The first four weeks in Ft Myers

I have been meaning to write something here for the best part of the last week. It's been nagging away at me: write about what's happening; and more importantly, write about how you're feeling. That's the thing about this blog, for a long time, the posts were all done retrospectively, using photos and calendars to piece together events and writing about them long after they'd happened, and without much emotion. Live writing just keeps it so much fresher and captures the reality of what's going on, be it good or bad. The irony of this blog is that it was created to document all the new stuff that was happening as we travelled the world. But in recent weeks, I've been so busy travelling the world that I've not had any time to write about it. 

I've done a few facebook updates which I'm going to copy onto here, as well as uploading a load of photos just so that you can grasp a little of what's been going on: 

Week 1 in Florida. Living out out of cases; gluten free on-the-menus; new motor and enormous roads; single-use-plastic *everywhere*; regular evidence of the destruction caused by last years’ hurricane; humidity playing havoc with the ‘do and no ‘gator sightings as yet. Get the keys to our new house tomorrow and we don’t own a single price of furniture but at least I’ve bought a kettle. Presentation of twin set and pearls is at 6pm in the club house.

Week 2 of life as a Floridian. And what a week it’s been: got the keys to our new house and we’re literally camping indoors but at least we have tea; have not joined any committees yet but it’s only a matter of time; spent *hours* setting up water, power, internet, and, as yet, the bank refuse to accept my existence ; William started school and he’s loving it - weans are coming to our door every night to see if he wants to go and play and we’ve hardly seen him; I’ve put in a shift trying to kit us out with the basics of life and can now confidently drive to Walmart without SatNav; back to doing laundry in a shanner top loader machine; celebrated the Big Man’s birthday by getting takeaway from the food trucks at the Community Clubhouse (scheme car park) on Thursday night; learning to drive our new kitchen and even had some of Iain’s work crew round for dinner last night; done a power of work on Marketplace buying things that I’ve literally just sold in France and thanks to Autumn decided to go BIG on the couch; talked our landlord into repainting the house; met our next door neighbour who showed me her snake catcher, and sent her daughter over with a “Hurricane Get-Thru” list; seen some amazing food in Walmart; seen some food in Walmart that would gie ye the dry boak; spent a decent amount of time at our community pool this weekend where we met an actual French family (incroyable!); still no ‘gator sightings, but plenty of birds, squirrels and the odd bungalow bunnie.

I’ve officially got three weeks under my belt in the Sunshine State and this country continues to surprise, delight and shock me on a daily basis. Here’s the headlines from la troisième semaine:

I’ve restarted my gym routine but can’t work out what weights to lift as they’re all in lbs; the pool is an absolute joy and I’m enjoying morning laps and we’re all enjoying afternoon dips; after about three *hours* of filling in forms online and waiting at County Sheriffs office, I got my Floridian driving licence (note that it took four and a half *years* in France); our couch arrived and it took us two days to build it but at least we don’t look like we’re squatting anymore; I’ve spent a bit more time locating and buying real food, and cooking proper meals at home; food is waaay more expensive than in France and it dawned on me yesterday that the ratio of fresh produce: prepackaged items in the supermarkets is *very* different to France; shopping takes ages as you work out where things are, what they’re called (brace yourselves for some unexpected names) and of course, determine if they’re gluten free (food labelling in the US is as loose as a goose); single use plastic bags reign but I did notice bags-for-life for sale in Walmart - after the tills; we’re looking after two Guinea pigs this week and have forgotten which one is which so we’ve renamed them Bogougou and Chocolaté but they don’t seem to care; William got sent home sick from school and I didn’t know if he had a temperature or not as they numbers they gave me were in Fahrenheit; we needed to provide a negative covid test before he could go back in and it was $23 for a pack of two self tests from the pharmacy; if you need some snouts (cigs) you can also get *them* in the pharmacy ; we had some much needed time in nature and although we didn’t see any gators, we did see some other unusual things; we celebrated US Mother’s Day by buying a vacuum cleaner, a box of white claw (thanks for the reco Eileen Campbell!) which I drank at the pool, and ordering our first Ruby Murray which was actually pretty decent; I’m spending my days measuring spaces and trawling marketplace / goodwill / other stores to get us up and running; it’s hard getting into buying mode after seeing how much stuff we accumulated in France and had to sell /give away before we left. Life on the road, eh?

I think these give a good enough summary. It's just been day after day of trawling marketplace and going to different shops to try to get things for the house. And everything is so far away from everything else that it takes ages to get places. Even nipping out to the supey to get a loaf of bread takes around 25mins as our closest, Winn Dixie, is around a 10min drive away. I wont lie, I miss living in the Centre Ville, walking or cycling everywhere and being able to get everything you need, within a 1km radius.

I posted an introductory photo/story on the community facebook group last week and it prompted a flurry of welcome comments, followed by some even kinder invites for a play date and to a birthday party! It was really nice getting out and meeting some of our neighbours and school families and I'm sure these sorts of things will continue. William then ended up playing with the usual crew from our corner of the development until after dark on Saturday night. He is just loving living here. 

I'm missing my friends in France. I miss bumping into people in the street and the park, and knowing everyone. I hope they don't think that I've just moved on and that I'm not thinking about them. It's quite the opposite, I think about them all, all the time but the more I dwell or wonder how they're all doing, the more I think about how I'm missing my life there. I'm not homesick for France per se, but I'm just missing so many parts of my life there as my life here still feels in limbo. It's the silly things though that are driving me nuts: it's the fact we don't have a bin in our bathroom, or a shower curtain in William's bathroom, or a utility room with built in storage, or any built in storage for that matter, or a self cleaning fan assisted oven, or a gas cooker, or a cheese box for the fridge, or spare towels, or ..., or ..., or .... 

Moves are hard and I know that we're still in the early stages of living here so these things will iron themselves out over time especially as I do more nesting, but I'm finding it difficult to commit to a lot of purchases after the big sell off that I did in France. The thought of having to do all that again makes me feel a bit sick so I'm reluctant to fill another house with stuff. But I know that stuff also makes a house a home and I need to have a home to feel settled. Aaaaargh. The challenges of living nomadically. I'm pretty sure that having our shipment here will help so it's all eyes to that. Whenever that may be. I said it so many times: our life in Pau was idyllic and moving away was always going to be hard. I'm not disliking Fort Myers, but now that I'm coming up for air, I'm just starting to grieve for the life I've left behind. 

LM. 

Photo dump: 

LM