Our Juicy Life

Eight Belles

I'm sorry to blog about this...but I figure maybe if I do the images and the story will go to my computer screen and out of my mind. I can't seem to stop thinking about this poor filly. She was beautiful and now she is gone. She broke both of her front ankles just after crossing the finish line in the Kentucky Derby and they had to euthanize her right there on the track. She was the only filly in the derby on Sunday. There are many who say the jockey was whipping her towards the end and should have realize she was injured (hello...both front ankles were broke!) and should have let up. I am not a jockey, or a trainer, or a horse owner, but I am a horse lover.

When I was a child I loved horses more than anything. The show "My Friend Flicka" was my favorite. When I was 11 I would ride my bike about 5 miles to a stables that let me volunteer there (I can't believe my mom let me ride my bike 5 miles by myself at 11...but I lived in Michigan and that was in the early 70's and times were different). I always wanted a horse, but never got one. I would dream that Santa would bring me a horse...I guess it was too big to come down the chimney. When I moved to LA I started volunteering for a non-profit that offered free riding lessons to under privileged kids. I loved being around the horses.

I'm the type of person that if there is an animal and a person together and something happens to them I worry about the animal, not the person. That's just the way I am. So, when this happened on Sunday, I was so sad...poor Eight Belles....her life was to race and she did everything possible to be her best, she knew nothing else. There is talk that breeding race horses has changed, it's now more about breeding a horse for the performance instead of breeding a solid horse. I don't know if that is true all I know is that she is gone and it makes me really sad.

Let the countdown begin

I have been feeling antsy lately, restless. I am so ready for our adventure, but it's not until September. Bruce thought it might be good to get a big wall calendar so we can count down the weeks/days. I also was visiting Kim at her blog and noticed her countdown widget...what a great idea. Then every day I can see on my computer screen how many weeks/days I have left, that will be just what I need. So I put one on my blog...thanks Kim! Kim is leaving in July, so her days are 1/2 what ours are....lucky dog!

We only have 4 more weeks of regular after-school classes and then our summer program starts. It will be 12 weeks of 1/2 day summer camps. Our schedule will switch from having the morning & early afternoon free and not having to go to work until 3:00 pm to being at the studio at 8:00 am and working until 1:30, so our afternoons will be free. I prefer the morning free, but alas. We will work the same number of hours per week, a light load at 20, but instead of working Tuesday-Saturday, we'll work Tuesday-Friday. Once the camps start the weeks fly by....usually when we start them it goes like this "ugh, 12 weeks of camps", then the next thing we know it's "ah, only 6 more camps"....then "yeah, only 1 more camp". Camps are great fun, we do super cool projects with the kids have a wonderful time, but it's draining and exhausting (in a good way that doing art with kids brings).

It feels like I'm a kid again...."are we there yet?" We were big on road trips when I was younger, as most of the country was back in the 60's and 70's. We had a big green station wagon and all of us would pack in there at least 2 times a year and head to Florida. I think I have been to Florida maybe 25-30 times. My parents are from Florida and my oldest sister and brother we born there. My sister Anne and I were born in Michigan. My father was a golf professional and started out in Florida and then took a job at a private club in Michigan. But anytime we had vacation it would be back to Florida to see the grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and it would allow my dad to golf.

I recently saw my brother, he and his family came out to San Diego for a weeks vacation, so Bruce and I drove down to have dinner with them. We were talking about the hell we had on those car trips. Mom and Dad in the front and 4 kids in the back. I'm sure many of you had those trips. "This is the imaginary line, don't cross it". "Mom, Anne hit me". "Mom, Mark kicked me". We didn't have DVD players in the car or hand-held games or ipods. My Dad would pop in his 8-track and we'd listen to his music, Edie Gourmet, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc... We played the alphabet game with license plates. Yee Haa! My brother also reminded me that on the drive down to Florida we'd always stay the night in a Holiday Inn and every time we'd have to eat, we'd stop at a Holiday Inn. He is sick of Holiday Inn's. We'd also stop in the same city for the night...talk about creatures of habit. Florida was our vacation...my dad didn't want to go anywhere else. Sure, we'd stop at Rock City or Mammoth Caves on the way down, but that's it. It was always St. Petersburg Florida. Staying with my grandmother, swimming in her pool, going to Treasure Island beach, going to Disney World when there was no Epicot center. The sunshine state. All my grandparents have passed on and only my cousin and her husband live there now, so no more Florida trips for me.....ever again.

What was I talking about? Sorry, got side-tracked. Ah, yes....counting the days until France. It seems so far away, but I know that once the summer gets going it will come up fast. It's hard to be patient when the countryside is calling you. The picture above was taken in September when we visited the Aveyron region. This is very close to where our house is. The nice thing about that area is that it won't change from when we saw it in September to when we'll be back in September. It is patiently waiting for us.

Such an exciting small world...

So, I wanted to do some spring reading and of course I wanted to read about France. I have read "a year in provence" but it was 10 years ago, so I figured I'd read it again. I went to Amazon.com and looked it up, Amazon.com also gave me some recommendations based on my "a year in provence" order...one of them was "French by Heart", by Rebecca Ramsey. It sounded really good, so I ordered it. The books came last week and I started on "A year in provence" and Bruce started with "french by heart". He said it was really good. Today I was looking at my comments and noticed a new one from a blog called Wonders Never Cease, so I went to that blog and started to read the latest post. I was about a backyard garden (not in the ground but above ground) thanks to their golden retriever tanner. Tanner looked so much like Dashell, it was scary....but many goldens look alike. I then read a bit further down and it said "when we lived in france"....so I went back to the bio and who is this blog by.....Rebecca Ramsey....yes, yes..the women who wrote "France by Heart", the book that is on my husband's nightstand right now.

I had to email Rebecca and tell her what a small world it is. Go and get her book, it's a really good read, even if you are not moving to france like us....you'll still get a feel of what it would be like. Thanks for visiting Rebecca, your book is making us so excited for our sabbatical in france!

Frustration!

I always hear of the problems with getting things done in France...the paperwork, the time, the patience you need, etc...but I'm here to say that it's bad here in America too.

Couple examples.  We had to update the deed for our house.  It was bought in my name and we needed to add Bruce to it.  I spent time on the Los Angeles County Clerks website getting all the paperwork that I needed (to save time).  So,  I went down to the County Clerks office which is by the Los Angeles International Airport.  Drove around for 15-20 minutes just to find a parking spot and finally reached the 6th floor.  The line was huge.  After waiting in line for about 45 minutes I was finally called.  I showed the lovely friendly helpful woman (NOT)  the filled out paperwork and of course it was wrong.  First I needed to add all this additional wording about the parcel of land our house was on.  I had to get that from another computer down the hall.  So I went and did that, got back in line and waited.  10 minutes later I was called again.  That part is complete but now you need to get it notarized.  OK, that's easy, where is the notary.  "we don't have a notary on site".  What!  Are you kidding!  This is the Los Angeles County Clerks office and they don't have a notary!  She said the closest was about 5 miles away, but she didn't know the  name of it so we had to just drive around looking for one.  So off we went.  We saw a sign for notary, pulled over, parked and went in.  Only to find out that the business didn't get their notary renewed so they couldn't do it  - so take your sign down!!!  We drove a bit further,  saw a sign, pulled over and went in.  "our notary called in sick today"...this was getting ridiculous!  We finally found another place that notarized the document.  Back we went to the County Clerk, this time Bruce waited in the car, so we wouldn't have to spend forever looking for a parking place.  The line wasn't too bad, I only had to wait 20 minutes.  Finally they accepted the document.  That was easy, not!

We are going to open a french bank account now so that we can buy a large amount of euros and transfer them to our account, there is talk that the dollar might go to 2.00 against the euro this summer.  In order to open a french bank account we need to send a copy of our marriage license.  I don't know where that is, in fact I don't think we even requested a copy.  So I again had to go on the county clerks website and I noticed that you could order it on-line.  Great!  So I filled out the paperwork, sent in a check and waited...and waited...and waited.  30 days later I got all my information sent back to me in the mail, with a letter telling me that I needed to send in 2 copies of the request for a copy of the marriage license (it doesn't tell you that on the website though).  Argh!!!!  30 days of waiting and I get nothing.  So we had to go BACK to the County Clerks office because I wasn't going to wait another 30 days for the license.  This morning we went down there.  I ran up, left Bruce in the car and was sure that I had everything in order.  I had the check that I sent them originally and in front of the guy I just changed the date and initialed it (like you do at the bank, post office, grocery store, etc...) but NO, can't do that at the county clerks office.  I had to write out a new check and void the first.  I said to the guy "you guys sure don't make things easy"...and his response was "nope, we don't".

I finally have a copy of our marriage license and our deed was updated, so hopefully I will never have to go back to the 6th floor known as hell.  Many people rant about the france being so slow with documents and all and I'm sure they are, but it's bad here too.

OK - I feel better.

France...here we come!!!

               

How beautiful is this house?  We loved it from the moment we saw it on the internet.  We knew this would be the house we would live in for 1 year.  It's called Les Costes  and it's in the Aveyron region, our favorite region of France.  It's located about 1 hour northeast of Toulouse.

We sent an email out today to all our customers.  It's official.  We are taking a 1 year sabbatical in France...1 year in this lovely home.  We have been working on our plan for about 5 months, but I haven't been able to post anything because some of our clients read my blog and I wasn't ready to tell them yet.  But now we have a person who will be taking over the teaching of the classes.  This was the hardest part...finding someone to fill Bruce's shoes.  Everyone loves Bruce and I will say that he is amazing with the kids and is casual, relaxed, patient, fun, cool and a great artist.  We have a friend, Travis, who we have known for 15 years.  He's Bruce's long lost soul brother.  Same personality, same gift with kids, an artist, surfer, cyclist, etc...we wanted him, wanted him so bad...well, he accepted our offer to take over the studio for 1 year.  That happened last week.  So now I can talk about it.  Now it's official.

So...we leave the end of September.  We are going to rent out our home here in LA for 1 year.  We will sell the car (it's an SUV and when we come back we don't need an SUV).  We will rent a car and drive across the US to New York.  We will stop and see friends in Ketchum, Idaho and Boulder, Colorado and see my family in Michigan and then drive on to NYC.  We'll have all the dogs with us too.  We leave on October 4th on the Queen Mary II, from NYC to Southampton, England.  6 days on the ocean.  The boat has 1 level that is a state-of-the-art kennel facility, it's the only way we could travel with the dogs, as I would NEVER fly with them in the cargo area of the plane.  We'll arrive in England, rent a car and drive to France.  Then we'll go to our new home and live a new life for a year.

Bruce will spend part of the day painting and drawing and I'm looking into cooking classes and pottery workshops.  We'll bike with our friends Jacques & Fabiana and Fabrice & Anka.  We'll hang out in the cafe, drink great coffee, great wine and eat great food.  We'll travel and see more of France and I'll take Bruce to Italy.  Most of all we will re-charge our batteries.  We are both a bit burned out right now.  We have been teaching art at our studio for 9 years and the longest break we have had was 3 weeks (and that was in September).  Teachers have the summers off and professors have sabbaticals for a reason.

I'll keep you posted as the time comes closer.  We have loads to do:  rent the house, sell the car, get the studio turned over, get the dogs ready to enter England (loads to do there), get our long-stay VISA's, etc...
We are both so excited and so ready for our new life.  I'll keep this blog going while we are there, so you can hear about all our adventures in France.

Stay tuned...

Citizen of the Month Interview

I participated in The Great Interview Experiment which came from the  Citizen of the Month blog.

I interviewed Lesley who is originally from Scotland but now lives in France.  How lucky for me!

               

Her blog is called "PEREGRINATIONS " 
    Noun: peregrination  `perugru'neyshun

1. Travelling or wandering around

1.    How did you come up with the name for your blog?

If I remember rightly I chose the title more for the sound of the word "peregrinations" than for its meaning although as it turned out that the blog has been a meandering journey from point to point with no real focus. I added the subtitle "or maybe just havering" a couple of months ago, if I remember rightly, as an attempt to nip n the bud any expectations random readers might have of an exotic travel blog.

2.    How would you say your blog has changed from 2005 - 2008

I probably post less often and less regularly than in 2005 and I tend not to blog about anything work-related any more.

3.     You have been blogging since 2005.  Do you still enjoy it?

I go through periods of enthusiasm and others of de-motivation but I never force myself to blog just because I feel I should. The aspect I enjoy most is the discussion that is sometimes sparked off in the comments box.

4.    why did you start your blog.  How would you describe it?

I started the blog as part of an online EVO (Electronic Village Online) course for educators. I learned a lot about the tools of blogging in a relatively short time and  quickly put it into practice with a group of students later that year.

5.    What's up with this Wordless Wednesday...I see it everywhere.

I've posted a Wordless Wednesday photo twice now - I can't remember where i first came across the idea. The first time I linked back to the original project page and garnered dozens of pointless comments from people I don't know saying things like "great photo", "love the tree". However, I do like the idea of lazy blogging just a photo with no commentary, but I won't be linking back any more, I don't really see the point.

6.    When did you move to france and what made you move there?

I moved to France permanently in 1984. I studied French at Edinburgh University and came to Périgueux in the Dordogne to do my year abroad. The classic girl meets French boy story ensued and we're still together all these years later. Aaaaaw.

7.    What is the best thing about living in france and what is the worst thing?

The best thing about living in France is the generally relaxed  ambiance I think, or at least that's the best thing about living in the South-West of France, i don't know if it would be the same in paris, or the North of the country. I like the way people take time over meals, over shopping at the market. I honestly don't have any major gripes about living in France but there are plenty of bloggers out there who do. Bureaucracy can be a pain, and so can dog shit on the pavements, and it would be convenient if shops were open on Sundays. Actually the worst thing at the moment is probably the bling-bling Sarkozy presidency.

8.    Give me an idea of a typical day in your life.

On a typical weekday I get up at around 7H30, wake the children up and then get increasingly annoyed as they dilly dally around the breakfast table. I walk them to school and then hop on the tram to the university. My working day is spent teaching, doing the usual administrative tasks, preparing classes etc. I try to set aside at least one day every week for research. I pick the children up after school and then it's home for a goûter and their generally evasive answers about their day at school. We usually eat at around 8 p.m. and he children go straight to bed after that. Evenings are sometimes spent working, sometimes watching American series, sometimes surfing ... actually how do I spend my evenings, where does all that time go? I have no idea, suddenly I look at the clock and it's midnight and time to go to bed.

9.    Disney World?  Why Disney World?   Every time we are in france we find someone who asks about Florida or wants to go to Florida.

In the past our visits to the USA have always been to places like Arizona, Colorado and new Mexico. But my Mum said a few months ago that it wasn't fair that we didn't want to go to Disney because all of her friends got to take their grandchildren there, so we said gave in and are graciously allowing her to  take us to Florida. The children are 7 and 5 so probably the ideal age for this sort of extravaganza.

It was a pleasure to meet Lesley via this interview.  Keep checking her blog to hear how the trip to Disney world was, I'm sure the kids will have a great time.  Lesley and her husband will probably need a vacation from this vacation!

Acupuncture visit

                  

Bruce and I used to be addicted to rock climbing...we climbed a lot!  In fact I met Bruce rock climbing - 13 years ago.  I wanted to learn how to climb and Bruce was a professional rock climber (yes there is such a thing).  He was also a private coach and became my coach.  We were friends for 1 year before he asked me on a date (probably because I was married at the time...but that's another post).  Anyway, we climbed everywhere....Los Angeles, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Northern California, Mexico, Arizona, Spain, France & the island of Mallorca.  It was so great...it was our life,  until I was pulling too hard on a hold and felt this pull in my arm, right where my elbow bends.  It stopped my climbing, forever.  I could never get it to heal.  I stopped for 1 year and then went back to try again and I re-injured it.  So I stopped climbing, so did Bruce.  We moved on to surfing and then cycling. 

3 weeks ago we were in the gym and we were weight training.  I had been using pretty light weights and Bruce said "add a bit more", I didn't want to, he said it's wasn't that much and dropped on 10 lbs..I pull it up and "OUCH"....I knew that I re-injured my arm again.  It hurt when I picked up a bag, when I reached into the fridge and pulled out the soy milk, it started to hurt all the time and it would wake me up at night.  Not good.  So....off I went to the acupuncturist. 

Last year I had really bad shoulder pain.  One of our clients works at Yosan University, which is an accredited acupuncture university.  You go to school there for 5 years and then spend 1 year practicing in the clinic under one of the Dr's.  It's $30.00 for a visit.  Last year they fixed me up in 3 visits.  Wham bam, done!  So I called them up and went yesterday for my first visit.  It feels a bit better, but I have to go back on Thursday and the Monday and they think that should be enough.  It seems to be a pretty easy thing to treat.

I must say the whole Eastern medicine "idea" intrigues me.  The ying and yang, the meridians, it all seems to make sense and it works.  It also doesn't hurt at all.  The needles are so thin, they slide right in, then you lay there (i have a heat lamp on my arm) for about 20 minutes with the needles in and then they pull them out and off you go.  I had 3 needles in my right arm, around my elbow and then 1 in the left side of my left knee.  She started with the 1 in my left knee, she put it in and then made me hold my bag and lift it up and down while she twirled the needle into my leg (again, didn't hurt a bit)....there was pain at first, but then as I continued it was almost gone.  Amazing. 

If you haven't tried acupuncture and have back, knee, ankle, arm, shoulder or pain anywhere else, try it....it works!  It also helps with sinus problems, headaches and other internal problems (with kidney, digestive, thyroid, etc....). I'll keep you posted on my progress.  I don't like being in pain, all day, all the time...especially when it wakes you up in the middle of the night - that dull ache is such a drag.

Think I'll stick with my light weights!