Umm…Why as in WTF??
A number of years ago Jeri was able to acquire Italian citizenship due to the good sense of her grandfather choosing to be born in Italy. After two years of dealing with impressive Italian bureaucracy and assorted hoop jumping, Jeri became a dual US/Italian citizen. That means she can live (and work!) anywhere in the European Union for as long as she wants (And she claims she gets free pizza on her birthday). I, as her husband, can also leech along as long as I stay in her good graces. I’m not sure I care for this marital power imbalance, but this is the enabling, foundational mechanism of this endeavour.
The impetus to kick this off is a need to downsize. A five bedroom house for two people is beyond stupid. So the smart thing is to sell and move to something more reasonable. And if we have to be between residences, why not extend this interim period a bit and do it at some place with style. You know, like Paris.
Lastly, we both remain physically fit and in really good health. We can still (most days) get away with this sort of nonsense. But in just a few more years, that may not be true. As with everyone, there is a lurking cliff out there with our names on it, waiting for us. But at worst it’s still at least a couple years out, so the time to do this crap is now.
This will be our last, greatest adventure. And we’ve been to the Antarctic.
OK, but why Paris?
It ticks off a lot of boxes for us. Over the years we’ve probably spent a cumulative total of three months in France, mostly Paris, and we sorta have a feel for the place. As card carrying old farts, France has one of the best medical systems in Europe so that’s important. The people are pretty decent and they don’t suffer fools. And at least for the moment, it feels a lot better than the US. Compared to living in Southern California it’s stupidly cheap. Our current overhead in SoCal is so damn high we project we’ll be saving money living in Paris. That’s just weird.
Paris is centrally located in Europe and will allow us all sorts of exploration opportunities by plane and train. Hell, English speaking London is only a 2 ½ hour train ride away from Paris. Ranging further afield, a flight to Iceland is the same as a flight from LAX to Chicago, while a flight to Athens, Greece is the same as from LAX to Dallas. We’ll be able to go places at the spur of the moment and enjoy trips we never could have made or afforded if coming from the US.
A final, unexpected aspect of living in France is that as old geezers we aren’t “invisible”. People there seem to respect the olds. Kids on the Metro offered us their seats and let us pass them on the sidewalk. The first time it happened we just assumed we must have looked really decrepit, but then it continued to happen. I have mixed feelings about this as I somewhat enjoy invisibility, but it does have some charm.
What’s the point of this blog thingy you’re doing?
It’s simply a way to let our friends and family what we’re doing and how it’s going. We’re lazy and it’s easier to post to a blog then send out a bunch of emails.
How often will you post?
Dunno. Maybe…every so often? We don’t want doing postings to rise to the level of being a chore. I mean, we can write about having fun in France, or spend the time we’d be writing actually going out and have more fun. Perhaps postings are for times of crappy weather.
Aren’t you a bit old to be doing something like this?
No shit, Sherlock. And next year we’ll be even older…see how it works? We are in our early seventies and this is something best done 20 years ago when we were callow youths. Unfortunately we weren’t in a position to do so, nor stupid enough. Our cognitive decline is a benefit in this case. It makes things appear much easier than they actually are. Don’t tell us the odds.
At this point in our lives there’s a magical alignment of circumstance so it’s jump now or don’t jump at all. We choose to jump. Now we’re old, and can’t jump as far, but we think we can jump enough to pull this off. And we can take some comfort in that we may have done stupider things.
Wait, what stupider things HAVE you done?
Hey, how about we just focus on the current stupid thing we are doing? No point of dwelling in the past. And it may eventually turn out that moving to Paris takes the crown for stupidest thing we’ve ever achieved. I wouldn’t want to sell us short.
Will you return to the US?
Possibly, maybe, dunno. At the moment, for our mental wellbeing, our default position is to return after 24 months. That’s open to reconsideration depending on how F’ed up the country becomes while we’re gone. We LIKE the US and want to come back. But man…As a couple whose formative years were in the 1960’s, the US is a hard place to like right now. Still the idea of growing old in a foreign country feels quite intimidating. And no need to point out we’re already old. Fun fact: A person is medically considered “elderly” if they are over 65. Yay for us?
We’ll still maintain our legal domicile in California and pay beaucoup (French word!!) taxes for the privilege. But we like California a lot and really couldn’t bear to establish a legal residence in any of the states without a state income tax (Ugh!). Just another couple of obviously stupid liberals.
Do you speak French?
Not really, just enough to sound like sad Americans. Truthfully, becoming conversant in French will be by far the hardest aspect of this adventure. But we’ve found the French to be very forgiving to those who at least attempt their language, and we can do that. Hopefully, we will provide amusement for them. Jeri has already committed our survival phrase to memory: “Je parle un peu le français, mais je ne comprends rien” (I speak a little French, but I understand nothing).
So what do you think you will be posting on this blog?
Mostly posting about the adventures we hope to have, if we can get our asses out of the local cafes. If we do this right we can provide a bit of escapism to those unfortunates still stuck in the US. And if this turns out to be a spectacularly stupid idea, then we’ll serve as a cautionary tale. “Kids, don’t try this at home”.
Will you be posting on other social media platforms?
No seems like such an insufficient answer to such a question. How about God Damned to Hell NO?
What, you don’t allow comments?
Damn straight. First, the Internet is full of crazies who love to troll comment sections. We don’t need that shit. Second, most comments don’t add a lot of value to a discussion. They just offer readers a chance to “engage”. Yeah, we don’t care about your engagement. If you like it, read it. If not, head over to the TikTok and let the algorithm feed you.
“I want to move to . Can you give me advice?”
No. We wouldn’t presume to offer advice to anyone doing this because we’d likely screw some information up. You need to screw up on your own.
Why is your website so plain? I can help you optimize it for SEO!
I know what I like, and I like simple and clean. Nothing fancy, just the minimum to convey information in the most efficient manner. What a concept! This ain’t my first rodeo. It’s my third, in fact. You won’t ever find any ads or affiliate links on any web pages of mine. It’s a money losing labor of luv. And as for all you very many Internet sales weasels who want to “optimize my website” and “drive more traffic”, well…just fuck off.
AI disclaimer!
Full disclosure: I used AI to tell me how to setup the structure of this website, and I feel a bit dirty about that. In the good old days I could write html code pretty well, but I can’t be bothered anymore. So I let AI create the structure and layout with my prompts. But all the writing, for better or worse (likely the latter) will be human. Of course that’s exactly what AI would say if it was writing this.
What’s with this awful writing style? Are you trying to be funny?
Why yes, yes I am! But will miss the mark many times. Since I actually don’t enjoy writing, my reward is the application of a certain level of snark. I dunno why, it just feels good. I’ll probably do the majority of writing, but Jeri has promised to do so if I make it easy for her to post, as she has better things to do. She actually writes quite funny, but in a warmhearted and self-deprecating manner. I’m sure anything she posts will be a welcome respite from me. Between the two of us we average out to a normal person.