Shortly after my last blog lambasting the phone company and bank, I got things sorted out. The phone just started working finally. It took about 3 weeks total that I went without an internet phone, ie free telephone calls to my family in the states and to my husband in Morrocco.
The bank is slightly worse. Like all diligent, careful people, I wrote my code down. The bank asked me if I wrote down my code. Of course. Then she said, did you write it down correctly? Yeah, duh. She asked if I still have the record of my code that the bank sent to me. I've learned that in France, keep ALL your papers, you never know. So, I went looking for my code in my file assuming I chucked it and voila! I found it. I took it out and compared it to the code I'd written down and whoops. I wrote down the wrong code. The problems more or less originated with myself.
So, all that being resolved brings me to thanksgiving...
We had our traditional potluck on Dec 3 during a weekend that Xavier would be home. I really wanted to invite EVERYONE I liked. That added up to about 100+ people. I tried hard to find a venu that could hold us. In the end I couldn't find anything available and or that could seat that many people, so I resigned to keeping the numbers down to the amount of people I could conceivably fit into my house. This time we did a little more picnic style, so people could sit on the sofa and chairs away from the table. It worked out fine.
In my image of a great party, I wanted to utilise the 30m² terrace, but in order to do that, I would need to enclose it. So, I went shopping for tarp. When the time came to put the tarp up, it proved to be difficult. The tarp I bought was mislabled and way too small. The highest height to attach is about 2.5 meters. I am 1.6 meters tall to give you an idea. I had to climb up the ladder to highest height in order to reach the wood beam to attach the tarp. It was windy outside and I kept thinking I'm going to fall off this ladder and get myself killed. Xavier left at 3:30 to get his hair cut. People were due to technically arrive at 4.
At 3:40, I shifted my weight on the ladder and as I did so, the ladder flew out from under me taking my feet along with it sideways. I was up about 1.5 meters high and thought, this is going to be bad. I landed very, very hard on my lower back (coccix). The terrace is tile and I had nothing to protect my fall, no coat on since it was relatively warm outside. My hand hit the step and luckily my head just missed the step.
Anyway, there I was laying on my back, outside on the tile in December feeling like an idiot and in extreme pain. My body made a loud noise when it hit the ground. The pain radiating from my back was very, very great. I lost all feeling the my fingertips and looked at my hand. In the impact my nail had lobbed off a nice chunk of my finger. I looked at that and thought, I'm glad I can't feel anything because when I get feeling back, that's going to hurt.
My friend Barb was in town from Texas and was home with me at the time, thank goodness. I was laying there in shock. I checked to see if I could move my fingers and that was ok. I was thinking, ok I'm going to have to call myself an ambulance and go to the hospital, question is, when? I've got guests showing up technically in 20 minutes. I can't leave Barb here alone. She's in the middle of making her hors'ouevres, she isn't ready yet either, she doesn't have time to deal with this. Then I realized, crap, I can't do anything now. I can't finish getting everything ready, I can't work and I can't use my left hand at all.
Anais was outside so I told her to go get Barb. She came out and we ascertained that I could move my body. I crawled inside and stood up, so that was ok. At least I knew the ambulance was out of the picture. I decided to relax and wait for Xavier to get home. I shoved the icepack down the back of my pants. People came on french time, roughly 1 hr late, so that bought me some healing time. When people did show up, I felt terrible because I had to ask them to work to finish setting up the house for the party. I wasn't able to lift anything.
I called our friend who was coming to the party anyway who is a doctor and told him that I broke my coccix and maybe also my wrist, but I wasn't sure about my wrist, it was swelling and changing colors. So, I spent the night trading the icepack off between shoving it down the back of my pants and my wrist. A friend of ours is a nurse and I asked her if she wouldn't mind looking at my bottom to assess the damage. I don't think there was any visible damage, just a lot of pain.
Well, we had a good time anyway in spite of the accident. I wasn't of any real use, which really annoyed me. My friend offerred to call off the party and take me to the ER. Call off a party? No. Everyone cooked and everyone's here, it's alright I'll go to the hospital later. Our friend picked up a wrist brace and looked at my wrist for me, he said it might be broken, but not requiring immediate attention and that the brace is as good as anyone can do anyway. He had a contact at the hospital and could get me in and through the system in one go, so it would be better than blowing 4 hrs at the ER for nothing. I said fair enough. He said you can't do much for a tailbone anyway. It didn't feel like it broke in half or anything, but it did feel broken.
The problem is all this took place on Sat. On monday both Xavier and Barb were leaving. I thought, crap, I can't lift anything or use my left hand at all and my right hand was severely damaged due to my finger. It was really hurting. So, I decided I hoped I would heal a little before they left. It was pretty rough. I couldn't sweep the floor or do the dishes, so I just let everything sit for awhile and get dirty. I went to the hospital monday after everyone left and got x-rays of my body. My wrist is not broken, but I did a nice big fracture of my coccix. The dr said it would take about 1.5 months to heal. My bottom is healing faster than my wrist. It's been about 1 month, I'm now taking the wrist brace off, but there is still a visible bruise on it.
In the meantime, I was living alone in France. A single mom with no family, working part time and broken and having to prepare a large move to another country. A little insane. Sometimes, I thought what the hek am I doing? My husband was able to come home every other weekend, but the weekend of the 3rd would be his last weekend home.
Luckily I am blessed to be surrounded by a group of amazing and wonderful international women in France. They all banded together to help me. A few friends came over and helped me go through all our stuff that we've collected over the past 10 yrs and helped me unload. We gave carloads away to charity and threw the other trash out. Our neighbor has been a very great help. He has dumped all the big stuff for us, like our very old and broken sofa from TX.
So, all went well. We finally received an emergency last minute passport for Nicolas so we could fly to Casablanca and meet Xavier for Christmas. Together we found a nice furnished house to rent in a beautiful resort like place. The house is smaller than other homes for the same price, but we get to live in a beautiful residence with pools, playground, beach and lots and lots of other people and consequently lots of kids for ours to hopefully make some friends. We have also met some expats, but so far no one has kids the same age as ours. Most people have very, very young children or their children are grown.
More on Morrocco in the next blog.
Cheers,
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