three weeks out

Well as of today, it’s three weeks until we depart for Los Angeles International Airport, with luggage, carryons, and three animal carriers. In two weeks from today, we will have a 20 foot container dropped off on our driveway with two days to load it. Today Cindy is picking up our renewed year long Visa’s, and we’re getting really close to critical point on a lot of fronts. We have a portion of our items inventoried and packed for the container, another third is in the garage awaiting being photographed and packed, and then the remainder is in the house breeding in cabinets. I fully expect to be surprised by the amount of unaccounted for items. I’m really not worried though, as when the container is filling up we will weed out the least needed items, we already have pruned our belongings to essentials.
We have revised and re-revised our plan for months on end, from renovating for the Gites, to renovating the house to have a couple rooms to let as a bed and breakfast, then doing the renovations for the Gites the following year. The budget has been an interesting cornucopia of numbers throughout this process, ebbing and flowing as the plan evolves and the housing market continues its freefall. We have fine tuned our financial exposure to the point where Cindy and I can talk on the phone and quote the different item costs on the three page spread sheet from memory. I think I am at the point where my biggest focus is on what has to be done prior to the container showing up, the animals have their required shots and implanted microchips, we have loads of packing material in part thanks to our new neighbors that just arrived from the Ivory Coast. I am still working for the same company that I was employed by when we left for France for four months last year; it’s hard to stay focused when my heart is elsewhere, but they have been so good to me that I maintain a high level of quality.
We still have our cars to sell, find good renters for the house in Topanga, celebrate Caleigh’s fourteenth birthday, slog through Christmas, ho, ho, ho. And to top it off the equity loan is slowly finalizing itself, we still have the little battles like the value of our house via the appraiser, where he got his values from was a complete fiasco, and the comps were from another community, so that affected the loan amount. The required amount we need for this little endeavor will require the loan supervisor to relook at the comps we submitted, and hopefully jog the amount upward a little. But anything worth having is worth fighting for, we have our sights focused on the life we want and I think we will get there with a lot of effort and a little luck.
Cindy just called and told me that when we applied for the year long Visa renewal and the original visa extension permit, they approved the Visa extension permit. That is quite a bit of good news, as we can hopefully then apply for the Carte de sejour (yearlong resident visa)have the local Marie (mayor) stamp it to renew it annually, which is much easier than going to the Prefectionaire and resubmitting reams of documents, that all have to be less than 3 months old. Ever try getting an original copy from Maine of a birth certificate then have it sent to France, sure it was surprisingly easy from California, but I can’t even imagine the process from overseas.
As I said it will take a lot of effort and a little bit of luck, just like life.

reality isn’t the world you imagine it to be.

When I was young growing up in Maine, we would visit our grandfather at his cabin on a lake in the summer. Before we arrived, we would imagine motoring about in his shiny aluminum boat, or sailing in his sleek fiberglass Sunfish sail boat, and camping out on the lawn overnight. The week would consist of summer weather, starlit nights, and cool breezes. We would talk about having a fishing contest, swimming to the float platform 50 yards off shore…life was limitless and food never tasted so good ,ah ‘youth.
Most of those memories still hold true in the back of my mind, but if I think back real hard, I remember a different reality, one of mosquitoes and no-seeum’s, a smelly old sears and roebuck metal boat with two inches of bilge water, and splintery oars as the motor invariably would not be working, and the sailboat was useless on a lake with no breezes but plenty of leeches. I felt like Humphrey Bogart playing Katherine Hepburn’s future betrothed pulling the African Queen through leech infested waters, except the water in Maine is a constant 52 degrees, warm enough for leeches to breed like… well horny leeches I guess, and cold enough where a guy wanted indoor plumbing, if you get my drift.
If any of you have visions of Cindy, Caleigh, and I living a lifestyle of walking about fields of grapevines, or sipping Rose’ in the comfort of a shade structure overlooking the garden and orchard, or traveling all about the environs of France stopping at roadside café’s, well that reality is three to four years off. The reality of it is more likely going to be planting and pruning vines into the wee hours of the night, with blistered hands and a certain young lady griping about not having bunches of fun. And we will also have to replant the garden, dig and plant trees and build a shade structure long before we will enjoy any shade from the arbor. And as for driving about stopping at these to die for café’s, we won’t have the budget for the café’s or even the frivolous gas money to waste, nope we’ll be not to unlike George and Lenny walking about our constant renovation projects.
It starts with Cindy asking.
“Tell me again about the plan, living the life of riley and having people coming in droves to rent our holiday lets.”
To which Caleigh will add.
“And rabbits Dad, and how I can have one for my very own, and I can hug em and squeeze em, and keep em all my live long days?”
To which my reply will most likely be.
“With our budget darling, I invited your rabbit to dinner last night, and he was delicious”
We have been doing a constant re-planning of our departure to France, and getting our seed money together. The process has taught us that no matter what we learn of the process, you have to relearn it anew and differently each step of the way. We have applied to two different lenders and chosen one, only to restart the process again, as there were limitations to the policies that weren’t discussed with us. We had attained a yearlong Visa, and then applied for and was accepted for a Cart De sejour, a yearlong residency card. However the visa ran out Nov. 1st, and it cancelled the residency card due to not having the local Marie (Mayor) sign it prior to us leaving last time we were there. So we now have to reapply for a second yearlong visa, and then apply for the residency card. There should not be much problem getting these documents, but had we known what was required back then, we would not have to go three steps back. But then the real reality of it strikes home, the help in so many different ways from family and friends, documents are e-mailed from continent to continent, time zone to time zone. I can’t even start to list off all the phone calls made on our behalf, to neighbors asking if they wouldn’t mind watching the farm and our mail until we returned, those same neighbors are even turning off the water to the house, because we aren’t going to be back until after Christmas, and don’t want an ice rink in our living room, complete with burst pipes. Sure we have had to go back and forth on so many things, but reality isn’t the world you imagine it to be.

That's a brilliant idea, Stanley!

After being back in Los Angeles for a couple weeks and reviewing how powerless we are with the housing market, and our perceived desirability of our house, another idea has arisen from the ashes. We could refinance our house and get an equity loan, rent our house and start the required work needed on the French farmhouse. Cindy could stay in L.A. temporarily for a month, and complete her obligation at her work. This would allow Caleigh and I to go to France with the two dogs, allow Caleigh to get into her school, and I could get the house running. This mainly consists of updating the Kitchen and bath, adding a bath upstairs, and getting the house into the 21st century, phone, satellite, and wifi. The broader idea is that we could tap into our equity and keep the house in our name, then re list it in a couple years, when the market would be hopefully more desirable. There are so many variables in the entire plan that we have tried to adapt without placing ourselves squarely in the field of fire for the financially inept planners. Not unlike tap dancing in the middle of a chapter 13 minefield. It reminds me of that hysterical scene in the old “Black Adder” British TV show, when Black Adder (Rowan Atkinson) has been ordered to lead a charge against the numerically superior German line in World War I . “I would rather stand on top of a 10 foot step ladder in no man’s land at midnight, and have a lantern strapped to my head, while I lit a dozen cigarettes, and sang God Save the Queen.”
Our thinking is that while we are working on the modernization of the French farmhouse, we would be adding substantial equity to it, while our house in Topanga rides out the drastic decline that has been the housing market. If we rented our house in L.A., it would generate the mortgage, and property taxes, basically placing it in financial hibernation. Well that’s our two year plan, don’t try this at home. The main reason I’m writing this is to illustrate the many tangents that are followed in order to follow ones dream, as we chronicle this process I wanted to include the highs and lows and a good look at what transpires and changes in all facets of our journey. There are so many different things that we have to consider on a daily basis that the casual onlooker might not realize that these are decisions we have to make. Some decisions are easy and some hard, and the possibility that one decision could financially ruin us. But Cindy and I agree with that old line I keep throwing out, “There are no luggage racks, on a hearse.”

Is time on your side?

After signing the required documents with the Notaire in Duras, Cindy and I followed the seller to the property where he gave us a quick tour. The word I remembered the most from our guide was the word “canalization”, while walking in a certain moist area of the pasture near the small pond he would point his finger and trace an imaginary line from one area to another and look at me and say canalization. Then while walking to the front of the main house he would mention the kitchen and shower and again point off to the low area of the property and say canalization. I understood him to imply that there was a gray water system that was not described in the septic report. Canalization, I now know from looking it up means, “Pipes; main pipe; pipe work, ground level pipe work, and so on.”
When Cindy and I were in the early stages of planning, some would argue that we were at the early stages of madness, I put together a spreadsheet and schedule for what I thought was the full scope of required work. This scope of work luckily included an entire mechanical system for the guest quarters, including the purchase of a used small excavator or “mini pelle” as they call it if France. As we were walking with the seller, there was a point where it all seemed so gigantic in scope, but after a few days cleaning the farmhouse, I was able to walk the site and rethink the scope, and must say that I still feel it is possible. That belief could be the results of the bacterial infection, from cleaning centuries of spider feces, to my nervous system and the added result of good French wine, but the longest journey starts with the first step…..right off the cliff.
I think the biggest obstacle is going to be the roof and treatment of the “poutrage” or girder work, framework of beams. Firstly the waterproofing of the entire roof structure, and then the aesthetic treatment of the interior beams from the standpoint of how it looks when you are in the unit and everything is finished. I know things will work themselves out, but this is the kind of sequencing and coordinating area that takes so many trades into account. If you start down a path in construction without a game plan, things will work out, but costing twice the time and money as a well planned project should require. I know my first project for the income aspect of the property, will be the foundation strengthening and coordinating all the conduits and sleeves required to be laid out prior to pouring a slab for the finished flooring to be installed on. That will be the most difficult planning to do, a real Rubik’s cube, but also the most rewarding as well. I really look forward to trenching for all the mechanical system requirements, then installing the conduits and pipes before finally covering everything with concrete and starting the forward part of construction. The initial demolition and trenching can’t be started until there is a complete agreement as to the final design of the three separate units. This will be amusing to look back and read this right before the concrete pour, thinking what an imbecile, “I looked forward to this, my kid hates me, and my wife ran off with a mime and didn’t say a word.”
It is at this stage where none of the accessory perks or fun items even sink into my head, the vines, farming the land, or even swimming in the planned pool. No at this stage I’m completely focused on the early stages of construction, and how I can’t wait to start. Cindy unfortunately is mired in the here and now, is our house going to sell, will Caleigh be able to start her school in time in France, how are we going to manage getting our property tax up in time , and sometimes even if this is meant to be. I am operating from the vantage point of ignorance, thinking that this is meant to be and things will work out, which isn’t really fair when Cindy wakes up at 5:00 am with constant doubt swimming through her head, and getting ready to start her day. In a few months we should have a better feeling as to where we are, but that’s true of life. Perspective is a gift of life, the longer you live the more perspective you have.

Trying to get a few rooms ready for our hopeful return.

There have been so many events happening in the process of selling our house and buying the French farm that one could draw parallels and see things as signs. The most striking “sign” that this was so meant to be was that while signing the final papers for the farm, across the oceans, someone had made an offer on the Topanga house. WOW!, talk about your lattice of coincidence, kismet party of two. Regretfully a week later, the buyer had to back out as there were unresolved family issues, which caused family issues at our home. So we continued cleaning the farmhouse, and taking the ever growing pile of debris, bag by bag into the barn. Having accomplished the cleaning to the degree that our time allowed we set upon the next critical item we needed to accomplish prior to our departure back to California, the painting of Caleigh’s bedroom. She had expressed wanting a bedroom that wasn’t like some old museum exhibit, and it so happened there was one room in the whole house that didn’t belong in “Brideshead revisited” or the “Bride of Frankenstein” for that matter. In the front hall as you go towards the main stairway there is a room off to the left that was added later in the history of this house, kind of non descript, but the door way to it is another of the architectural details that I love so. It’s a deep wall the goes into the room, so they built in paneling in the surround as you enter, on the wall and above at the header there is nice light blue stained woodwork. The effect is that of entering a formal reception room, however small enough that it could be a nice bedroom, 3 meters by 4 meters with an eight foot ceiling height, add in a folding screen and the divider could make a fun room for a teenage young lady. Ok, so off to the hardware store to get the needed supplies, so let’s get to it. I leave the house and head for the nearest large town, Saint Foy Le Grand, how fun. Cindy had stayed behind to tackle the front walkway with the Cat urine infused foliage.
I remembered seeing a rather nice looking hardware store the size of a small home depot that looked promising a few days earlier, the phrase of Keep it simple stupid escaped me as I drove further and further into the Dordognian country side. I could have sworn it was this way, as I reached Saint Emillion 40 minutes after I had set out; I guessed the gig was up, , and headed back the way I had come. Half way home I stopped at a rather unrewarding looking junior varsity hardware shop and went in. Malibu Barbie’s friend without benefits, Ken, would have been right at home here, it looked like an overpriced 99cent tool store on meth. I made my way to the paint-paint brush- lawn care aisle and proceeded to shop for the needed items. The first thing I needed was paint, “something off white but not to dark and not to white” Just so you know, I knew when Cindy described the color she….we wanted, that it was a perfect setup for “didn’t you listen, I said not to dark or to white”. So I chose green, no actually I chose Ivory, not the soap either. Then I looked over all the brushes and bought a decent one, not one of those 25 dollar masterpieces either. The rollers were a lot narrower than in the States, but what you gonna do. I also bought some more of the miracle acid, paint tray for the paint and returned home to the cleaner farmhouse. Well the paint was not unlike rolling on yogurt, and turns out it was this soupy consistency, and the disposable rollers could barely apply it. After the 2 liter sized can was empty, with only the short wall covered it became evident that we would need more paint and a much better painter. I have painted so many walls, ceilings, and house exteriors that this experience blindsided me, after screwing up the courage and the first attempt of painting in a foreign country Cindy and I set off to get more paint. Let’s just say the discussion about the trek I took to get the first pail of paint didn’t go swimmingly. After it was determined, unanimously I might add, what a bumbling nitwit my navigational, decision making skills, and that my overall attitude was lacking, we continued on our romantic drive across the country side. After stopping at two hardware stores trying to find the exact same make and color, we struck pay dirt. We also bought another roller, as the one I bought didn’t have the ability to have an extension pole inserted into it, boy did I wish I was that particular roller at this point. I tracked down an associate working in the paint, paint brush, lawn care aisle and pointed at my hands, she walked a few steps down the aisle and pointed at the white spirit labeled bottle. I bought two, turns out the paint was oil based, not the acrylic I had thought, I swear the label said Acrylic, but probably said it covered as well as acrylic but harder to get off. Gleefully I left the store with our new purchases, Cindy was slowly getting out of her funk and so we returned back to the farmhouse. We managed to get Caleigh’s walls and ceiling painted, and cleaned out; but needing to sand the floor and then seal it, but that would happen upon our return. The photo at the header is of Caleighs bedroom entry, as a before photo, with some chairs that were fortunately gone when we returned. We love the Farmhouse with all its shortcomings, the property has potential, and the community has been so kind to us. Petit Clos, its name and it’s address, has a sign to it as well, take the first initials of its name, and the first initial of my last name and Cindy’s maiden name Carlyle, and they are the same P and C. But again that’s just the lattice of coincidence, which I’ll probably have to paint as well, because I love painting lattice.

Part two of the Andromeda Stain

Having finally shaken the worst of the mutated flu strain, we approached the next day skeptically, should we go out and purchase hazmat suits? With the windows open and the plug in air scent freshener installed, the house was manageable. I spent a couple hours cleaning the stairway and felt there was a spot now in the house that was spotless, the wooden handrails, balustrades, risers and treads are one of my favorite architectural details of this house. I then made my way upstairs and surveyed the elevated bedchambers. The second floor hall runs the entire length of the building, two meters wide by ten long, there are two bedrooms, side by side, each five meters square. The ceiling heights are roughly nine feet high. My plan is to add a bathroom on the second floor, and possibly a powder room for the other bedroom. The details that really made the building was the fireplaces; the first floor bedroom has a carrera marble fireplace that is beautiful, the second floor has only one fireplace, it is also quite beautiful. As I walked the second floor I couldn’t even start thinking of the potential it held, I was so distracted by the stacks of junk. I started filling bags and taking down loads to our ever filling barn and finally only had to sweep the floors. This accomplished I brought up Cindy and showed her the future suite we would hopefully call home, aside from the lingering fecal swampy aroma, it was romantic. We ended the day with a walk between the rows of sauvignon blanc vines which were harvested earlier in the day, it is such a small quantity for this area (one acre) that the mechanical picker managed the task in a hour. We each brought a glass of the local red wine and unwound by making our way from the vines to the five acre woods. As we approached the house, we weren’t intimidated by the existing aroma, we had wanted to make our mark on the house, it seems we have to eliminate someone else’s first.

Pack all your troubles in a big trash bag.

After a couple days at the farm, we realized that the grocery store variety cleaning solvents weren’t making a dent in the accumulated film of disgust. We drove to a couple different shops and got bolder and bolder with cleaning solutions, unfortunately they weren’t the solution. The French have an odd assortment of DIY hardware stores, they start at the really cheap quality type small hardware stores, and work their way up the ladder to Brico-marche, and end up in trade specific stores that are really expensive. We found a good compromise and I chose some type of acid that could be diluted down from mild to varying strengths. We also bought a couple rakes that were really cheaply made, but we needed something to get the cat urine infused leaves out of the front yard. We were getting depressed and also slightly hallucinogenic due to the stench, after breathing this infusion in for the third day, Cindy was the first to fall. It started with her throat being irritated and worked its way into her sinus, what with the existing blend of the jet lag and hanging on effects of the canned airline air already stored in her system, she was a candidate for a mutated flu. So she slowed down, and went to bed earlier and woke up later, but she still worked at her nonstop pace. I meanwhile started using the acid in a couple different dilutions, and really the only formula that worked was with the acid uncut. So I decided to attack the worst offender, the first floor bathroom; who am I kidding, the only bathroom in the house. Well I poured a quarter cup of the bubbly on the floor and using rubber gloves spread it over a 2 foot square area of the floor with a floor brush. The result was instantaneous, the acid ate into the grout lines with bubbling, foaming efficiency, then using a water soaked rag, I went over the foaming results and swiped up the grime. The underside of the rag was loaded up with forty years of filth, looking down at the floor was rewarding. It resembled one of those T.V. commercials, with the scrubbing bubbles and the spotless streak in the wake of the cartoon scrubbers. For the rest of the day I was on acid watch, I finished the rest of the bathroom, and did a test sample in the kitchen, same results. We were making a dent in the first floor, and then I got hit with the modified plague, so we went for a drive to blow out the stench from our systems. We went to a store that sold appliances and furniture and browsed around. We did need a refrigerator for our temporary kitchen setup, so we milled around the fridge isle, then made our way to the mattress area. I didn’t mention that our furniture collection consisted of a bed, mattress, bedside table, and an armoire. It’s my belief that this bed was the final resting place of the sellers mother, may she rest in peace,… elsewhere. So there was the need to get our own mattress, even though Cindy had brought a new set of bed linen, mattress pad, and duvet. We even placed one of the existing linen table clothes under the mattress pad; still we need to feel unaccompanied while we sleep. We got a dormitory sized refrigerator and stuffed it into the rear of the little Renault. We finished milling about the store and drove home. I placed the fridge in the decidedly cleaner kitchen and Cindy and I continued bagging debris and shuttling it out to the barn. Our collection of trash was getting sizeable, but we wouldn’t be scheduling a container until our return. There were still a couple days of hauling bags-o-crap from the house, but the flu set in and we quit early that evening. I would wake up 40 hours later and venture from the bed, weak but glad the worst had passed. My main memory of this plague was the constant waking throughout the night and fighting for a comfortable position while trying to sleep. My body has never ached to the degree it did those 40 hours of hell, I would get up every 10 minutes and stand up gingerly stretching to alleviate cramping. I guess if you want to make lemonade from lemons, the good thing was I was so stuffed up; that the ringing odor of stench was barely perceivable due to my sinus’s being stuffed. We were now over the halfway point of our trip, but more than halfway completed with the house cleaning.