We're two months into 2023 and it's already been an absolute whirlwind of madness. So much has happened already that I've barely had time to write which is the ultimate in irony because finally I could be writing about something interesting again! I really want to get back into the habit of writing in real time with real feeling about the here and now rather than lengthy retrospective posts so I my plan here is to do a short, sharp round up of the major headlines of the past two months that have kept us so busy in order to jump back into real time again.
Here goes:
Jan started with me dreading going back to work, especially as I was facing so much new content without any resources or real support. My stomach hernia was postponed from the 4th Jan to the 12th Jan as my surgeon was sick which meant that my recovery was definitely going to run into the start of the semester. To be honest, I had no qualms about going on sick leave. The surgery itself went well but I wasn't prepared for the pain that I would be in, post op. It was bloody sore. I remember waking up in post-op and literally groaning with pain and just asking for more and more drugs. Morphine to be exact. I also ended up getting kept in for two nights which I didn't expect either. As such, I knew that I'd be taking all the necessary time to recover - and my surgeon had given me an arrête du travail for a month!
I got out of the hospital on the Saturday at lunchtime and on the Sunday afternoon whilst the three of us were fighting over a game of Ludo, Iain got the call we'd all be sort of waiting for. It was HR at the Boston Red Sox, offering him a job! As I write this, we're six weeks on from that day and I still don't know if it's sunk in yet. The process had started in Dec with him seeing an advert on LinkedIn and clicking "apply". We've hummed and hawed all through the festive period, wondering, "What if...." but unable to go beyond that, knowing how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole of planning a new life in a new place before you've even been interviewed for the post. But this was it. The bloody Boston Red Sox! After a few days of trying to process things, Iain formally accepted the position and our fate was sealed: USA here we come!
The first thing I did was resign from UPPA and Jeezo, what a relief! And one of my bosses is still yet to reply to my email informing them of my resignation. Sums the place up, really. The next thing we did was get out the Big Sheet Of Paper and doing a mind map of what needs to be done, and when. Spurred on by resignation, I also got to work listing items on Vinted and Marketplace. Experience is knowing that this stuff takes time to photograph and list so the sooner the "surplus" items are listed, the better. Then we decided to book flights to Scotland. We reckoned the end of February would require a trip to Paris for visa interviews so rather than getting ourselves into a double booked tizz, we pulled William out of school for three days before the winter break and shot off to the Motherland for a quick visit to say our goodbyes. Scotland was seven days of hellos and cheerios and shoehorning as many people into the week as possible. Only being there for one weekend made it tricky but we just had to do our best to see folk.
We got back to Pau on the Wednesday of the first week of the holidays. As I was still recovering from surgery, I was just happy to be home. It was utterly baltic when we got back. The temperature in the house had dropped to just 8*C in our absence! A bloody cold, dry winter this year, that's for sure. The holidays passed in a quiet sort of way with me taking time to recover and getting my follow up with my surgeon (who cleared me to start physio). I continued chipping away at listing things to sell but our major focus was the visa applications. Iain had already gotten confirmation of his visa sponsorship from the Red Sox which meant that we could all then formally apply for our visas. Tbh, we didn't really know what we were doing, but managed to fumble our way through the night after we got back from Scotland, and that was us, in the system. It also seemed that I was able to apply for my visa at the same time as Iain and not, as we'd previously thought, only apply on the basis of his being approved. We figured that this would speed up my potential move date. A real win. We were hopeful that we'd done everything correctly, but we had no idea of general timescales and the US Embassy in Paris was playing funny buggers with their online portal for making appointments. Iain was getting really frustrated. Then suddenly at the end of the second week of the school holidays, he got through to their helpdesk, the woman clicked a button on his account, and that was it: appointments available the following week! We took the Tuesday morning and began planning a trip to Paris! William's highlight of the holidays was definitely having Arts here for his first sleepover. They're just such good wee pals together and it's also crazy to see just how much they've grown up in the past year.
My Parisian dream came true. We went by train. This is also something that William's wanted to do for years so it was really great. We actually got the confirmation of the visa appointment early on the Thursday morning and by mid afternoon, I'd booked train tickets and accommodation. We decided that as a last hurrah, we'd spend a couple of days up there, actually doing Paris. William was overjoyed at being on the top deck, and in the First Class carriage of the train. Simply delighted. It was all very easy. Train to Montparnasse with a straight shoot on the Metro to our hotel in the north of the city. Dinner the first night was at an Italian place called Gemini and my god, it was great. I actually had to check with the manager that the pizza I was given was gluten free as was a proper hand made pizza base and not just some lame from thing that they used to accommodate GFers. What a start. Tuesday morning was an early kick off to get down to the Embassy for 8.30am. There were a lot of people hanging about, and they were only accepting people in waves, based on their interview time. It was all pretty serious but there were running a slick operation and we we in and out in around 45mins, application approved and passports duly surrendered for our paperwork to be entered. Eeek! The next couple of days went past in a blur of tourist hot spots, metro trips, gluten free delights and well earned glasses of wine.
On the way home to Pau on Thursday, we realised that Sunday would be Iain's only opportunity to say goodbye to people before the impending passports arrived and he would then need to shoot off. (The Red Sox had already given him a start date of 1st March). We, therefore, spent a large part of the train ride home to Pau planning a farewell do at our place on the Sunday. I was delighted that we finally be able to use up the boar leg that had been in the freezer for almost a year!
We arrived back in Pau and got off the train and into a snowstorm. The weather has been utterly crazy here this year. William wasn't complaining though, him and all his wee pals were loving it on the school run on Friday morning. There was even a tv crew at the school, filming them all playing at snowball fights!
We took one day to come up for air then we were back into the weekend. Tennis on Saturday morning and a big Carrefour shop in the afternoon certainly had us back into our usual routines. Sunday was different though: we had a proper houseful for the rugby and we spent the day chatting, drinking, eating, laughing and crying with our Pau family. I must also point out that William wasn't here for a large part of the day as he was at another party - he's got a better social life than us!
We did the school run on Monday morning (with yet more snow) and came home to try and make some use of the day but in all honestly, the pair of us were absolutely knackered from the previous day's socialising and just needed 40 winks. I had the physio at 10.30am and ran a couple of other errands before meeting a woman here at lunchtime who is keen on buying a heap of furniture from me. While she was here, the postie arrived and suddenly, we were in possession of US visas. Absolutely mental. The afternoon was just as busy with another buyer coming to the house and me attending an information meeting at 6pm for William's upcoming school trip. What. A. Day.
On Tuesday, Iain woke to find confirmation of his flights to the US for the following day so spend the rest of the day packing all his belongings into either a bag for travelling, bags for shipping, or boxes for charity or the bin. It was crazy. I changed gear with my Big Sale, we had a carbonara dinner and fell into bed, shattered but unable to sleep, at about 9.30pm.
And then we were all up again (first through the night with a very excited William) and then at 5.30am to get Iain to the airpot for his 7.10am flight up to Paris to make his connection to Atlanta. I honestly cannot believe how quickly this has all come around. While I've been writing this, Iain's Facetimed me, FROM FORT MYERS, FLORIDA. It's wild.
So he's there, and we're here, and we're trying to get there. I need to get a back scan on the 17th March and if the Gods are looking down upon me, I'll be told that further surgery is not absolutely necessary at this point, and that I can just focus on my rehab and happily fly off into the sunset. Anything else doesn't bear thinking about. Just the logistics of it all would be an absolute side show. So for now, I wait, I list, I sell, I bin, I use up, I panic, I calm down and through it all, I remain slightly detached and very much in a state of disbelief. I am so incredibly proud of Iain's achievement here and what it then means for us as a family but my God, we're mad. Mid 40s and still pulling these stunts. What a life we lead.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Lorna.
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