Observations

We have been back from Portugal and France for a few weeks now. I have observations:

✧ Americans are so loud! You don't need to yell when you're sitting three feet apart!
✧ We need more roundabouts—so many more, and so many fewer traffic lights, never mind stinking left-turn arrows.
✧ We also need fewer cars. Rush hour in nearby Santa Cruz, over the hill from Silicon Valley, is worse than rush hour on the périphérique encircling Paris, with its 2.8 million-plus population. Seriously.
✧ American divisiveness did not go away while we were blissfully elsewhere. On the contrary. Hoo boy.

Which has me re-rethinking whether moving to France might not be good for our health. I'm not sure I can stand watching this country get demolished by right-wing thugs. Though when I think about it, it's been going on for well over forty, maybe fifty years. I shouldn't be surprised anymore . . . But I can still be horrified.

A few more observations, however:
✧ I thrive on wilderness, on nature—natural nature. The parts of Europe we visited are very civilized. Even the birch forests are civilized. Never mind the eucalyptus plantations all over Portugal, in tidy rows, which simply should not be. (I kept wondering, what did this land look like before?)
✧ I like banter, wordplay, having language as a quick-thinking thing rather than a slow parsing-it-out thing. My case in point tends to be a restaurant, and chatting with the server. Simple understanding. I have that at home, I have that to some extent in anglophone countries. I do not have that when I'm struggling just to grok what's on the menu . . .

These are the two main takeaways from our trip, which ostensibly was to gauge the possibility of picking up and moving to Europe. The midterm elections in November will no doubt give us more food for thought. And then, 2024.

We tried being tourists (of sorts) when we first got back: went out to breakfast! sought out bakeries for the best baguette! went to the farmers market, where we bought sweet onions, orange beets, and snap peas, and bunches of banksias for the dining room table!

But then, I fall back into my old (not necessarily good) habits and routines so quickly. It's a little frightening. Am I really so stuck in my ways? Is this it?

Perhaps undergoing the rumpus of a big move would give me a new lease on life. Perhaps that's reason enough (never mind 2024) to think about this more seriously.

You only live once. And we're not getting any younger.