It's All Just Stuff!

Bye, bye their stuff, hello our stuff..

Today was the second day of divesting ourselves of other people's stuff. Lucky we bought the house furnished, but it wasn't our choice in furnishings or decoration, so 90% of it has gonesville. This is all in preparation of the first container of our stuff arriving. We have the date...twice now, as it turns out. Today brought a second confirmation of the date of arrival, so we thought we needed to get cracking, in terms of divestiture.
Richard's (English Brocante guy) van was full up yesterday when he departed and he had to make a second trip today to collect the beds and some last chairs.

The last few chairs left in the garage this morning, ready to go this afternoon.

I had a date with Henry this morning. Henry being the vacuum cleaner.
Lots of spider webs in the basement stairwell, and then I kind of carried on down into the basement itself, and around the corner into the garage, and before you knew it, I was cleaning windows and ceilings and saying hello to our resident large spider, whom I allowed to live. Plenty didnt make it out alive, but such is life...or death. The garage and part of the basement now looks great. All I need to do now is clean the windows for real....not just wipe them with a cloth....a bit pointless really, as it didnt get them any cleaner.
I have to say that everything feels so much better. Nothing worse then moving around a low ceiling'd room thinking you will have a spider drop on you at any moment, or get tangled in webs, which I seem to manage to do on a regular basis.
There are many more 'rooms' in the basement to clean yet, but we will get there one day.

I was really clearing room for all our stuff to arrive. We consider the amount of stuff, and wonder where it is all going to go??

Dont suggest we get rid of it....we signed a piece of paper to say we wouldn't sell, gift, donate or get rid of by any other means, any of our belongings which we are importing.

We cant wait to sit on our lovely new sofa's from the Florida shipment! Real comfort!

Consider this. Our Florida container left Florida one month before the NZ container, and our NZ container will arrive just one month later than the Florida one (yes, its a puzzle!). Consider the distance they both have to come, and you will see the point of this.

Speaking of cleaning...
On Tuesday morning I got down (I cant do hands and knees anymore) on my haunches and scrubbed the tiles at the front door, and the concrete stoop with a hand scrubbing brush. It nearly killed me. Not only could I barely walk last night, (Tuesday), but I felt as if I had broken my hip AND back. Today, we went to the supermarket in Barbezieux and on the list was a small but mighty (think hard bristle) brush and a squeegee. The squeegee is for use after I have emptied half a bucket of water on the tiles to wash and scrub them. I have a mop for the excess water!
I dont think anyone has scrubbed the tiles or the grout in the tiles everywhere, for a very long time.

Voila! The front entry tiles are all clean, as is the yellow stoop.

 Before, below.

All that cleaning and back breaking was good for me...I think. One of the things we missed, being on the boat, was the bending and stretching you do in a normal day in the yard and house. Our bodies just need to get used to it again.

I got rid of all the other artwork in the house, but kept this delightful print, which hangs above the kitchen sink.

So, after a day of cleaning, moving furniture and the last of the old stuff downstairs, we were a bit in need of some down time.
What better place to do this than on our 2nd story terrace, facing north. Our view really is gorgeous, especially with the late afternoon sun shining. This is the northerly view.

 ...and the south westerly view.

 We enjoyed a Rose as an apero (pre-dinner drink), and then went inside to cook and enjoy the duck marinated in Cepe mushrooms.

They were divine! Duck breast which I baked briefly in the duck fat left over from baking the potatoes and pears as an accompaniment. I also prepared some cole slaw in the middle of the day, so that it would be ready for dinner. Adding some lemon zest and fresh mint leaves to the mix was extra delicious.

 The pears are a very firm/crunchy variety which held their shape beautifully, when baked in duck fat. The rest skinned potatoes come out really crispy and flavorful. You should try it!

Perusing the aisles of the supermarket for new foods to try always takes a while, but we generally find something to pique our interest and taste buds.

Todays special was Mussels - Moules. 3,50 euros per Kilo. We bought 1 1/2 kilos.:)
They are a favorite anywhere in France. One orders Moules/Frites, normally, but as we didnt have any Frites, I warmed some fresh Baguette Cereale (Grain baguette) to go with the moules in white wine garlic and eshalote sauce.
Fabulous, messy and slurpy. You take the meat out of the first mussel shell, and then use that shell like tweezers to get the rest out. Lots of fun, noisy and delish, esp. when you dunk the rustic bread into the juices.

 I wondered what was crunchy in some of the mussels, and Waz found the culprit. I ate them anyway...cooked crabs!

 They went down a treat...All gone! Some bread made short work of the garlic shards and the eshalots floating in the brine.

After putting away all the groceries, late afternoon, we had a couple of chores to finish. One of them was to get rid of all the glass bottles that have populated the basement, and the previous owners were turning the colored glass from the bottle bottoms into tea light holders. 

The glass depository is literally just down the road from the house, but too far to walk with all these bottles. We also wanted to stop by the Bar and ask Ben, the owner, if he would be showing the Rugby this Saturday. 

Ben wasn't there, but his wife Celine was. We decided on a glass of Rose at the bar while we chatted in Franglais. Her English is actually worse than my French, I think, lol. We still manage to communicate and laugh a lot :)

Ben finally arrived and we asked him (he is a Rugby enthusiast) if he would be showing the Sat. 9.35am Rugby match in NZ between New Zealand and France!

Merde!!! He didnt even know it was going to be on! Not just that, but he didnt know if he could get the channel. Apparently it is Pay all the way type. Bah! We might have to make the one hour trip to Verteillac to Le Calice, the English pub where we know we can watch it. Bother!

While at the bar we picked up the flyer for the Fete la Musique, which we are now signed up for. 

Very much looking forward to sitting under the stars and listening to music. Hope the rain is well gone by then. It also needs to warm up a bit!

We arrived home around 6.30pm, and I didnt really feel like preparing all the mussels, after drinking a full glass of wine....none of this half or 3/4 glasses...this baby was FULL to the brim.
I have to remember not to drink before dinner....I might never cook!
I need to finish this and take a nice hot shower. Things are slowly but surely coming together, being cleaned, de-cobwebbed and spruced up. Been here two weeks and it feels like 2 years, already. Is that a good thing??
We wonder why  we wake up feeling as tired as when we went to bed. We do rather push ourselves, but then we have had to with the arrival of our stuff. Unfortunately much of the Florida stuff cant be put away until  the NZ stuff arrives, as that's the shipment with the furniture in it!

Spare a positive thought for our mother, will you. She has been in Hospital (in NZ) for the past 6 days, very ill. Hopefully she is on the mend. My sister is now there with her, taking time off from her teaching job in Oregon, and helping Mum to figure out this next stage of her life, at 90. We feel very far away, but grateful that we had so much time with Mum when we were in NZ just two weeks ago. Mum is in good hands, with my sister and brother there to support her.

Night night.