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not firing on all cylinders, a couple sandwiches short, light won't light on one side. we're almost out of here. all the junk we had to buy or managed to accumulate through just being here has got to go, one way or another. miss made and put up flyers with dangly phone number tags for the big items. we got some bites and sold most of the clumsy stuff. not losing tons of money on that, and also we don't have to rent a truck to cart it somewhere to sell it, which saves euro too. had some lousy experiences trying to sell the remaining items at secondhand stores. they pay dirt. at one place i was actually insulted at what we were offered. but we're stuck. it's got to go, money or no.

tons of recycling. piles of paper and boxes and where did it all come from? in only 8 months? well, it's a lot better than when we moved out of the oak st! trying to be merciless in what we save and what we chuck. terminate with extreme prejudice.

we have about $40 in spices that are half-used. half boxes of pasta. anyone want cans of chick peas and a sack of quinoa? how do you get rid of this stuff? in france people don't move very often. way different than me, moving every couple years. there's not a lot of infrastructure for handling it that i can see. maybe the goodwills are just hidden somewhere in the suburbs.

ok, we lucked out and the girl and father who are buying the tv and little table will take our heavy set of plates and dishes and the half-foods and little leftover liquors and thank god the bar which we can't get rid of ourselves. for free they get it all. it makes them happy and us too. they were our only hope. they're hauling it all in a thefted shopping cart. they have no car. three (four?) trips to somewhere that's a half hour shopping cart round trip away. we get the impression the dad just split with his wife and has got a new place for himself. daughter helping him move. he's kind of sad and the idea heartbreaks me and i try to cheer him up by joking as best i can. at least he can have spaghetti bolognaise for free tonight.

also through the grace of god sold the bed to our french teacher. took her three trips with friend's borrowed car to get it all transported. could only get the friend with the big car the day before, so we had to sleep on our little mattress cushion on the floor the last night, in a dusty echoey apt. her and different friend with small car pick up the cushion and sheets today.

then clean clean and get ready to hand over the keys.

everyone in the last days has been so incredibly helpful and friendly (courteous, kind...) i really can't believe anyone thinks the french are snobby or stuck up. well, i can believe it if they're approached by someone with an air of entitlement. there's a little mean streak, but only for those who deserve it. for us, everyone has gone out of their way to help us out and wish us well.

one of the most touching sentiments (if i understood her right) came from our same-floor neighbor. i was telling her i'll miss france and avignon and i hope to return and she said "well, it's your pays now." pays is an important concept, as i understand it, representing the geographical and cultural region a french person associates himself with. it's where he comes from, and he feels ties to the land and the people there. even if one ends up living in a different region, he still consideres himself to be from his home pays. i don't mean to sound corny. i promise no more cultural overextrapolations. i guess i overexplain it because it's pretty foreign to me, who has few ties to any place. and it's easy that maybe i misunderstood her. but i prefer to imagine she meant it as just that, that we had been established here, adopted into it. i'm tired and susceptible to sentiment now, but it was a very sweet thing to say, and i feel quite touched. she got our last giveaway item, the basil plants missy's been growing. one of the main herbs of provence, it was thriving from the windowbox sunlight when we handed it over.