Goodbye, July!

 Cheers, everyone!

The title of this blog should tell you how I'm feeling these days. July was a particularly cruel month for us. I won't bore you with the details but it left me very discouraged and defeated. 

I have a very unfortunate, lifelong habit of berating myself for the things that remain undone instead of finding joy in the things that I've completed. This has followed me across the Atlantic. No matter how many tasks get ticked off the To Do list, I fret over the ones that didn't. We have accomplished so much in three months! During a global pandemic. At our ages. In a country where we know nobody and the citizens are just emerging from a soul-sucking lockdown. They, too, are feeling drained and looking for something about which to be optimistic. 

I am grateful that we found some solace on the last day of this month. We returned our rental car! We signed the paperwork to lease an Audi Q4 e-Tron, an electric car that will be significantly more affordable here than our beloved Saabs. This both introduces us to the era of electric cars and allows us to begin to build a credit history in Ireland. So, a good end to a bad month. The photo below is from our drive down to Limerick today to pick up the car. 

Velvet Jane is adapting so well to her new home! She has lots of perches where she can sit or lie down to watch the birds. There aren't any squirrels here (that we've seen), but she is loving the stairs and the space, zooming through the house like a kitten on catnip. 

We continued to by stymied by the number and variety of day-to-day fees and taxes that are imposed on Irish residents. We recently learned that viewers of cable TV must apply for a TV license and renew it annually. That left me shaking my head in complete bewilderment. 

Our house painting is complete, as is the follow-on sweeping and mopping to remove the dust from sanding. We have finally begun to place furniture in [potentially] permanent places.  The process of unpacking continues, although the number of unopened boxes is small. Curtains are going up, our gate is being installed in a few weeks, same with our home security system, and eventually we will begin to introduce colour in the form of artwork that we loved in our Virginia home. 

95% done, 5% to go. 

Sláinte!