Paris — Page 8

Rain and Wind

October 17, 2019 at 11:03 am by Claudia

First: I’m shocked, as is everyone, at the loss of Representative Elijah Cummings today. He was a true patriot, a civil rights leader, and a man of great integrity. May he rest in peace. I’m deeply greatful for his service to our country.

A profound loss for our country.

________________________

Thank you for all of your incredibly supportive comments on yesterday’s post! I’m glad you understand and you clearly do. We’re very excited, of course, and have a lot to do before we leave, but it will all work out and we’ll soon be in our favorite city.

We had torrential rain yesterday afternoon, evening, and throughout the night – along with winds. There are a lot of catalpa leaves on the ground this morning and we have a wind advisory for the rest of the day. And maybe tomorrow, as well.

You know by now that I do not like high winds. Especially winds that go on all day long.

Looks like I can’t rake or mow the lawn. We’re due for more rain today. I’ll try to do both before we leave but whatever happens, happens. We did get the gutters cleaned out yesterday; in fact, it started raining heavily while Don was still on the roof. I told him to come down and he did. We also ran a couple of errands. I needed a new handbag that was big enough for the trip. Does anyone else still call it a purse? I do and I feel like I have to stop myself and say ‘bag’ or ‘handbag’ instead. But they’ll always be purses to me.

I also needed an ‘in-between’ jacket. Not winter-heavy, not early fall light. We found a nice one that was on sale. And there you go!

Now I have to do things like hold the mail, buy some travel sizes of things we need, find the timers for the lights, do laundry, decide what to pack, etc.

Thank you again. Love you all.

Happy Thursday.

The Answer

October 16, 2019 at 8:35 am by Claudia

Late in the day yesterday, I found a surprise rosebud in the memorial garden. Wonderful!

We had a lovely day together in Rhinebeck yesterday. Perfect sunny and beautiful fall weather. Don found a couple of books, I found two, as well, we had lunch at a pizzeria that has been there for years – we had paninis – and we walked around town for a bit. It’s a rare day when we are together on one of these little daytrip adventures. Usually, we’re running errands, etc., separately. Today, we’re going to run another errand together. Too much togetherness? Nah.

I’ll share a bit more of Rhinebeck with you tomorrow, but here is one of my favorite old houses on the main drag. I think it may have been converted into a business.

I love the charm of Carpenter Gothic homes.

As to our trip –

No, we’re not going to Michigan. (Don drove there last January to retrieve my stuff from my friend’s basement.)

No, we’re not off on a leaf peeping trip. We don’t really need to do that as we live in a place that is spectacularly beautiful in the Fall. People come from all over just to spend the weekend here.

No, the miniature show in Philadelphia is not until November and I’m not sure I’m going to go anyway.

No to any spot in New England – it’s lovely, but I used to live there, and both Don and I have spent a lot of time there over the years, separately and together.

No to Florida, though we do need to go there in the next year to see family and Little Z.

No to Canada, though my family is from Canada and it’s beautiful, but I’ve also spent a lot of time there over the years. No to Montreal, though we haven’t been there and do want to visit someday.

We’re going to Paris.

A few months back, Don stood up and said: “We’re going to Paris.” I was surprised, to say the least. But he knew how much I longed to go back there. Turns out he did, too. We talked about it all the time.

We had the usual discussions about timing and money and is this a good idea and all the things that creep into any conversation about this sort of thing. Especially from me.

We thought about it all day long and decided to go. I wrote to the hotel we stayed in last year and they told me they were booked through October 19th, so we decided to leave on the 20th and made our reservation. We got a pretty good deal on our air fare. We set aside money from our recent respective jobs for the cost of the hotel.

Then we had to pay additional taxes.

This week, I thought long and hard about it and brought the whole thing up to Don and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go.” I reeled off a list of maybe-in-the-future expenses, some quite probable, some not. Our plane tickets are non-refundable, so we’d be out that money, but we could cancel the hotel up until 24 hours before our arrival.

Maybe we should just stay home.

We gave ourselves 24 hours to think about it. I meditated and really didn’t get any sense of direction. Every time I saw a photo of Paris, I felt sad. Anyway, later that day Don said, “Of course we’re going to Paris!” I said I didn’t want to talk about it until the next morning. But by the next morning, I felt fairly positive about the whole thing (an answer?) Turns out, the day before, Don had secretly bought tickets to a production of Moliere’s The Miser at a well known theater near the Eiffel Tower. So he had already made his decision.

So we’re going.

Here’s the thing: we wanted to go a second time because who knows what life has in store and maybe this is the one chance we’ll get to go. We wanted another week there in which we were freed from frantically trying to see everything and, instead, could just be. Where we could sit in the park for hours, if we wanted to. Where we could explore neighborhoods. Where we could sit in a cafe for an entire afternoon, should we choose to. Where we could walk along the Seine and hold hands and celebrate our anniversary and get away from the chaos in our country for a week.

So we’re going to do it. We leave on Sunday night, will arrive on Monday. And we’ll head back home the following Tuesday. We’re doing it on a budget. We just want to soak up the atmosphere and beauty of that incredible city.

I often react from a place of fear. I’m working on being practical yet not sinking into fear. I can’t control the future, nor should I try. But that’s what I attempt to do time after time. So many times in my life, I have made decisions based on a fear of the unknown or of what might happen. Cautious Claudia was one of my childhood nicknames.

Life is too short not to go for it.

We’re excited. It was just yesterday, by the way, that we shelved our idea of cancelling the trip.

Anyway, there’s your answer.

Happy Wednesday.

Walking and Reading

September 4, 2019 at 11:12 am by Claudia

An interesting photo with some spectral images and that bit of pink in the lower left hand corner might be my finger. I’m not sure. Nonetheless, I like it for those very reasons. Also, this day lily blooms earlier in the summer and then comes through with a few unexpected blossoms at the end of the summer. I’m always surprised. It makes me smile.

I’ve been getting to my post a bit later than usual, as we are committed to taking our morning walks. We wake up (Don gets up earlier than me), we read for an hour or so while drinking our first cup of coffee. I reluctantly get up and put on my jeans and we head out on our neighborhood walk, whereupon I immediately exclaim at the beauty around us and am happy we did it. After the walk, I make our second cup of coffee and we sit and chat. I scroll through Instagram. Then I sit down and write a post.

While on our walk, we chatted with a neighbor who saw mama bear looking for food in her trash can a couple of days ago. She’s trying to feed her cubs. All of us in this neighborhood love our wildlife and we do our best to honor and respect those creatures. We are protective of them. They’re black bears, by the way, who are more afraid of us than we are of them. They are not likely to harm anyone unless that person threatens them or a cub. And we wouldn’t do that. So I’m not nervous. Actually, I’d like to see the two cubs!

We’re expecting rain and thunderstorms later today and it is looking rather gloomy out there. I mowed part of the front lawn yesterday afternoon and Don mowed the rest when he got home. There’s still more to go, but that will have to wait a day or two.

Still immersed in the world of Shakespeare and Company Paris – a fascinating history of both incarnations; the first bookstore started by Sylvia Beach in 1919, shut down by the Nazis in 1941, and the second incarnation, started by George Whitman on the Rue de Bûcherie across the Seine from Notre Dame in 1951. It is now run by George’s daughter, Sylvia Whitman. George was a democratic socialist and believed in helping writers, giving shelter to those who needed it in return for a couple of hours of work in the bookshop each day, who invited one and all to read, rest, have meetings, take part in social causes. I just finished reading about the 60s and 70s in the bookstore. In 1968, that tumultuous year, there were fiery protests all over Paris. The bookshop was refuge for draft dodgers and protestors. One story, shared by an American, is of being chased by the police (he had taken part in a demonstration) and finding no refuge as all neighboring shop doors were locked. Finally, he saw Shakespeare and Company, where a light was on. He was greeted by George, who immediately figured out what was going on and urged the young man to hide upstairs, as George locked the door and turned out the light. A fascinating man with a huge heart, who lived well into his nineties.

Here’s the exciting day ahead: doing lots of laundry. Don’t be too jealous, okay?

Happy Wednesday.

Rain and Wind

The Answer

Walking and Reading

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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