Yesterday did me in

I've had a sleepless night with 2 doses of ibuprofen trying to control the pain in my right ankle. And today it is no better, although not throbbing pain when just sitting (like for writing the blog). I'm wondering if I have tendonitis. I've been fighting this for a month or more, but usually, after a night's rest, the pain is gone and I'm functional until I do another stint of standing and/or walking for several hours. Today is different. Whatever position, whatever shoe, my ankle aches badly. Maybe ice will help. Of course I have to figure out how to make ice as we have no ice cube trays. (The French aren't big users of ice for cooling drinks.) Maybe a zip close bag will work. Oh, well, another challenge in living in France.

So, I'm resting the ankle. The temperature has cooled considerably and I think there was rain last night at some point because the tables outside are wet. There's a cool breeze and I'm actually wearing long sleeves today. What a change! That makes the day here in the apartment downright pleasant.

We continue to work on the wine bottle collection and are down now to a single row around the fireplace mantel. But many labels are resistent to our efforts, so photos will have to provide the memories.

Working on laundry and some cleaning chores today along with leisurely breakfast and lunch. In fact, horror of horrors, Dave arrived too late (10 AM) at the boulanger to get croissants today. We had to have regular baguette for breakfast. Unheard of! Sacre bleu!

I've been catching up on email and the blog and we've finally generated a list of tasks to be done before leaving France. One of the biggies is to plan how we'll spend the 3 days travel to Berlin. That raises our interest level considerably.

Dave has got tired of sitting around doing "nothing" (how can enjoying the terrasse count as nothing?), and has headed into Narbonne in an effort to finally see inside the Bishop's palace. He promises to be back by 6. I will spend the time doing needlework on the terrasse. Or perhaps posting more door photos.

As we go about our normal days now, there's a background bit of the same limbo feeling we had when moving from one house to the other. There's excitement about going - we miss our friends, our house and our way of life as well as all the new experiences that wait for us in Madison. But we are reluctant to clear out the accumulation of 2 months of travel brochures, sea shells and other bits we've collected here. Making decisions about what to try to squeeze into already overweight suitcases means we must leave some of the evidence here in the trash. It's a bit too much to deal with right now, so we choose to ignore it. That may make our Monday packing a bit on the furious side, but we've put off the inevitable for a day or two.

Time to hang the second load of laundry and get back to the sun of the terrasse.