Le Blog: Ram a car, have a good week

I took Ed to the Marseille airport last weekend. Or rather, he drove on the way down. While we were waiting in line to go through the tollbooth, the car in front of us rolled backward at a very slow pace and bumped our bumper. Right before impact, Ed was waving his hands and honking the horn, and the people were oblivious, until the 14 year old in the back seat looked back just in time for the impact. He had no perspective on the direction of the motion. These people thought we had rammed them! They got out and looked at their car and gave us funny looks, and the people next to us in line who had seen the whole thing were laughing their heads off and commiserating with us that these folks did not understand what had happened. As they paid their toll in front of us and drove off, the 14 year old gave us the bird. It was a French bird, but "the bird" is "the bird" in any language. I did not consider this a very auspicious sign for Ed's departure. Luckily, things have been going well.

First, I outsmarted a functionary. It has never happened before that I could anticipate what might be required, or show up with the right papers, seals and identity cards, or see how a paperwork snafoo would work itself out. These mysterious things cannot be foreseen. You cannot know how anything works. You might, for example, wonder what is happening with the processing of your French visa that occurs once you arrive in France, and wonder what rights you have and whether, for example, your husband can leave France and come back before he gets called to visit a French doctor and receive a special seal to go in his passport on his Visa, and if wondering this, you might email the email address provided in your paperwork, and someone might respond, though only partially, so you might reply with the rest of your question, and since you got one response, you might expect another. And when that is not forthcoming from the person who originally responded to you, you might try the general email again and think that someone will respond. But they won't. No. You got one response. That is apparently enough. You remain in the dark. You might book your husband's trip and cross your finders and hope that when your husband arrives next at Charles De Gaulle airport for entry into France, he will be admitted. But that is a story for another day. The day of October 22 to be exact. Stay tuned.

So, knowing that you are mostly in the dark, if you have turned in your paperwork for your car registration, and then you get a letter asking you to come in to the mayor's office and bring your marriage license (this document is much needed in France, though I have never in my life used it in America) because your name and the name on the documents showing who owns your house do not match up, you might just go in and wait to be told x, y and z, and leave and try to comply with x, y, and z, as the licensing process runs on and your temporary insurance and registration are about to expire. OR, you might realize that they think your husband is on the house paperwork, when it is really your mother ("Joan" is not a well known name in France, and the gender is mysterious), and that what you REALLY need is your mother, who happens to be in town, and an attestation from your mother that you are living in her house. So you MIGHT draft that attestation and take it and your mother to the mayor's office. And you probably expect that is not going to go easily, that it will take about an hour, and that you will leave without successfully having finished the paperwork. If you think this, and I did, imagine the surprise awaiting when you have foreseen everything EXACTLY CORRECTLY, and the attestation IS SUFFICIENT, and your mother's passport (which you also brought with you OF COURSE) is copied and she signs the perfectly sufficient attestation, and you leave the mayor's office with the paperwork complete in UNDER FIVE MINUTES. Imagine! That's enough to make you go have a beer in the town square. You have extra time, since you budgeted one hour.

That is my major success since Ed left for a place where he speaks the language, he bargains for the cars, the weight-lifting equipment meets his expectations and he can withdraw money from his bank at any time without any type of justication whatsoever. Gee, I sure hope he comes back.

The rest of our week will be told in pictures.

Meals: