Prioritisation: It's Now or Never!

Well, it's already the end of July. Needless to say I am appalled at how long it has been since I last blogged. But as I sound like a broken record, I will skip that apologetic refrain and just dive in...

One of the biggest lessons I have come away with from this relocation so far is the fact that I am fearful of details. Not just details, but of practical details. Let me explain. Hubbie and I had a heart-to-heart because he has been making me very nervous. I told him, "You are making me feel very nervous, because you keep telling me in bits and bobs what I need to do, something new every night, or that I haven't done, or have not even thought of." He said, "I don't want to make you feel nervous. But I think I am nervous because you are making me nervous." This was because, he had said in not so many words, I was solely responsible for all the remaining logistics for our last month in this country. Hubbie will be in France for two weeks starting this Saturday to find us a flat, and then when he gets back we will only have one more week left to sort everything out. He found this prospect frightening because he caught me out on several occasions doing something way down the "priority list". For instance, I was on hold with the French consulate for 30+ minutes (ahhh, French bureaucracy) trying to change an appointment, when the priority had clearly been to send some documents to the solicitor so that the exchange would happen on time. As soon as Hubbie had pointed it out, I knew I had procrastinated subconsciously somehow. But why? What had happened to my priorities? I feel like I never get them right. I can plan and plan and plan, but somehow I always end up doing things in the wrong order.

I think my growth in this area was seriously stunted at the age of 5, when I did not finish the diary I was supposed to keep for summer vacation, and my mother did it for me the night before I started the first grade.

It may have been reinforced by the reports I used to throw together at the last minute and for which I still got A's.

It may have been further reinforced by the fact my primary weapon in battling my father was my strength of stubbornness in restating a general fact over and over with greater and greater passion, until he gave up and I thought I had won the argument.

It was shown to be a far-reaching problem in college (university), when I often ran out of time to read the text that the course was based on, and on a couple of occasions forgot to study for final exams.

It was further aggravated when I married someone who was pretty good at organising himself. And further still when I worked for someone who was meticulous about following up on my tasks. It drove me nuts.

And now it has come to a head. If I remain vague and wishy washy in this move, I will end up forgetting something huge. Like a bed. Or my son. I need to change. I need to CHANGE. I NEED to change.

So we started a list of priorities, complete with estimated completion dates for each task and Green/Orange/Red codes for how things are progressing. I feel like I am in the army. But I suppose this is what it takes to break a bad habit.

Holidaying in the South of France

We're into the second week of our 3-week holiday in the South of France. Yes, you Americans, that is pretty long. It's even long to us.

We spent last week with my brother and his family, who came all the way from Boston to Perpignan to be with us. They spent a week touring Italy and then hopped a plane to Marseilles and drove the rest of the way. Seeing them again for the first time in 3 years was a real blessing. They had never met our one-year-old in the flesh, except of course over Skype. Our little L got to know his two cousins, who are now 5 (Z) and 7 (J), and by the end of their stay, he was regularly giving them cuddles at random moments (exiting a carpark; entering McDonalds; etc). J and Z were such good sports. When we were otherwise occupied, they followed L around like little sentries and made funny faces at him to keep him from crying.

A peaceful, uneventful week? Not quite. The worst of it came when my brother and his wife took a day off to Barcelona, leaving Z & J with us, and my brother was outmanoeuvred by the Tire Slash Robbery Gang and lost his and J's passports. To get J a new passport, Hubbie and Papie had to drive him the 2 hours to Barcelona to make a physical appearance at the US consulate. My poor brother lost all his photos of Italy (which he took great pride in) and my sister-in-law thought this might be the last holiday she would ever have abroad (my brother was very upset by the robbery).

That same day, L came down with another nasty bug that kept his temperature up around the 40-degree mark for 4 days. It kept him up at night. That meant it kept us up at night. It didn't help that it was constantly higher than 30 degrees every day he was ill (that's close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit).

Hubbie insisted it was just teething again (as L had a very high temperature when his botton teeth appeared). But we finally called a doctor, who immediately came around to the house (a real perk of the French health system) and prescribed antibiotics for some sort of throat bug. L is feeling much better now though he still has a slight fever.

So although we are now in the South of France eating nice food and drinking nice wine, it is not such a big change for me, as I still chase after L all day and still do not seem able to blog or write much at all...

Oh and good news in case someone out there is following the Flat Sale. We have had confirmation that the buyer officially has their mortgage in place! Woohooooo! We are on our way!