THE BEGINNING OF THE END

After two headaches and ten days of jet-lagged sleep (not being able to sleep when I wanted to and wanting to sleep when I shouldn't), I think I'm finally recovering from our journey home.  We had been in contact with our landlord while we were gone, and she told us we would be coming back to this:

Who knew a new refrigerator could make you so happy??!!

Now, this may not seem like a big thing to you, you probably have large, fancy refrigerators.  But we've been living for 18 months with a fridge slightly larger than a college dorm refrigerator.  Seriously.  David has grumbled about it since we first went to the market and had to store our food in it.  But, now she is preparing to rent our apartment when we leave and, at our suggestion (and probably her daughter's also), she bought a new refrigerator in our absence.  How exciting!!!  She also had some bathroom caulking redone, did some work on some of the drapes and had some work done on a section of our wood floors.  While we wish she'd done these things BEFORE we were leaving, it's all good and we hope it will enable her to rent this beautiful space easily.  And we have two months to enjoy the improvements!!

It was nice getting back to our "adventure home" and see our friends.  Our first week back was spent getting groceries, library visits, and occasional meetings.  Now that we're back and in our schedule, we've gotten to do some fun things...yesterday we went to Adrian's Apres-Midi, a monthly afternoon event she hosts with various speakers at a little cafe.  We've been many times during our time here and always enjoy it.  Yesterday's speaker was Susan Herrmann Loomis, journalist, author, professionally-trained chef and owner of a cooking school.  I've read two of her books, "On Rue Tatin", her memoir, and "In A French Kitchen", a beautiful cookbook I think I have in storage in Texas.   She has a new book, "French Grill" which I purchased and she signed.  It's a fun way to spend an afternoon and I love meeting and hearing authors of books I've read (I've seen Cara Black of the Amelie Leduc mystery series several times.

Susan Herrmann Loomis

Susan said these recipes can be adapted to a cast iron stove top grill.

Earlier yesterday I spent several hours at my hair salon getting "refreshed"!!!  For 18 months I've gone to this same salon and seen the same woman.  She only speaks French, and I only speak English (except for a tiny bit of French and Google Translate!!).  Somehow, we manage.  I was able to tell her about our upcoming move and that my next appointment would be my last.  She was very kind and said (in French which I only partly understood) when she speaks to her friends about Americans she tells them about David and me and how nice we are.  It was very sweet...I'm glad I stayed with her.

(Here's my shorter, new do after yesterday.  I've decided selfies are for the young...I can never get far enough away to make me younger, thinner or less wrinkled!!!!!!!!!!!)

One of the other items that has taken our time since we returned to Paris is going through the process for purchasing our new home in KC.  As you know, part of the process is having documents notarized, which can only be done at the US Embassy in Paris.  Because of a mix-up we weren't going to receive our closing papers in time for our meeting at the Embassy today.  Fortunately, we realized this yesterday so were able to work with our US title company and get the papers emailed directly to us, we printed them and had them for today's appointment.  Our appointment time this morning was 8:45 and, as you know by now from my posts, we had to leave early in order to make sure our bus would get us there in time.  David likes being early (and, in this situation, I don't disagree) so we sat outside the Embassy for 30 minutes at a cute little park.  The morning was cool, cloudy and felt very much like fall.  The streets were pretty quiet, and I sat watching people walking to work, jogging through the park, walking dogs, hurrying to catch buses.

Not quite like this today...you get the idea!

You can't take pictures in front of the Embassy so this is a photo I got online.  It's a pretty building surrounded by large trees.  There was quite the process getting in (as there should be) but in a little over an hour from our scheduled time we were walking out with our closing papers signed and ready to be mailed back to the US for the official closing.

Later this week someone is coming to take photos of the apartment for listing so we'll make sure everything looks fabulous and shining and our miscellaneous stuff is put in hiding.  Then we also have the moving company coming by one day to discuss what we'll be shipping back (mostly small things...just one antique side table we love).  Little by little, day by day we're getting closer to closing this chapter and opening another.

This is what Oz looks like to us:

Christmas time on The Plaza in Kansas City.