, and there were MORE duvets, pillows, and sheets in the storage under the bed. Ugh. Think I will just pretend I didn’t see them…
I have some supplies left over for another day and hope to make some throw pillows from the scraps.
And here is the final product. Still need to think about decorative pillows and I’m looking for a turquoise throw for the end of the bed, but I’m pretty proud of my little ‘rainy day’ project.
It’s been brought to my attention that I’ve neglected to announce that we got a second dog. Last August! Our Gaston was being such a nuisance and needed SO much attention, that we thought a female playmate would be a great idea. And so Josephine entered the scene.
Miss Josephine, our rescue girl, maybe part Labrit (Pyrenees Sheep Dog and part Australian Shepherd
Fast forward to last week, when they both escaped from the front patio here at our Spanish house. Thankfully, we live on the border of the development and the mountain beyond is mostly green space, so not many cars and not many people.
This was not the first time the gangsters slipped through the gate when someone wasn’t paying attention. They are big opportunists. But they have always come back. Whether after an hour, or two, or three, or even four. But this time, they did not come home. It got dark, they weren’t home. It was time for dinner, they weren’t home. It was time for bed, they weren’t home. We left the gates open, because we KNEW they KNEW the way home. They both have noses that had proven trustworthy before.
The innocent ’partners in crime!’
I had driven around the neighborhood with my whistle, to no avail. But it was late and we had to let fate take over. Either they had been mangled by wild boars, which we know are prolific on the mountain, or they had attacked someone (really?) and had been injured, or they had gone the wrong way and been hit by a car (but both of them?) or someone had locked them in, either knowingly or not, or we’d hear from the pound when someone took them in and scanned their microchips.
Truth be told, we are struggling with having these two. They are a handful for us and have brought many more issues than we could have imagined. So, in the back of my mind, I had wishes of them just to disappear. Of course, I didn’t want them to suffer, but life would go back to being manageable without them. Of course, I love them both so much, so this was really just a fleeting thought.
Well, we’re up the next morning. The gate is still open and there still are no dogs. I’m thinking I’m going to hell (even though I don’t believe in that stuff) from thinking evil thoughts about them.
So we ease into the morning and around 10:30, I get a post prepared for our local neighborhood Facebook group announcing that we’ve lost our dogs. And not five minutes after posting the announcement, here comes two very dirty, very tired, very happy-to-be-home dogs running at top speed down the lane. Not a word of apology! No explanations of where they were all night! Who knows?
Toxic pine processionary caterpillars rampant in Spain.
So all was well in the world again. Except that Josephine was licking her paw. And licking and licking and licking. Then she was coughing, licking her mouth, making choking sounds, and licking some more. A few days previous, I had found a very long strand of processionary caterpillars in the street. These are prevalent in Mediterranean climates and nest in the pine trees here. I was scared to death that she had licked one, or sniffed one, or maybe eaten one! They are extremely toxic to dogs (and not good for humans either). But here it was, Saturday night, and I think my dog has encountered these nasty things. I’m in a strange country where I don’t speak the language, have no idea where an emergency vet would be open, and started to cry. Even though I wondered if we would keep Josie long term, it was hell to see her struggle with this. And so we put her to bed and figured either she’d be fine or might suffocate in her sleep from swelling from the possible exposure.
Well, the next morning, I heard her tail on the crate and knew everything was fine. She had stopped licking and was absolutely normal, except she was still very tired from their wild night out.
Now I need to share with you my little escapade with the parade of caterpillars I found on our street. When you find them, you should safely kill them if you can. So into the house I went and found a can of cheap hairspray that was left by the seller of the house. Oh, and a mask for me. I immediately sprayed the long line with the sticky hair care product and that stopped them in their tracks. It also immobilized their fine hairs from becoming airborne. So here I am in the middle of the street, bent at the waist, with my can of hairspray, spraying at these buggers like nobody’s business. It was clear that stickying them up was not going to work alone, so I returned to the house to get the fire starter. I had remembered reading that to truly get rid of them, they need to be burned.
Call me Bond. Cindy Bond…
So here I am, giving them a good dose of spray, then incinerating them with the flame. Well, the big brutes among them just kept squirming, so more hairspray, more fire. Spray. Fire. Spray. Fire. At some point, I forget which product I have in which hand and before I knew it, I had a flaming torch coming out of the hairspray can!!! Yikes! Not a chance, but I was wondering if someone was secretly sitting in their house howling with laughter watching the crazy lady in the street with her fire thrower!!!
Anyhoo, no eyebrows were burned in this incident and I escaped unscathed. No such luck for the pine processionaries!
For the house here in Spain, I bought tons of lovely linen napkins to use with all those scrumptious meals I dream of making… Now, they’ve all been used, washed and sit wrinkled on the ironing board. Remember, we bought this house ‘furnished,’ and so I tried the two cans of vintage spray starch that sat rusting on the shelf next to the ironing board. Needless to say, they sputtered and spit and promptly clogged, so into the trash they went.
So I added spray starch to my shopping list. One thing about our little piece of heaven here in Spain is that the shopping is a little dicey. There are Hypermarkets, with about everything that you’re not looking for, with really poor selections for having to walk kilometers to not find what you came for…couldn’t find spray starch. The grocery stores are best at groceries, again, no starch. And the bricos (hardware stores) are small and also have a huge selection of stuff that you’d never find me buying from a store like that (say, kitchen cabinets or desks) and, you guessed it, no spray starch.
The only variety stores here are “Chinese Bazars.” They are on every corner (no idea how they all stay in business), everything in them undoubtedly is made in China, they are huge, and they are cheap. They carry an eye-popping amount of crap. There is an entire row of cheapo detergents in multiples of nauseating smells, a municipality of fabric softeners, and cleaning products that are yet to be discovered, but no spray starch.
Now, my Spanish is only slightly worse than my French. I caught a young lady that worked there and tried to explain what I was looking for. She understood what a ‘spray’ was, after I did the pumping action with my fingers. Then I said “spray para ropa” and did my rendition of an ironing movement. She showed me spray spot remover for clothes, spray perfume for clothing, and fabric ‘conditioner,’ whatever that is! But no spray starch. I told her ‘no,’ it makes the ropa stiff and started walking around like Frankenstein. A light bulb seemed to go off and she said in perfect English, “No, we don’t have that.” No shit, Sherlock!
So, I briskly ordered some spray starch from Amazon this morning (don’t judge me). But the happy ending to this story is that I did return home with tons of items under €2 that I didn’t even know I needed — some of the cutest teeny-tiny clothespins to use as paper clips, 4 door mats, and the absolute find-of-the-century for 80 centavos, a Veterano Osborne look-alike plastic bull napkin holder. Love, love, love him!!! I’m guessing it’s exactly fools like me who keep these stores afloat!!!
Love at first sight…
Postscript: For those of you who know me and my quirky collections, you know I love and collect bulls. And I always stop the car to take photos of the Osborne billboard bulls around the hills of Spain. If you’re interested in the history of these toros, this is a great little synopsis.
We had to postpone our exodus to Spain until December 15 because I had to appear at the Prefecture for the renewal of my Carte de Sejour (my residency card). I waited until the two month period prior to expiration to make an appointment and felt like a fool (but also pretty lucky) to squeak in the first available on Dec 15, with my card expiring on Dec 22! And what a day it turned out to be.
A friend offered to ride shotgun with me and we agreed that we would have lunch afterward for our personal little Christmas celebration. We got to Perigueux (about an hour away) with no problems, but mistakenly went to the wrong address. My friend stated that she knew exactly where we needed to go, but it was the address for new British CdS’s, but not for the ‘rest’ of us. Then I started sweating bullets, as they stated very clearly on the confirmation for the rendezvous that timeliness was of the essence and they would allow 1 minute past the appointed time or else they would cancel the appointment! And they were adamant that you come ALONE, due to Covid restrictions.
Well, I was in my newfangled Volvo and hardly knew yet how to manage the GPS, but somehow we wiggled through the streets until we found the right address. I jumped out from behind the wheel with my armful of dosier papers and left the car with my friend to park. Got in the door with seconds to spare. I’m standing in line, wondering why I had even worried about being on time, when the family in front of me mentioned that if I was assigned to “Door Number Two,” then I’d better get my tail in there! Well, get out of the damned line then!
I sat down and presented my expiring card and started to produce paperwork in the order they prescribed. Then she looked cross-eyed at me and asked me if I was married. I replied YES. She said, “Where is he?” I explained that the paperwork clearly stated to come alone. I did not know he was supposed to accompany me. She said that he MUST appear in person for them to even consider my application. Ruh-row. After explaining my situation in the best French I could muster (with a little groveling and perhaps a little tear in my eye) that I was leaving tomorrow for five months in Spain, she was actually very empathetic and asked if my husband could get to Perigueux? I, of course, said YES and she kindly gave me a second appointment for after lunch at 2 pm.
Then began the challenge of getting hold of Theo. He is the one who never plugs in his cell phone, never answers the home line, and did not respond to any Messenger texts or call. Ugh. Then I remembered our gardener had been at the house that morning. I quickly called him and explained that he needed to go pound on the door to the house and have Theo call me immediately. It was URGENT. After 20 minutes of not hearing from Theo, I called the gardener again. He had misunderstood (he has just enough English to kind of understand, but didn’t understand fully this time). Finally I got Theo on the phone and he skedaddled to Perigueux JUST in time for the 2:00 appointment. We went in and presented the rest of my paperwork and Theo-in-the-flesh, the whole process taking maybe two minutes. And we were off. Whew!
Now, fingers were crossed that everything in my dossier checks out fine. I’m expecting a 10 year card this time, so I don’t have to go through this again anytime soon. And thankfully, they said I could pick up my card in May, as I need to schedule a rendezvous anyway. Just got a text yesterday that it is ready, so guess I’d better get to scheduling that pickup for May ASAP!
