Just Around the Next Bend: March 2020

"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities"

The Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun in Colorado Springs

These are my words:

It is a time of knowledge, it is a time of ignorance
It is a time of generosity, it is a time of greed
It is a time of compassion, it is a time of indifference
It is a time of responsibility, it is a time of blame
It is a time of love, it is a time of hate
It is a time of spirituality, it is a time of worldliness

It is a time of caring, it is a time of paranoia
It is a time of helping, it is a time of selfishness
It is a time of inclusion, it is a time of exclusion
It is a time of reason, it is a time of stupidity
It is a time of truth, it is a time of lies
It is a time of living, it is a time of dying

A statue in St Sulpice in Paris

It is a time to realize that we have more in common with each other and with the rest of the world than we ever thought.

The Pieta in Saint Peter's in Rome

Be the one who spreads wisdom, belief, light, hope, knowledge, generosity, compassion, responsibility, love, spirituality, caring, helping, inclusion, reason and truth.

A flower market in Nice

Take care of yourselves and others. Sending you love and light and virtual hugs during this difficult time.

And I would add to that: "Who's buying all the toilet paper?"!!!

What a crazy time! It's hard to know how much of the frenzy is factual and how much is just a reaction to something over which we have very little control. As of today, at this moment, I am still planning to go to France next month. I may be the only one on the plane, but United is still flying and I am still going. I really am not terribly concerned about being in France. My friends in the SW say there are only a couple of people in their area who have been diagnosed. But, the lady that was coming from France to take care of the dogs while I am gone has decided not to travel right now.

That means that I am trying to find someone closer to home who is willing to travel. I emailed a lady who had responded to my original request on trustedhousesitters.com saying she would love to come here for those 3 weeks. I am hoping that she is willing to travel and be at my house. If she is unable to come, then I will put out another request on the website and hope for the best. I'm just not ready to call it quits when I've been planning this for 6 months!!

Now for the random thoughts:

Roads:
I drive out to National Mill Dog Rescue at least twice a week which puts me on a couple of local highways. One of them is a state route and the other is a county road. Both of them are paved and fairly well traveled. One of them is pitted with potholes. It is necessary to do zigzag driving in order to avoid the worst of them! Every time I drive on that particular road I think about all the roads I drove in France for the 7 months that I lived there and I think I only encountered 3 potholes in that entire time. I was driving in cities, towns, villages; on toll roads, national roads, district roads, country roads. So why are the French roads so much better than ours? Do they use different materials? If so, are they not willing to share their success? Is it because they have been building roads longer than we have? I mean there are still Roman roads in use today, so obviously the early civilized inhabitants knew how to build roads, too.

TV:
Particularly the ads on TV. Every commercial break on network stations there are at least 2 injury lawyer ads and probably that many, if not more, ads for prescription drugs. It's so annoying! I still haven't figured out why the ads for the drugs when you can't just go into a pharmacy and buy them, they have to be prescribed by your doctor. And why so many injury lawyers?? I think that's a terrible commentary on the society in which we live. Neither of those types of ads appear on any French TV station. I found that to be so refreshing when I lived there!

What's in my freezer:
No, that's not a riddle. I often put leftovers in there or if I buy a package of meat and can't possibly use all of it I will freeze the part I won't be using. And so, I end up with small packages of sometimes unrecognizable food. I try to be good about labeling, but it doesn't always happen. As I am looking at being gone for almost a month I decided it was time to start cleaning out the freezer and have started on the top shelf. Last week I found small packages of ground chicken, ground beef and ground sausage. Those got transformed into a yummy slow cooker meatloaf and spaghetti sauce. I also had some chicken tenders which I "fried" in the oven with some potatoes. I'll start on the second shelf this week and let you know.

I leave you with some photos of places I hope to visit while I'm in Europe. I actually fly into London and will spend a couple of nights there before taking the Eurostar to Paris. After about 5 days in Paris I will slowly make my way south. I hope that I will be able to travel. I have reservations for which I have already paid that are not refundable so I will be out quite a bit of money if I have to cancel. Keeping my fingers crossed that the road ahead will not be too rough!

Thanks for being a follower of my blog as I journey along the way - hopefully making my way to France in a few weeks!