Found out tonight that Bill has been given a new project to manage at work. It’s fairly high visibility and could seriously impact our next move.
But I can’t stop being pissed off about it. Because it involves a lot of travel. He will be gone for 3 and 4 weeks at a time. In November right after we get back from home leave… in December for basically the entire month except the week we’re already planning on going away for Christmas… in January for the last part of the month including his and Kaitlyn’s birthdays. And that’s all we know of so far.
I realize there are lots of other ISEs here who travel a lot. Plenty of other wives deal with kids and life in France by themselves a great deal of the time.
What really irks me is that we live up this crazy, steep, narrow mountain road. Not only will I be here alone in this house far more than I’d ever intended (maybe I can rent a dog)… but that I will be here alone during winter. When it snows. When I cannot drive up this road nor can I put chains on my tires. The more I think about this, really, the more pissed off I get. I already don’t like this house but this just really is the icing on the cake. (That coupled with the fact that it took us a half hour to heat up soup tonight because the stove top kept turning itself off.) Had I known Bill would be traveling a lot, I don’t think I’d have agreed to live in this house.
And I’ve really made a pledge not to complain about the cost of things here. But now we’ve gone and spent several hundred euros on annual ski passes that hopefully we can get the most out of in February. Because I don’t ski alone. And I don’t drive up the mountain to the ski resort if it is actually snowing, either. As for the whole driving thing, Bill said he’ll just go out and buy the crazy-expensive chains that aren’t really chains that you just stick on the outside of your tires. (Ok, he was thinking of getting those anyway.) He’ll be traveling to the UK which means we could very well end up spending the money for him to fly home or for Kaitlyn and I to fly up. London in January.. sounds enticing.
The more I think about this just the more angry I get. Anyone want to come stay with me this winter? Pleeeeeaaase…
*********UPDATE*****************
I’m still not thrilled with the idea of driving in the snow, but I guess we should have thought about that when we decided to live in the Alps. I’m ok with it now. It’s an opportunity. Sometimes you have to take them… even when they come with extra challenges.
Not yet being retired, I probably wouldn’t be a good candidate for an extended visit this winter. I suppose Kaitlyn’s schooling wouldn’t easily tolerate her being away in a London hotel room for weeks at a time if you just went along with Bill. Maybe Kaitlyn could miss a Friday and Monday every once in a while, so you could take the train via Paris to London and all spend long weekends there. We’ll all put on our thinking caps and come up with dozens of impractical ideas for you to consider, but at least it’s a start.