Exit Strategy

This is it!

A month ago we were invited to spend some time with our family friends in Portland to their guesthouse in the south of France. Our initial response was, “Yes, of course, count us in! ”  Fall is a great time to travel so we tentatively accepted. And by tentatively, I mean we needed to plan our exit from our obligation here in Glen Ellyn.

Anyone following us and our time here with Maribel and her situation as an early onset Alzheimer’s patient, would agree that this is a very difficult time. We are not health care professionals, yet we are here to care for Maribel 24/7. Catherine is simply the landlady who has informally adopted Maribel and who has been the only person willing to step up to help. Maribels’ family is essentially absent. SAD! On top of this, Catherine only has the ability to make legal decisions for another 30 days. On top of that, Catherine will be 81years old in October. She needs to get out from under this!

2.25 years later = divorce
CHEERS!

Every night we all have dinner together. Our nightly pow-wow. Strategy. How do we get away from this? Simple. Accept the invitation to France and start making arrangements. First course of action, one-way tickets.

Follow me to the ends of the earth. . . assuming I get there!

So, we will spend the rest of the summer here, celebrate Catherine’s birthday, and fly to Spain mid-October. Being familiar with Barcelona, we’ll spend a few days there. take the rails up to to Carcassone, France and visit our Portland friends.

As of today, we’ll spend a couple weeks in France, including traveling to Nice, where we last visited in 1985, and in the next couple months, figure out where we might go from there. We’ll have until mid-November to travel. Not sure if we’ll be back here in the Chicago area or in Florida for the holidays but that doesn’t matter. Today, we have an exit strategy.

Hmmm. . . How does France to England sound?

London’s calling? Perhaps. . .