Getting my house in order.

“Our homes are not containers for stuff, but rather a place of joy and connection. Let’s make room for more of that.”

Courtney Carver

So many people ask what am I doing with all of my “free” time. I have to chuckle, because I feel like I haven’t stopped since I arrived here in October. COVID lockdowns be damned! I have managed to find something to work on every week. At this point, I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel in getting my new home to be exactly what I want it to be. I almost have my house in order.

When the work finishes, I’m going to wrap myself in the cultural blanket of Italia for several weeks. I feel like I need to return to the place that brought me here originally and where my heart still rests much of the time. I also need to get my house and affairs in order there, before I return to France to experience spring and eventually feel the warmth of summer.

I’ve made the difficult decision to let my apartment in Torino go when the lease expires. In these strange times, it just doesn’t make sense to maintain it when getting there is not so easy. I still maintain my main residency there, so I can return home after I complete a few technical steps. (A negative COVID test being the most important one.)

I will always find Torino to be an important part of the quilt that I have crafted over the last two years in Europe. Life delivered me there for a reason. I must honor that memory while I seek a more permanent place in Italia. Hopefully after summer in France, and when things normalize a bit more, I will return to Italia and find that happy place.

Every house has a story to tell.

The whole idea of getting my house in order struck me when I took a walk with Sofia just a few days ago. The was shining before the rains and wind arrived, and just when the light turned into the golden hour, I took the photos above. This is somebody’s ruin that has a story to tell.

This house is clearly being retaken by nature with spiraling branches around the staircase, ivy cascading from what is left of the ceiling and moss reclaiming the quarried stones that still remain as a perimeter wall.

There’s something hauntingly intriguing about the pictures. Clearly, the house in the photo has seen better days. But, would you not agree, there is something magical about seeing it in its current state? I wonder what it was like when people and animals called it home. Who was the family that abandoned it to let it slowly return to the earth. Perhaps they lacked the money or desire to maintain the house. It’s sad, but you see this everywhere throughout Italia and France. Once beautiful stone structures that are slowly being reclaimed by the environment.

Thankfully, my house has been cared for throughout the years, and isn’t ready to return to nature yet, but it’s been a project and a story nonetheless. Along the way, gifts keep appearing in the form of people that move my vision forward to get my own house in order.

There is progress despite the chaos around me.

I must remind myself that the most of the world is still shut down as I continue on my home improvement efforts. Everything I need to go about the work is open for me. It creates the illusion that life is still normal. I’m learning a lot thanks to those geniuses on YouTube who post all of those do-it-yourself tasks that one wouldn’t typically do-it-themself.

As I mentioned in a previous post (you can read that here). There’s something different about this house and the reward it is providing me for my efforts. I think that’s the point of this move, to heal from the inside out and prove that I’m made of more than I thought. Perhaps getting my house in order here is about changing a mindset about what I am capable of doing on my own. It’s a launching place for what I will do next.

In the past I found myself creating my home it tandem with Darin. We always had a shared vision (after some lengthy debates) of what we wanted to create. Along the way, I got something from the joy I created for Darin and my friends and family as our vision materialized.

This time, I don’t have the same feeling of joy or even the desire to please somebody else. But it has been replaced it with a desire to make this my own personal exploration. You can see how getting a house in order can take on an entirely different meaning. Along the way, the surprises keep coming.

What’s cooking in the kitchen?

• The kitchen has turned out to be something I can work with now. I still have one last area to finish, and that brings plumbing into the picture (back to YouTube). Under the sink there is a patchwork of duct-taped pipes and some questionable connections that seem to come apart quite often and dump water on the floor. It’s best just to replace it all..new sink, new countertop and certainly a garbage disposal. They aren’t common here, but as they say, “You can take the American out of America, but he’ll probably take a garbage disposal with him.”
• I’ve sold or given away most of the my kitchen cabinets to a lovely French coiuple. The wife is still recovering from COVID, but after we corresponded on the purchase, she sent her husband (Jeremy) and father (Laurent) to pick up the cabinets on a cold Saturday morning.
• As they loaded up their truck, I mentioned I would have more cabinets available once I found someone to help me carry my new oven in from the barn and install it. As it turned out, the husband is an appliance installer. He and his father-in-law were happy to go to the barn, carry the rather large oven into the kitchen and install it for me. In exchange for their efforts, I gave them the rest of the cabinets, the oven and the cooktop. Ciao old kitchen! It was a fair exchange driven by serendipitous circumstances.
• Jeremy also runs an authentic pizzeria napolitana. We’ve made plans to meet in their town once restaurants are open again and perhaps there’s a new friendship to be had.

Barry and Luc arrive to help get the house in order.

• Also on Facebook, I found Barry. He responded to an ad for garden work. As it turns out, he is the Mr. Fix-it I have been waiting for all my life. After he finished with the garden work, I asked him if he knew how to build an outdoor roof. Turns out his passion is carpentry. A few days later, Barry had expanded my terrazza and built a beautiful roof out of galvanized steel. Now I have a brand new place to find shelter from the rain and sun, and it makes the most beautiful sound when the rain drops fall.

• And speaking about the garden effort, there’s a lot of land to deal with here. I needed to find another Luc in my life to help tie it all together. The other Luc is the rockstar of the heavy garden effort. If you know me, you know I like clean and tidy spaces. So, after all of that chainsaw effort, Luc arrived to repair the damage.
• Luc has a small bulldozer/digger and was able to remove about 12 tree stumps, two rows of unwieldy hedges and some rather big boulders and railroad sleepers (railroad ties) around the property.
• Tonight my garden is a muddy apocalypse this evening, but I can see it coming together nicely. When the rain subsides, and the sun dries things out, I will make more progress. I plan to finish the garden when I return from Italy in late March. Barry will come back to build garden planters out of the the leftover galvanized steel, and I think those will be the final touches in the garden this year.

Max, aka “The party killer” comes to visit.

• Last but not least, there is the problem of the uninvited guests that have been partying in the ceiling every night. Remember “Una festa nel mio tetto!” After coming back from a few nights in Bordeaux last week, I found my guests turned their dance party into a all-night rave and invited several of their friends.
• The problem is field mice (souris en français), and I’m not talking about just one or two. My house has turned into the Holiday Inn Express for these little guys.
• Again, I went to Facebook for advice. There were many kind Zen souls who chimed in with encouraging help such as, “It’s cold outside. They are just looking for warmth.” or, “Don’t torture them. You should capture and relocate them.” Based on the noise level, I would have needed a mini-van to relocate these little bastards, and then what do I do with them, take them to my neighbor’s house?
• I was dealing with a hostile takeover at this point. The last straw was the photo below when one of my snap-traps caught one in the act.

• Before calling the exterminator, I went to the local hardware store. It sells all the things I needed to get through this predicament sanely and humanely (including wine). I then called the exterminator.

• A few days later, Max the exterminator shows up. Max is a 20ish year-old English expatriate that talks about rodents like they are his unwanted relatives. “Yeah..you have to make sure they don’t get too comfortable and multiply. The best way to deal with them is to just feed them to death. Eventually, they will disappear or find another house to live.” Imagine that being said with a thick Cockney accent.
• Max stuffed every crack and orifice of this house with something that he assured me would deal with the problem. I had a little guilt in my heart, but my brain knew it was the only option.
• Now getting my house in order includes making it a biohazard zone against all kinds of rodents..foreign and domestic.

It’s easy to get lost when getting your house in order.

You know there’s always an emotional hook in my blog, so here it goes.

I am grateful for the help from Jeremy, Laurent, Barry, Luc and Max in getting my house in order. These are all people that arrived when I needed them. One cannot question the undeniable system of support the Universe can deliver when you need it.

At the same time, I have used his time to get myself in order. I guess the last three-years have had a traumatic impact on me in a way that I wasn’t ready to cope with yet. I had to pause to listen to it, and much of that listening came over the last few weeks.

One of the most common things to happen to people dealing with grief-related trauma is to shift further into isolation. Hmmm. Throw a confining pandemic into the mix, and you have yourself the potential to go quite deep and lose the desire to stay connected to the outside world.

There are days now where I am quite happy to just continue working and be alone. Each day I have to push myself to stay above the cloudy skies and seek out the connections of others. Perhaps many of you find yourself in the same daily struggle.

I am not telling you this because you need to worry about me. However, I think it’s important to share an honest message with you about what is happening with me and what I am uncovering along my journey. Now I can recognize the symptoms when they appear and can counter them. Sometimes it’s a phone call to a friend, reading a book that inspires me or just simply taking Sofia for a walk. I hope sharing my experience will make you feel a bit more ok if you are feeling the same symptoms. We are all on our own journey of self-discovery during these difficult times.

I want you to know that when I write and share my stories with you, and in turn, feel and see your reactions, that keeps me connected to the greater world. Even if I can’t be with you personally, knowing you are there is everything to me. Thanks for following me on the road to get my house in order: physically, mentally and spiritually.

Sending love to you from Sofia and I, along with a few remaining mice that call this little place in Europe home.

Be well and stay well.