Un Mois

One month into this new life of ours and we are now totally empty nesters.  We put Chelsea on her plane this morning and back to Chicago she went.  Was very sad to see her go but hopefully we can get out to see her in September and watch a few of her games so it won’t be so long until we see her again.  We drove up to Paris yesterday - it turns out it takes about 5 hours - most of the way on the motorway there is a 130km an hour speed limit which helps!  We hired a car for the trip as although we have finally signed up to buy a car we don’t pick it up until Wednesday this week.  John can finally have his little Peugeot back too which I am sure he will be happy about!
We have had a pretty good week - once Chels and I got back from our little side trip we drove to Albi in Tarn to look for a car as there wasn’t a lot about locally.  After we managed to buy a car from a dealer who spoke pretty much no English (yay for Google translate) we decided to go home via Toulouse to go to Ikea - we got a few homey things like some kitchen cabinets so that we could make the barn a little bit more comfortable - Paul hates Ikea with a passion so this was a bit stressful for him but he has got over it by now - and the barn looks much more like a home - see pic of the kitchen.

I don’t want to make the barn too comfortable though as I would like to get into the house sooner rather than later but it is nice to be able to put things away somewhere and have our food somewhere any critters can’t get too.
Paul has still been spending days smashing up the tonnes of concrete from the wine vat - it still hasn’t gone completely - hopefully by the end of this week it will be out of there.  It’s been a pain to work out what to do with all the rubble - Paul has decided to use it as road base for the entrance to the barn but it looks terrible at the moment and this also means he has to spend a long time breaking it into smaller pieces.  He assures me that we can later put some nice white quartz gravel over it so you won’t see it at all.  This will be better then barrowing it all down to the tree line of our block and dumping it like it seems is the normal thing to do….Paul also has been very busy doing loads of wiring and plumbing - it’s lovely to be able to turn on lights - have a hot shower etc.  Unfortunately still no fosse septic  so are still using the lovely cabine as we have to wait for the professionals to do the installation  - slightly odd that you can completely wire up your house but can’t put in the septic system by yourself!
Had a funny episode with our new washing machine.  We set the machine going for the first time then went out, when we got back the machine had walked its way to the middle of the barn - the next time we tried Chels had to hold it when in the spin cycle to stop it from smashing against the barn wall!  Paul kept saying I would have to send it back - this is slightly problematic when, A. dealing with an online store and B. said store is a French store.  I had the book out and tried to decipher the page that talked about setting up the machine but couldn’t understand it.  I finally went to our friends place to see about contacting the company and luckily I took the book with me - Aileen read out the page and it seems we had failed to release the drum or something which is held in by bolts in transit to stop it stretching or something - whooooppssiiee - luckily it still works like a charm now and you don’t have to arm wrestle it in the spin cycle!
Paul also got one of his ride on mowers working this week that he has bought from a neighbor - both hadn't been used for a while and weren't working but he has managed to make a working one out of the two.  He has happily mowing away when some of the neighbors turned up to warn him he was mowing the local ‘big’ farmers land.  Turns out it’s a bit confusing as to where the boundaries are - we actually have about 8 different blocks in a strange arrangement around the house - there is about 3 acres in total.  Paul then got the ‘cadastral’ out and they all had a chat about where they all think the boundries are - looks like another neighbor has also set up part of his garden on one of our blocks - oh well c’est la vie!

The mowers get unloaded - amazingly one now is a goer!

Up at Domme - for dinner with Chels before she left - check out that view!!

Tomota and mozarella salad - this is on the menu quite often at our place - this is how tomatoes are meant to taste!!

We still haven’t been able to get the phone or internet connected to the house - the man from France Telecom came a couple of weeks ago but he couldn’t find where the conduit from the house met the main switch on the road so he left pretty cranky and apparently we now have to find it ourselves before making another appointment.  Paul has dug several very deep holes trying to find it without breaking the pipe for the village water (that wouldn’t make us very popular!) - this has taken ages in itself as the ground is a heavy clay and it has been very dry lately so it is extremely hard.  We may have to resort to contacting the previous owners to see if they know where it is located.
Well tomorrow I get to pick up the ‘boys’ - our two ginger cats have been at a cattery in Australia and are getting shipped out as we speak - I really hope they will forgive us for dumping them in a strange place for so long but I am sure in a couple of weeks they will be totally immersed in the French way of life and have become happy little ‘chats’!! Can't wait to see them - sad isn't it haha.

We came home one day to find this sign propped up against our post box - one of our neighbors, Michel, does them for the village - how lovely - Paul has been practising all week how to say thankyou in his best French!  And now he has to work out how best to place it at the entrance..