As the days begin to grow shorter (that’s an odd turn of phrase, now that I think about it), so does the end of our sabbatical draw ever nearer. We knew this was inevitable when we started but now that it’s only a month or so away, it’s in my thoughts quite a bit.
Brief aside: as I’ve been thinking about the change of season this past week, I’ve had a song in my head whose lyrics include “autumn’s coming on slowly” (by my cousin Flip Frisch called North Avenue Blues). Anyway, I’ve been meaning to play it and just as I started writing this post, it came on our “jukebox”, which is set to random. Serendipity in action.
I can’t say I’m happy about the prospect of returning to work but it’s actually been happening gradually for the past few months ever since I started working on the eLeaf prototype back in May. I’ve got a second project on the go at the moment which means working at least 8 and closer to 10 hours every day. The plan is for eLeaf to pay me a salary starting in November so I’ll be officially full time then. At the same time, we’re still in a beautiful environment and I’ve always loved working from home so it’s a good transition back into the working world.
The garden is more or less done for the year. We’ve got a few tomatoes still growing, plus a few squash. The courgette are finally finished as are the beans. The corn is still growing and we’re starting to see signs of ears; it’s just got to make it another three weeks and then we’ll be rolling in it (not literally). I made a few things with squash this past week including Garden Vegetable Enchiladas, Curried Squash Stew with Quinoa and Veggie chili. I’m trying a recipe for a fig tart tomorrow – it’s puff pastry topped with figs, bleu cheese, rosemary and carmelized onions.
The kitties are good but not too happy about the change in the weather. It was decent last week but it’s getting cold at nights and today it was cloudy and cool with temps around 15C (60F). They still went out but poor Smoo ended up on Will’s shoulders shivering after awhile. We’re learning that Louis (aka Sausage) is a bit of a strange puss. Smoo is gregarious, inquisitive and completely impulsive. We thought Louis was just calm but now we’re starting to think he’s a bit autistic. The best word to describe him is aloof.
And that takes me to my next tid-bit: the oddities of the French language. Will has mentioned their penchant to use a string of words to describe a word, rather than just coming up with a single word. In English, we have the word “aloof”. In French, it is “personne distant”. Another one is “tongue-twister”, which in French is “phrase amusante pour exercice de diction”, or “funny phrase for practicing diction”. Apparently, they have tongue-twisters, they just haven’t bothered to name them.
Our only other activity is house-hunting. It’s going a lot more slowly than I’d like but we really want to avoid paying real estate agent fees and that makes it harder to locate places for sale. Will has been scouring the french on-line classifieds and we’ve found a few that way. He sent an email to all the Mairies (mayors) around Nontron, at least ten or so in all. They are meant to have listings of all the houses for sale in their jurisdiction but we only heard back from two so we’ll have to go in in person this week and see what’s up.
One of them passed on the email to a friend of hers with a place for sale. Apparently, her email isn’t working so the friend had to print it out and give it to her that way. Will only mentioned that we were in the Commune of Monsec, an area of a few square miles with 2000 people. Anyway, the seller and her husband got in their car and drove to Monsec, then went around to the various hamlets until they tracked us down. As Will said, this is the French version of “forward” and “reply”. So we went to see their place the next day. On paper, it meets all of our criteria with the small exception of the price. The house is a converted barn and the husband has done a fair bit of work on it including a new kitchen. Despite this, it was a bit small and oddly cut up. It has potential but we’d have to live with it for at least a few years before we could afford to do the kind of work it needs. It’s a functioning farm – they showed us their produce from this year and it was a staggering large amount including many jars of green beans, mounds of potatoes, tomatoes and onions. They also have a run with chickens and ducks that they eat and make into pate etc.
We saw another place today, also an old barn but this one was really more of a holiday home. It would need extensive work if not a complete rebuild and is located a bit far from where we want to be. We’re waiting to hear back from a number of people about viewings which is a bit surprising considering how much of a buyer’s market it is these days. We’re not in a rush to leave here, we’d just rather be in our own place and not have to pay rent. I’m sure it will happen with a bit of patience.
Finally, I should mention a milestone that just passed. Will and I celebrated 8 years together on the 21st. We thought about going out but in the end, we just had a bottle of champagne that we enjoyed before dinner. I guess that means we’re over the seven year itch, not that there’s anywhere to scratch it even if we wanted to.