Trying to Emerge from the Suck

What's keeping you afloat?

This month has been shockingly miserable. First the election, and then the loss of our sweet little Ru. We are getting though one day, one breath at a time. I am trying (and rarely succeeding) to focus on positive things. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will tell you some things that I am grateful for.

• The outpouring of love and sympathy we received from friends, family, and from you, our readers. Many people that we have never met in person reached out to us. I was especially grateful for the number of you who empathized with the particluar pain of losing a pet to an accident.

• The holiday season. This is something I really never say because I find the season in the US to be too cloying and aggressive. Here in Montpellier, the decorations are truly beautiful and don’t feel like they were sponsored by Coca Cola.

The main square, Place de la Comedie.

Rue de la Loge

• Our home. To distract ourselves we dove into some home prpojects that we had been procrastinating. Roberto was a champ and painted two walls (you may remember that we had three different painters flake on us last spring). Painting the walls allowed us to finally put up artwork, making the apartment more homey and distinctly ours.

Bedroom, guest room, music room. The wall of the bedroom is a very light gray green, which barely registers in this photo.

• A new studio! We have kept this news under wraps because we really had no idea if were going to pull it off. But this Thursday we are closing on a very small studio right next to our apartment in the same building. We will use the space for guests while we are here and when we are away we will store our personal things here so we can rent out the entire three bedroom apartment.

  Most importantly, it gives Roberto, a freak amazing person who wakes up between 4-5 AM every morning, a place to go where he can practice guitar, do yoga, etc. without waking me.

  The owner is a collector of antiques and is leaving several pieces behind (mostly because the pieces are too large and heavy to move). Decorating the space will be another good destraction within the next few months. Here are pics of the studio as it is right now.

  

  

• The podcast The Telepathy Tapes. Both Roberto and I are obsessively listening to it. We learned about it on the terrific Substack by Michael Ian Black. Roberto and I are both skeptical people who believe deeply in science, but I gotta tell ya, this podcast is incredibly compelling. Don’t just roll your eyes. Go listen to it!

  The Telepathy Tapes dares to explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism – individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated. These silent communicators possess gifts that defy conventional understanding, from telepathy to otherworldly perceptions, challenging the limits of what we believe to be real.

• Lastly, I am profoundly grateful for my husband. I don’t wish pain on anyone, but he has been as anguished as I am about the election and about losing our dog. If he was less miserable than me right now, frankly, I don’t know how I could pull myself out of bed in the morning.

  

  Thank you for reading. Just writing these things down is useful and without you I wouldn’t have a reason to do that.

  Tell me in the comments what you are grateful for (and not just the BS you told your family on Thanksgiving).

  Jusqu’a la prochain fois,

  Carolyn & Roberto

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