A continental and intercontinental challenge.

This is the view from our house. While it is peaceful and lovely to look at, it is also a lonely place.

We have been house-bound for the last couple of years and are beginning to wish for a change. Any change.  Do any of you out there swap your houses?

How is it done?
What precautions do you take?
What insurances do you carry?
How does it all work?

My husband doesn't think anyone would want to spend time here, too remote he says.
I think anyone who lives in a city would love to spend time on a remote beach.

What do you think?
A swap with an apartment dweller in Philadelphia? Or a villa in Italy? How about a farm house outside of Melbourne?

We are open to possibilities, for one or two weeks, or.....

We've been there!

There is got to be something fishy about people who end up this far west of the Mississippi. Yesterday, while shopping in Coos at 3B's Nursery across the Coos River, we met Steven Michael, a young man with a penchant for talking and native plants.  He helped us choose woodland plants for an area frequented by deer.

He impressed me with his knowledge and helpfulness, and his interest in all things. He is a photographer and a traveler.

Fishy Ah?  A traveler who ends up by the westernmost point and has been everywhere. I wish I could say the same. Once, we wanted to travel all the time.

Now, we have too many requirements. We have become travel Divas.

Still, when we watch a movie like Iron Man (yesterday, at Coos, in a crowded theater where we had to take seats not to our liking) we recognized many of the sights. Yes, Malibu! There, New York!

Our bucket list of travel sights is enormous. We need to get going and not be derailed by bathroom remodeling or health issues.  Do you know that we haven't been to all of Europe, or all of South America, or none of Africa or the Middle East and Far East?

We are so inexperienced!
Moreover,  we're not very easy travelers when language or food can become big barriers.

So, meeting Steven was a joy. A young man who travels everywhere is living well, we thought. Good for him.

Do visit his blog by clicking this link: Oregon like no other

And take your Mother out of her kitchen and living room. Help her see the world. Remember, you were a detour in her life, a wonderful detour, but a very long one too. She probably never told you where she wanted to visit when she was your age.

Travel with her, and your lives will be forever linked.

Learning to do nothing and other stories of retirement.

It all started when we began to talk about retiring, sorting through our lives, anticipating leaving L.A. for good.  The first thing that came up was the wish to travel.  Both of us love to get up and go, at a moment's notice, without any plans, any baggage.  As a matter of fact, that was our honeymoon trip.  But, I'm digressing.

We looked at RVs and  travel trailers. We had traded in a comfortable passenger car for an SUV as our preparation step.  Hubby wanted a truck, a big one, with power. We compromised.  The SUV, we reasoned, could haul a travel trailer as well as transport passengers and gear. Neat uh!

We moved to Oregon with our books, computers, clothes,  and a telescope,  filling up the SUV.  We had moved a few times across the nation. Each time we moved for a good distance we ended up ditching every thing else.  You see, most of the stuff we owned came from Goodwill Industries; we just returned it for others to us.  But, our last move was different.  We had lived in one place for over twenty years, and had accumulated good stuff that our children were happy to take off our hands.  Since we were moving to a small cottage by the sea, smaller digs, we didn't need much, and didn't want anything that reminded us of our working days. 

In Brookings, sixty miles from Port Orford, a town big enough to have a furniture store, we stopped to purchase a bed. My American Express card was denied and it took a few manuvers to get that credit approved.  We bought three beds, one for each bedroom, just in case our children would rush up to visit and spend time with us. We also picked up lamps and a working desk. We bought kitchen utensils, plates, life vests and rain gear from the local hardware store.

We looked at RV's and trailers for months, driving to every lot. hours away, tried every model and we agreed on the one we wanted.  It looked like the one pictured above, a one unit that drove like a car, no set up problems, no worrying about hooking up anything.

Our house came with outdoor furniture and a canoe. Hubby and I would sit out on the deck, captivated by the whitecaps out on the Ocean visible from our deck.  We couldn't get enough of those views.  In the morning, we'd sit with coffee and the newspapers, and the evenings, we took out our telescope and stared at the stars.  Life on that deck stretched out like that for weeks until the rainy season.  The canoe waited for our children to visit.

It was after that first storm that we entertained the idea of purchasing an RV again and return to visit the children in L.A. Weeks of rain makes you want to escape for a while. 

Stay tuned for the continuation of this story.

Who needs Paris?

I do. Now that I can't sleep much at all, having a whole bunch of pictures to peruse during the wee hours of the morning is a wonderful way to pass the time. This weekend, we can reconnect. We'll pick up a baguette and some pate for Sunday brunch.

We had landed in Paris early in the morning, but the tour folks were hard to find. Hubby and I had our first French fight. He read the instructions regarding meeting the tour guide at some landmark right at the airport; I read the same and interpreted them differently, going up and down the elevators trying to find the correct exit.Hubby assumed the French I knew would be sufficient for airport navigation; I suddenly fixated on the wrong words, not aligning signs with instructions. What a mess.

That evening, we had our first view of the city and of course, of the illuminated landmark, the stars in the middle signifying the special time when France presided over the European Union. Hubby took this picture with his phone camera. His real camera needed batteries. For the rest of our vacation in France, we dropped into camera and electronic shops looking for batteries and/or recharge cables, neither of which we could obtain.

While I shopped for soaps, tapenades, nougat, hats and scarfs, Hubby stopped at electronic shops He did a lot of waiting for the right person to assist him. He'd come out frustrated because not enough people could speak English. He should have learned French in high school like the rest of us. If only he'd start with Bonjour.

As I rested at the hotel, Hubby walked down the block, and stopped to do a very French thing: purchase a baguette and some pate.

Tagged

We all played this game as children. On the blogs, it is played this way:someone tags you, you talk, you tag six more people.

Crystal from Be The Change you Want To See tagged me. Here are my
ramblings:

1. I have visited every state in the union, lived in three of them for more than five years and Oregon, where I now live, is my favorite. The other ones were California and Florida. I much prefer cooler weather and less humidity.

2.I still have not fulfilled one of my life's ambition to become a writer. This is my last frontier, a task that keeps me hitting the keyboard every morning at six. Because of this hunger in me, I've become more humble and patient with myself, forgiving and encouraging as well.

3. When I first came to this country as a teenager I thought all of America was like California. When we lived in Florida I realized that there are many Americas, many different strands and cultural pockets.

4. When I was seventeen I could speak five languages. Now, I barely remember Italian, my mother tongue, and totally forgot French and Latin. If something is not practiced, it is lost.

5. I finished my bachelor in four years, majoring in English. Considering that I could barely speak English when I first arrived in America, it was a major accomplishment. To those people who work with children from other countries, my advice is simple, show them that you care. They will learn English faster.

6. My wish is to travel in every continent. I have just begun.

Rules for this activity:write six random things,link to the person that tagged you, post the rules,and tag six more people.

The people I'm tagging today are:

1. Matawheeze
2. Cheri
3.Janis
4.Angela
5.Cheryl
6. Ruth

Good luck, and hope to see your ramblings soon.

What to buy in France

Most of us are shoppers, curious people, bargain hunters. The places we visited were full of shops with beautiful products made by local artisans. I kept looking for bargains as well. Since a Euro translated to one-dollar-fifty or thereabout, I was constantly adding 50% of the price of each item to have a full idea of the purchase price. Since France has a value-added-tax of 20% already in the price, it was hard to come up with the bottom line. I must add that in order to collect the value-added-tax at the airport, one must keep good receipts and read the fine print.

This is what I bought: soaps; jars of fleur-de-sel with herbes-de-Provence; jars of jams and tapenade; scarfs and berets; a wool shawl; books; hats; and two paintings. The last two purchases were made by my husband and are still on route. He fell in love with both the artists and the paintings and by the time we left the galleries, he had left his patrimony on the table. I can't wait for these to arrive.

I started by wanting to buy scarfs and porcelains. Frenchmen all wear scarfs with creative touches. It turns out one can spend the cost of a vacation on one Hermes scarf or one beautiful pill box. I gave full attention to these items and appreciated the workmanship and the quality. If any reader has the money and wants to purchase these on line, they will get the most beautiful designs and quality in the world. I just couldn't see wearing a scarf that cost more than an entire outfit I'd wear, including new shoes and new coiffure.

We had to dispose of some things to make room for our purchases, with airlines keeping tabs of all our luggages and charging plenty for going over 50 lbss. Simple, undergarment and ordinary T's. To replace them, it would just be a few dollars in the States. Besides, who wants to bring back dirty laundry?

Those readers who are curious about any of the elements of this post, from products to recipes, can obtain more information, including authentic Provencal recipes by posting a request.