Catching up these past few months -- Happy New Year!

 

A Journal, sort of

January 9, 2021

A friend reminded me that I hadn't written a blog post in a long, long while. I didn't feel like writing, frankly. I made a sweater for Co. on the renovated machine. In September, after consulting again with the surgeon, we decided to proceed with a hip replacement in mid-November. Then, in France, we went on partial reconfinement -- for us, it was the same as the first one. One-hour out-of-home activity, curfew, etc. There were a few high school classmate reunions on Zoom and the following journal is a result of those meetings. I have configured it so that the reader bores down to the past. That way, once it was started, the reader doesn't have to scroll down all the way to the latest installment; it's at the top. I've edited slightly for the blog, taking out full names. (My friends and family can figure out who's who; other readers don't really need to know.) This, then, is a long post, with a lot of catching up.

January 7, 2021

I can't believe what I saw last night when I turned on the TV. But let's get the good news out of the way.

Yesterday, before 7a.m., I left on a 5-hour drive to Mulhouse in our 14-year-old Prius. It was a very smooth trip. I got to the dealership before they were closing for their two-hour lunch break. I left after 1p.m. to return home in our new-to-us one-year-old Prius. 

I can't describe the pleasure I have on long, solitary drives. I can listen to the radio. I can drive as I like to drive. I got home just before 7p.m., before our 8p.m. curfew. A long 12-hour day.

After a bite eat, I turned on CNN. The thugs were still "just" on the Capitol steps; they hadn't yet broken in. The scene brought me to tears. I've been to the Capitol. I've been to the office of Nancy Pelosi -- when she was the Minority Leader. I've been to the office buildings, especially Cannon, where my Representative from PA-3, Dwight Evans, is. Seeing an attempted coup in Washington is just too much. 

This morning, I woke up to the Pennsylvania electoral college vote being objected to. As I write this, they are getting back to the full session to continue the tally. It's. 3:23a.m. in DC, 9:23 in France. I'm confident the procedure will now continue smoothly. 

I'm not confident that the inauguration on the 20th will go smoothly. I'm afraid that even after the inauguration, President Biden and Vice President Harris will be in danger. I'm sad and angry to see how low our country has fallen.

January 5, 2021

Good news first. Yesterday, I wanted to go for a walk and P agreed to go, too. Then I suggested that maybe R and M could join us. They've been our dear friends since our daughters, now 45, started école maternelle when they were going on 3. R and I have been out walking together a few times since December. It was time to get our husbands out. We went into the Bois de Vincennes and went around the lac des Minimes. For us, from home and back, that's precisely 5km. As we chatted away, it was a smooth walk. I think I can declare my recovery complete.

It's the doctor who will really decide if I'm fully recovered. My appointment with him is this afternoon. 

Not such good news. Cl is still coughing and exhausted. G is still so exhausted he couldn't take Ch to the halfway stop for N to meet them and take her home. N came all the way to Northampton to pick her up. A, the 11 year old, has become the family chef. She loves to cook. As Cl says, the meals are not balanced, but at least they're eating and she's having fun. She's also been a bit anxious with both parents sick. C, 7, is very quiet. As of today, the U.K. is back on full lockdown. Cl says it'll give her more time to get back her strength as she didn't feel she'd have been able to walk Co to school starting today.

We discussed the catastrophic vaccine distribution strategies in the U.K. and in France. In two weeks, France is still counting vaccination in the hundreds, not yet reaching 1000! In the U.K. they've decided to delay the second dose.

Trump should be arrested for trying to tamper with an election, with extortion of a public official. The Senate runoff in Georgia is today. Will there ever be good news coming from the U.S. again. Biden has such an uphill struggle to get some sort of bipartisan peace again.

January 2, 2021

Here’s wishing us all a Happier 2021 than 2020 was. Covid is still rampant in Europe, where we seem to have better governance than the U.S. does, and in the U.S. where better governance should be coming after January 20. France is taking a tiptoe approach. First only those in care facilities are being vaccinated and in a week, they’d only managed 332, whereas Germany had vaccinated in the many thousands. After much protest, the French have added medical workers over 50. They do not anticipate reaching people with high risk and over 75 until late February and we younger folk will have to wait until March or April. Maybe, by then, they’ll get rid of the “informed consent” document. My thought is that if you are reticent and do not consent, then you don’t get the shot. To have to see the doctor beforehand, get informed, and then make another appointment to get the shot and a third appointment for the second dose is overkill. Still, it’s better than what the British have just done -- put off the second dose to a later date so they can give more people a first dose. Pfizer has not done any study as to whether that approach will work.

Update on the UK family -- so far, so good. The kids are fine and keeping occupied. Ch is doing a great job on that front. To prepare for her upcoming exams, she’s been playing school with the others, teaching them what she needs to be studying. If they (7 and 11 years old) get what she’s saying, then she’s got it down pat. She’s also been doing watercolor workshops with them. Cl is still coughing a lot during the day, but sleeping fine and her husband is stuck with a stuffy nose and a headache. But the symptoms have not gotten worse.

Update on the car -- I’m going to pick it up on the 6th. I will probably have to spend the night on the way back. It’s a lot of driving for a single day and there’s a curfew in effect, so I’ll play it safe.

Today, an Italian woman currently in Paris is coming over to check out my knitting machines. She may decide to take one of them off my hands. I think I only really want to keep one standard and the mid-gauge so getting rid of two of the standards would be nice but I’m still too attached to them to create an ad and put them up for sale.

December 26, 2020

Christmas gift? Cl and G spent Christmas morning getting tested for Covid. They got the results, today -- both positive.

After Christmas Eve dinner they went to bed feeling a bit under the weather and woke up on Christmas Day coughing and feverish. G was supposed to drive Ch halfway so she could transfer home to her mum, but of course, that did not happen. That is a good thing because she's about to turn 16 and with both Cl and G ill, she will be the adult in the house. I'm sure A, 11, and Co, 7, will be as helpful as they can possibly be but I'm reassured that Ch is with them.

My own inclination would normally be to get on a plane or train and go to them, but it's just not feasible. Thank goodness they have wonderful friends who are already volunteering to drop off shopping and food for them. I feel so damn helpless.

December 23, 2020

I woke up this morning with one of my high school friends on my mind and how sorry I was that she would be missing her usual holiday travel for Christmas with her family and the missing people in her family who had died from Covid earlier this year. This has been a terrifying year.

Another reason she, in particular, came to mind is something she had said about never leaving the country to live abroad and eventually abandoning U.S. citizenship. Certainly not at the age we are, now. I did not leave with such an intention. I came to France as a student, just turned 19, and fell in love. Just like Kathleen Damerol, whose story is much like mine, with the added distress that she has because she had a business and a tax-advantaged account in France that was specifically for retirement but is not recognized as such by the IRS.

https://youtu.be/UaTILxfPs0M

What's extraordinary is that Keith Richmond, a mutual friend (also participating in the video), sent Kathleen and me an introduction email just last month. It was when I had my surgery and I sent her my phone number but we never talked. Yesterday, I wrote to her again and we agreed to a call this morning. Then, I saw that video, so now I feel I already know her. I'm looking forward to our call even more.

The distress of considering renunciation is very real. I go through thinking of it every year, sometimes several times a year. I haven't done it. I always manage to reason with myself that I can manage the status quo. But I don't have my own business. I don't have a job that would require signatory authority on company accounts. My friend D-L vomited when she left the embassy after renouncing.

PS: I just got off the phone with Kathleen.

December 21, 2020

Okay, it looks like this is going to be a once-a-week deal. First thing, very early this morning, I looked at my emails and found a flurry from some GHS friends about an upcoming class-wide announcement/invitation to the GHS Stories. It was a pleasant thought and I went back to sleep. However, that reminded me that I needed to do some cleaning tasks in the group’s folder that S had requested last Friday. That led me to catching up on some stories that had been modified or added since the last time I looked. Reading P’s piece reminded me that I should probably update this journal.

One thing leads to another and the days go by. It’s raining so I don’t think I’ll go out for a walk unless it clears up. I took a long (for me, at least) walk, yesterday, to the Picard frozen food shop in Fontenay. According to “Map My Walk”, that’s 1.23km. Let’s just say it was 2.5km round trip, with the return trip a bit slow because I had a backpack full of frozen food on my back. P estimated about 15kg. I don’t think it was that much but it was heavy and my leg was a bit wobbly by the time I got home. I think I was more sprite a week ago and have been overdoing it since then. I walked a bit over 2km with R on Friday. When I see the pictures on Facebook of wonderful hikes in the snowy woods, I wonder if I’ll get anywhere near the stamina to do those kinds of walks again. 

We are going to buy a car. Our Prius will be 14 in May and I think P is just tired of it. We got it as a recent used car in 2008. Once shops were reopened, we scheduled a meeting (can’t just walk in any more because of the limits on the number of people allowed inside at one time) and got the info for a new Prius, leased or bought, cash or credit. Then we were told that one would be available in April. On a used car website, we found just what we were looking for, a 2020 model, only 4000 km, in Mulhouse. That is not the town next door. Now that restrictions on going from one region to another have been lifted, we thought I could drive there on Saturday, trade in the old for the new one, and drive back, either the same day, or the next. Oh, no. The vendor is treating this as an online sale with a retraction period of 14 days. Plus he’s now on vacation for the holidays. Then, he has to handle the transfer of registration paperwork (which is really online work) and does not anticipate our coming to get the car until January 9. I hope that France is not back to shopping and or travel restrictions, again, by then. 

I am not hopeful about the progression of Covid. I’m pretty sure that this fast-spreading variant that has forced a strict lockdown in the London area is not limited to London, nor to the U.K. The numbers have gone back up in France over the past week instead of staying at their plateau or going down, as hoped. I’m sure this is going to mean stricter measures are in store. The hospitals are okay, so far. The percentage of Covid patients in ICU is holding steady at less than 55%. The famous effective R number is creeping back up -- now at 0.9. Vaccinations start in France this week. We may be in the “elder” category but we are not the top priority, nor should we be. First the health care workers and the occupants of care facilities. Those of us in our own homes, with no health problems, can wait a bit.  

14 Dec. 2020

During the Zoom meeting on Dec. 13, it was suggested that we might add a story 6 months on. I had already left the meeting at that point, so I don’t know exactly what was discussed. Susan told me about it today.

That brings me to bringing this whole Covid business up to now before I carry on with the future.

In France, it really started hitting us hard in March. There were municipal elections scheduled in the middle of the month and there were already questions about whether they could go through, as scheduled, or not. (An aside, here, for non-French readers. There are no absentee ballots, here. If you know you are not going to be able to go to the polling place on election day, you have to go to the police station and fill out a proxy to allow someone else in your town to vote for you. You trust that person to vote as you want.)  At this late stage, it was a matter of delaying the election or carrying on as scheduled. To delay would have required a special law. The President went on the air to announce that France would be going into lockdown (called “confinement”) after the election. The many parties involved in the election had met with the President and had decided to go ahead with the election. 

My husband and I went early to the polling station, which is our usual habit. We are usually the first, or at least in the first 10 people present. We voted and walked home with our friend and neighbor who was just behind us at the polling place. We were already keeping apart, scarves over our faces, no kissing cheeks, shaking hands. 

The second round of the election, two weeks later, was postponed. We were in lockdown. Our neighbors were wonderful, checking on us to see if we needed anything. Spring was coming. Days were getting longer. We could open our windows and hold conversations across the street. There was a festive air about it. Every evening, after the Italian and Spanish models, we were all at our windows clapping our appreciation for the medical workers. Festivity is one thing but the grim numbers of people getting sick and dying is another. 

By May, things were looking up and by the end of the month, confinement was over. We no longer needed permission slips to be out of the home. We could finally see our son’s family in their apartment into which they had moved just the weekend before the confinement started. We could see the grandchildren. We could see our daughter who lives in Paris. The French confinement eased just in time to fit in the delayed runoff election before it would have been necessary to start all over.

Zoom had started to enter our lives. Our daughter in England, has a step-daughter whose grandmother is a talented artist and a great teacher. She gave us watercolor lessons every week over Zoom. She lives near Tours, France; I’m just outside Paris; Cl and the girls are in Northampton, England; and V, Ch’s mom, is near London. We had a great time. We also had a few family Zoom meetings with immediate and more distant family.

Then, S suggested a 212 Zoom meeting. From Europe, all across the United States, some classmates joined in the meeting. Covid was on our minds. Long-term care facilities everywhere were hard hit. Hospitals were under considerable strain. Although statistics show that Europe was really more severely hit in terms of numbers of deaths per 100,000 population, it seems that the governments tried to flatten the curve and succeeded to some extent while the states in the U.S. were not reacting in concert and the President was not taking the illness seriously, at all. Europe seemed calmer and reports in the U.S. seemed more panicked.

I missed the July Zoom because we were in the southwest of France with our Parisian grandchildren, visiting our daughter who lives down there. Cl and her family came down with their trailer and parked it at E’s. It was great that the cousins were able to spend about 10 days together. Anne even came for a few days of her vacation. With hindsight, this could have been a risky gathering. We spent all our time outdoors at E's. It was wonderful. Luckily for us, no one became ill. 

In September, people started going back to their offices; the children went back to school. The English family, too, started a more normal routine. Cafés and restaurants had set up service on sidewalks and in the parking spaces in front of them. We could eat with friends. At our age, we were still being very cautious. 

By the time of the October 212 Zoom meeting, the second Covid-19 wave was hitting Europe and in the United States, there was debate as to whether this was the second or the third wave! Schools in France did not seem affected. Our grandchildren have not missed a day of going to school. In England, one of the children had to remain at home because there had been an outbreak of Covid in her section of the building. It was becoming evident, though, that a second confinement period was coming. That came in early November.

Stay at home -- except for medical appointments, to take care of someone, to shop for necessities, to walk the dog, to go for a walk (limited to 1 hour). However, I do not consider this a hardship. I’m fine. I’m not doing much, but I’m not particularly bored. 

Between April and November, I had made each grandchild a sweater. I had picked up another old knitting machine in July and restored it. I feel no urge to knit every day. I even started some projects by hand. I’ve read several books. I’ve watched lots of YouTube. 

After my shoulder replacement in September 2019, my hip problems became more noticeable. This ended up with a hip replacement on November 18. Luckily, the confinement was decided early enough to avoid the strain on hospitals and clinics, so this kind of elective surgery has been able to continue. 

The numbers in France have not declined to the desired level, but have gone down and stabilized enough. Our confinement has been eased. We can go out for 3 hours. As of tomorrow, we’ll be able to go to other regions of France. There is a stay-at-home curfew after 7pm. This will allow for limited family gatherings at Christmas. However, we will be home. A will come over. The other Parisian family will go to the other grandparents. The U.K. family will stay in the U.K. 

That brings me to today. We went to the Toyota sales point in Vincennes. I walked to the bus stop without a crutch. That’s the longest walk I’ve done without a crutch. The second bus stopped almost in front of the sales office. We think we know what we are going to do, now. We’ve gone over the recent used versus new, and buying versus 3-year lease. This is the future. By this coming Spring, we will be ready to head out on the road. I hope we will have been vaccinated by then.