Skeleton Crew

We're camping out in the house now. There's four mugs, a couple of dinner plates. A towel or two apiece. A pot, frying pan and baking dish. Two laptops, a couple paperbacks, a television that will soon be made redundant, the 4th season of Peep Show, some garden chairs and a wobbly old table. Suitcases as nightstands. And all our musical equipment - we have a gig in Le Dorat on Saturday.



The rest has made it up to England. Like a modern divorce where everyone co-operates, this is a modern house sale - the new owner came down with a load of stuff before the final completion date, and offered to take a load for us. Shipping from France is complicated - of all the ports in this country, right now only one will do container shipping of personal goods so getting space is difficult and expensive. So we go through England - that's where we'll put everything in a container for the US.



Packing has been all-consuming, that and healing. I'm going back to the fine doctor in Bordeaux tomorrow, hoping that he'll give me the okay to put makeup on.

It's been pretty bizarre, having a nurse come to the house every other day. I feel like I should be wearing a turban and being taken out for a spin in a wheelchair. Feeling guilty about using what feels like a luxury, I'd asked at the hospital if they couldn't just show me how to take care of things myself. They insisted that it was more consistent with an infirmiere. I can see now that it also helps keep someone in employment in rural France. In a few days I'll say goodbye to her. Then we'll have a little get-together with our friends and neighbors, and the new owners. Strange, melancholy, exciting, terrifying. Did I say exciting?



Two months ago it was "will we outlast the bottle of balsamic?" - now it's the expiration date on the milk bottle. We'll be going off before it does.

Packing

I'm sorry things degenerated for a while there into the equivalent of a TV clip show - sort of like that early Simpsons episode where Homer ends up in the hospital and instead of an actual story line, they just revisit past episodes? I remember what a shock that was, but how they turned it into comedy gold. No such luck here.

Ashamed to say I even sunk to re-using a photo from a post a year or two ago. But all that's behind us now, because I'm on the mend. Maybe I had a sort of revelation one night when I was feeling sorry for myself. It went something like: "Oh fuck it. Just...FUCK IT! I'm alive, I'm reasonably healthy if kind of banged up, I've got a lovin' man beside me, my family's all doing okay, we have a buyer for the house. What is, is."

Thought of stopping the blog temporarily because things are in such a state of flux right now, and it's hard to concentrate. But I'd miss it. Just as it's never a good idea to question the meaning of life while applying eyeliner in a dank basement dressing room with only beer crates for company, so it's best not to examine too closely why I share details of my life in public while sitting in a roomful of moving boxes.

More soon.