I’ll spare you any more photos of boxes, but you can take my word for it that they’re piling up around here. And I, dear Reader, have finally packed TWO of them. Gold star for me. Until a few days ago, I’ve been wielding my highly developed instruction-following skills by putting together our massive dossiers for our long-stay visa applications, and last Thursday, I hauled nearly three pounds (yes, THREE POUNDS) of paperwork over to Kinkos and shipped it FedEx — as instructed, of course — to the French Consulate in Los Angeles. As of Wednesday morning, the bank shows they’ve run the card for the payment of the fee, but I have no idea if that’s a good sign or not. On verra! (We’ll see!)

It has been brought to my attention that the minutiae of our projected adventure are not quite as widely known as I had somehow imagined. Quelle surprise! What else could anyone possibly have to think about? I’ve even been asked where we’re going, a subject on which I was fairly certain I had been monopolizing conversations for at least a year. So here, briefly — or as briefly as you can reasonably expect from me — is a bit of the itinerary.

We’re temporarily leaving views like this:

And castles like this:

For views like this:

And this:

And castles like this:

And this:

The Plan — Part One: In March, we’re heading off to France, for just enough more than three months to require the aforementioned long-stay visa, then back to the states for a New England summer, then back to France, for about two and a half months, but just soon enough after the previous trip to require another visa. Yippee. Excellent planning, non?

After the second France trip . . . ah . . . you’ll have to stay tuned!