WE’RE SO CLOSE! ALL SET FOR OUR MOVE TO FRANCE – THE MOVERS HAVE ARRIVED!

WE’RE SO CLOSE! ALL SET FOR OUR MOVE TO FRANCE – THE MOVERS HAVE ARRIVED!

I watch you as you dve do you know I’m looking and I can’t help but smile do you know how much I love you you put my favorite song on I put my feet up and we just sing along and I can’t help but feeling just loving this moment can we stay here

Forever I’m loving this moment can we stay here together if I could stop the time don’t you know that I would cuz I’m just loving this moment can we stay here forever forever forever forever hello and welcome back to our Channel my name is an and my name is Jeff and this

Is postcards from our golden years oh and this is little Bella who doesn’t really want to be here I guess right do you no you want to get down Okay so we’re so happy to see you we thought we would sit down and do another little update for you as you can see

Jeff is all better from his Co yes you feeling good much better back to normals although we had a big weekend here working and cleaning up packing up getting ready for the big move yes we did first let’s tell you about some of the other things that we have done yes

So last week we went to Social Security and we took a number you have to check in and you’re a number and you’re in line and whenever they get to you they get to you so we got there it opened at 9 we got there at 9:00 and there were already

People lined up in the door so we weren’t sure how this was going to work and for those of you who were questioning well why did we go to Social Security we had heard a while back uh that we could go to Social Security and ask to pause our part b

Medicare deduction right which is current ly it’s $178 a month and as you probably know or if you didn’t know I’m going to share with you now uh you cannot use Medicare anywhere outside of the United outside the United States unless it’s an emergency so routinely if you’re paying for your part

B hospitalization coverage you have no coverage unless you come back to the United States right so we decided why pay $178 a month each of us us for something that we can’t use in France at all right we had to in order to get our long State visa we had to

Purchase oneyear International Health policy to cover us for hospitalization emergencies things like that right so the $178 that we were having deducted from our social security check that was just sort of useless it was just giving it to the United States government why so we did not have an appointment at Social

Security um by the time we realized that hey we need to do this it was too late I think to make an appointment so we decided to just go to our local Social Security office and as Jeff said we took a number you go a little computer you

Check in we got a number and you checked on what day of the week was the less crowded at Social Security yes they said said that typically at Social Security offices Wednesday through Friday are the least busiest days to go if you go first thing in the morning if you get there

Before 10 o’clock right chances are you won’t have to wait too long if you go on Monday that’s the busiest day of the week so if you decide you’re going to go and do this don’t go on Monday plan accordingly exactly yeah so uh when we finally met with the person the

Represent representative there we actually went together we each had our own number right and then I noted that some other people were together doing things as a group and the security guard said to them you really only need one number if you’re together so when they

Called my number I said to him let’s let’s go together so we told the the representative what we wanted to do and we said we wanted to pause he said there is no such thing as pause it’s either you either have that deduction you don’t have the deduction

Well so how did it go in there well Jeff as you know we learn that there is no such thing as pausing our part b Medicare deduction really you either have it or you don’t have it okay so obviously it’s $178 a month if we’re moving to France

And you can’t use your part B coverage in France why pay it so we have both opted to stop the payment just that’s it it’s not called pausing it even though uh someone else had told me they paused their payment we were told there’s no such thing as pausing just

Stopping okay so we have paused it it takes effect now this is the end of March when I’m shooting this um this will take effect at the end end of next month which is exactly what we want we wanted it to start May 1st no more deductions so that’s the way it’s

Going to be and they have you fill out some paperwork basically you put on your name uh social security number the reason you’re terminating your coverage put your name address and today’s date and they put it into the system and it’s done so the bad news is that if we

Ever come back to the United States and decide that we want to add it in there is a 10% penalty added to our monthly deduction for every 12 Monon period that we’ve been out of the United States it is what it is we don’t plan to come back

So say love say la all right it’s done another thing checked off the list so so well the bottom line is we didn’t want to pay the $178 that it will be effective May 1 which worked out well which is exactly what we wanted because we’ll still be in the United States for

A few days in April right and who knows you know just in case you need it we’ll have it based on what I’ve heard of the health system in France particularly in cities where there are lots of doctors and good hospitals I I don’t think we

Have to worry about having to come back to the United States for health care I think we’re going to have the best health care there is the World Health Organization rates France as the number one Health Care system in the world number one National Health Care System

Exactly the US is number 37 so I mean there’s the difference so why come back to the United States right so we took care of the Social Security check another thing off our list yeah okay so I’m going to be a little all over the place here because these are

Things that are coming to mind so I think I told you or maybe I didn’t in a last video that when we were in nie a few weeks ago we signed up for internet y with a company called free F re not because it is free it’s just that’s the

Name that’s the name in France so we signed up for the the plan and and we tentatively made a plan to have it installed a couple days after we returned to nce next week right well they didn’t tell us that they were going to send us a box cable box some

Equipment right and that we were going to go and have to pick up the equipment well that’s not the biggest issue the big issue is they they don’t drop it off at your house or your apartment they don’t leave it in your mailbox they don’t leave leave it outside your door I

Got an email saying that it was dropped off at like a sort of a mail substation it wasn’t the post office but it’s like another place where they drop off mail our in our neighborhood right and so it said that you have to go get it and you

Have to go get it by in our case we had to pick it up by the 21st of March well here we are in the United States can’t go get it now even if we knew somebody in in France and ask them to go get it

They can’t go get it without an original copy of either a resident card or a passport so I couldn’t even call somebody I mean we we did work with Adrien leed’s people to find our apartment I couldn’t call one of her people and say hey can you run over and

Pick that up for us and sign a power of attorney NOP they have to show up with their identification and our original identification to pick it up for us so we’ll just have to reschedule the installation and we’ll have to reschedule the equipment being sent to

Us when we go back exactly so keep that in mind when you get over there when you make the appointment for the internet shortly after they’re going to send you a box so make sure you’re pick it up yeah that you’re going to be in France

To pick up the box so that was a disappoint so it’s going to take us a little while to get internet once we get there hopefully not too long right uh okay so we talked about the internet we talked about going to Social Security okay so then we’ve been packing here as Jeff

Said yep and we got to the point where Jeff had to like pitch in and help now because I’ve been packing a lot of the inside of the house right and Jeff’s job was the garage so take a look at this so we’re coming to the end of our

Cleanup the garage is getting empty Jeff got this giant dumpster so that we could put everything we didn’t want in the dumpster and there it is so when the dumpster arrived I got the comment why did you get such a big dumpster and I guess the answer is cuz

We had so much stuff to throw away someday we’ll be sitting in nice at a cafe with a glass of wine laughing about these days Jeff you got your dum sir so what happened was over the years we had used the garage as a basement we had stored

All kinds of things there to the point it was a two-car garage and we had a problem getting one car into the garage well we did get one car did we always kept one car but it’s a two-car garage which meant there was a whole bunch of

Other Treasures that we had stored in the garage so we weeded out we weeded out the best we could sold us of the stuff to racks and shelves and stuff like that to other people and then it came down to the last stuff that just

Had to be thrown out so I ordered a dumpster which was a six-yard dumpster they put it in the driveway and you’re you’re looking at this dumpster now yes and it was when it first arrived we said oh my God that’s giant we’ll never fill

That up so over the weekend for two days things came out of the garage went into the dumpster into the dumpster and at the end we had filled the dumpster all the way up to the top so um we’re allowed 2,000 lbs of junk well we were

2,600 lbs of junk wow in our dumpster so we at the end of it they took it to the landfill we got a bill for $27 for the extra 600 lb of junk that we threw away but most of it was so big it was hard to get it into normal trash the

Dumpster let us in two days pretty much do months worth of trash disposal and believe it or not we still have stuff to get rid of we do but the bulk of it now is out of the garage and surprisingly it’s a very big two-car garage now now

That all of our junk is out of there yeah so and I think I mentioned that I’ve been selling our things on Facebook Marketplace Craigslist and then there is another site called Next St right which is sort of local to this area although I think there are other communities in the

United States that hook in with next door right so we’ve been selling things and it it was fairly slow although on the weekend things picked up I guess on Saturday and Sunday right I was putting last call on the postings yep and so we did have I don’t know five or six people

Came and bought some things plus as he was finding things in the garage that we thought we could get some money for I would quickly take pictures and I’d post them and then within an hour or two people will come and buy those things we still have a few pieces of furniture

That we have to get rid of and we think that probably I’m going to end up having a call there is a local char I’m going to have to call their St Matthews right St Matthew their pickup service to come right they’ll send a truck and they’ll

Pick up the furniture right we also have our two televisions which is kind of disappointing that nobody wants them yet but on the good side we get to watch them for a little longer so we may have to donate them right and then we’ll we’ll schedule that for like one of the

Last days we here so uh the Mover that’s the next thing we should to talk about we did find a mover and we locked in a date for them to come and pick up our boxes now you know we’re recording this on a Monday night and our

Mover is coming on Wednesday night so by the time you’re seeing this video the boxes will have all been picked up there goes all of our stuff on the way to the Port of Miami eventually bye stuff see you in nice now the movers boxes those things

Are all going to go by ship and I guess we’ve got probably about 45 boxes right of varying sizes and most most of it’s not huge boxes we packed it in like medium UPS boxes right so the Mover will come and pick up these things now it

Will sit in the mover’s Warehouse until ship is ready to sail until they got a container worth of material so it might be us and other people in the container to fill a container up exactly plus they have to wait until the ship or as ship I

Don’t know how that all works but they said that it’ll sit in their warehouse until they receive notification that a ship is going to be sailing and then they’ll add our stuff to a container with all of their other client stuff right now um one thing that I found very

Interesting was we packed according to the rules and when you pack you can’t bring anything any chemicals for example I we could not pack any um Beauty things like no uh cleaning fluid no moisturizers no makeup things no makeup they didn’t even want us shipping soap anything that is a

Chemical uh I guess they could catch fire on the boat so we didn’t we couldn’t pack any of that stuff couldn’t pack any makeup in the boxes so that kind of stuff can’t go so most of what we packed was we packed kitchen plates and dishes and clothing um and then miscellaneous odds

And ends but basically everything was sort of bubble wrapped and put into a cardboard box ready to be shipped right it we did end up boxing up more things than we thought we were going to ship that sometimes you know when you start packing and you realize wait a minute

These are all photos that I’ve collected for all these years can I can I really part with these things do I really just want to turn around and dump them into the trash well in some cases I actually did but in other cases I just I couldn’t right I started

Thinking back to when my mother was um my mother was ill and she was in assisted living and then she got to the point where she had to move into skilled nursing and anything that she had with her and her assistant living room apartment I had to go and get and I kept

It in a storage unit for a while and then it got to the point where when she went into skilled nursing she had she had Alzheimer’s and it was advancing and she really wasn’t real sharp and rather than continuing to pay a storage unit bill I

Ended up having to sell what was left of her things what was left of her furniture and and I I still remember standing at a dumpster I used to have this little cart it was like a little cart on wheels and I would fill it she had hundreds of

Photo albums and I would take these photo albums in this cart to the dumpster in the apartment complex that I was living in and I would stand at the the dumpster and I’d flip through the through the album The albums looking at the pictures to just see if there was

Anything that I wanted to keep and a lot of these were pictures of things that my dad and she had done vacations they took together without us kids and then after my dad died it was my stepfather and and my mom vacations they had taken and Friends people that I didn’t even know

And so it sort of made it easier for me to just take those things flip through and say oh I don’t know these people and put the the album in the dumpster and I can still remember the thud into an empty dumpster and she had I probably stood there for an entire afternoon

Making trips back and forth from my apartment right to the dumpster just taking these albums and throwing them into a dumpster and so as I sat here in our house looking at the the few boxes that Jeff bought it brought in from the garage of pictures that I had collected

I mean there was one just didn’t have a lot of pictures in it but it was all the notes from my son going to the doctor pediatrician as a baby yeah and I thought oh my gosh how can I just throw this away well I took

The notes out of there and tossed the album because I hadn’t written anything in the book yeah um but there were all of these other albums and I had to literally go through them and decide can I live without this is it going to break my heart if I have to

Throw this away so I mean for an example one of the easier ones was there was a wedding album from my last marriage not to Jeff my last marriage and it was this you know beautiful wedding album of all these pictures and I kind of thought about

Just pulling out the pictures that were just me and then I thought okay well I tried to get there was one of me in my wedding gown and I actually loved that gown and I just wanted that picture well the way the album was assembled the

Picture wouldn’t come out so I ended up I just tossed the album in the dumpster that was out in the yeah in the driveway and there were other pictures like that from my past marriage and pictures that I thought well I can live without these I did find

An album of my very first trip to France and I flipped through it and there were a lot of pictures of just things I had seen and I was in the picture and those pictures I really didn’t feel that I was ready to say goodbye to those because

That first trick to France was important to me it sort of got me started on falling in love with France yes so I did bring that album back in the house but it’s very hard when you’re trying to get rid of as much as you can of the material things you’ve collected all

Your life and you get to the photos the photographs I mean it is really difficult I see Bella came back to visit us and what we’re doing is we’re moving from a house that’s 1,500 square ft into an apartment that’s about 700 Square F feet right so we’re moving

To less than half of the floor area that we have right so we we have to sort of pair down to the minimums as we take stuff and move right now I suspect that once we get to France and we get settled we’re going to end up getting a printer

And a scanner anyway right and my plan is to go through the the pictures that I’ve decided to hang on to and scan and just start scanning them into digital format exactly yeah and then I can let go of the the paper copies right and be

Done with that yes so that that was one of the things that was really hard to go through and just let go of um so anyway I got over that I’m still looking there are like three small boxes in front of me on the floor that you

Can’t see that I’ve got a box up tomorrow right so anyway the Mover uh will come and they will take all of the boxes in a couple of days and we had these other boxes now these are things that the Mover won’t take for example I have all my makeup and toiletries from

The bathroom right I didn’t want to just throw those things away I use those things and anything you throw away you have to you have to you have to buy it again exactly you have to buy them again and then there there are a couple of boxes of

Files I didn’t want to send them with a mover and not see them for Poss possibly 12 weeks three months right so those boxes actually one of them may go with the Mover but the one that has the most important things that we have to hang on to that we’re going

To send with and if if you go back to my old videos I did a video on different ways to ship things to France right and I determined that send my bag was probably the least expensive and easiest way to do it to get things there quickly right so well

Contact send my back I had gone on their website and they only really need uh couple days notice to come and pick up your packages or your boxes your boxes they can take boxes and they can take suitcases so I may we’ve got some extra suitcases around here that aren’t being

Used I may transfer some of the things into a suitcase because I think it’s actually less expensive to send suitcas than it is to send the box right so that’s yet to be determined next week right before we leave I’ll have send my bag come and take those last things right with send

My bag you pretty much you have to be on your way to the place the destination because send my bag will get your packages your box or your luggage to the destination in three or four days so I figured I’ll have them come the day before we

Leave so that by the time the boxes get to France we’ll already be in the apartment to receive receive them right so that’s how we’re taking care of that um let’s see what else did we do oh Bella today Bella went to visit the vet

So now if you watched my video from a few months ago I don’t know maybe six months ago I did a video on how to take your dog or your cat to France to France right exactly and at the time we weren’t sure if we were going to take the ship

Over or we were going to fly over and subsequently we decided just going to fly it’s a lot easier plus it was going to get too complicated with getting Bella into the UK and then having to drive from the UK all the way to France

Y um plus they don’t I had read that they don’t let dogs on the Eurostar that’s correct right unless it’s a um what do you call a working a uh service a support dog or service dog well she’s not a service do dog so right

We just thought you know it this is just going to get too complicated just trying to get toce and it was far easier to just book airline tickets and book a ticket for her so she has her ticket y so the way it worked is I took her to the vet

Today so today is Bella’s vet day it’s 10 days before her little feet touch French soil and so she is required to come to to the vet for her exam and make sure she’s all up to date in shots and for them to do the paperwork so we have just been inside and

Everything checked out now we have to come back when they get the papers back they completed forms they will send them to the USDA we should have them back towards the end of the week and then we will have to come back grab the forms and we

Will bring them with us so that Bella can get into France um the dog has to have had a threeyear RAB shot now the vet was trying to convince me that it was okay that Bella’s rabies shot still hadn’t expired she had it almost three years ago it

Wasn’t going to expire until June and she said you know they just want to see that she had a three-year Raby shot if you want to I’ll give you one a couple months early but technically she’s had it well I didn’t want to run into any problem in

France so I had had them give her her three year another threee the one that she would have gotten in June I had them give that to her today so then they complete all this documentation and they need you know your name the per the name of that the

Person who was flying with the dog so because she’s part of my airline ticket they needed my full name the way it appears on my passport they needed the Destin address where we’re going to be living in France and they needed my France telephone number so I gave that all to

The vet for their paperwork and then all of this is sent up to the USDA so the USDA will give their stamp of approval on the paperwork now the vet overnighted it to the USDA today so that the USDA will have it tomorrow and then

They say that the US SDA requires 24 to 48 hour turnaround and typically they do get them turned around within 24 hours right so then the USDA overnights it back to the vet and then we will go back to the vet and pick up the documentation so we can’t get on

The plane with Bella until we have that documentation paperwork to show we’re flying Lanza so we need to be able to show that at the Lanza counter when we check in now as far as Bella’s ticket uh the ticket broker that I used to get the tickets got a price of between

$125 and 350 depending on the weight of Bella and her carrier so Bella is actually almost six pounds that’s how much she weighed today which is so she’s gained a pound it’s all those cookies you keep giving her could be uh so between her weight and the little carrier that she’s riding

In um I’m sure it’s probably going to be at the lower end of that because she’s just a little doggy right so then the other question that some people had was well what are you going to do about keeping her calm so the vet told me that there were multiple options the first

One she told me about was this spray and she said you spray it in the dog’s carrier before you get on a plane she said Don’t Spray it in the plane so you spray the carrier like all of the cushion pillows whatever you’ve got in that carrier and it’s a

Calming fragrance or something she said it’s like Theron um I that just didn’t sound like enough to me I asked her how long it lasts and she said it lasts about 2 or three hours and so I said well this is is great because our first flight is 9

Hours so after two or three hours then the dog if it does work right then the dog won’t be calm anymore and she’ll just be her normal self and we don’t know what that is on plane right cuz we’ve never taken her on a plane so and

You can’t like respray on the plane right so we decided okay that’s not going to work so what she did give me uh was a little I guess kind of like a calming pill right and you have to do is a quarter of the calming pill so you take the pill and you

Because of the size of the dog you break it into a quarter of a of a tip pill well I’m going to have to cut these before we leave it’s called trazadone so the vet said to give these to Bella give a quarter of one to Bella

Two hours she suggested before the plane two hours it looks like it’s about the size of an aspirin yeah so she said give her a quarter about two hours before she gets on the plane um because my concern was that when we put her in the carrier and close

It all up in as we get to the airport she’s going to stay in that carry and she’s not going to be happy right so probably when we’re on the way to the airport or maybe just before we get in the car to go to the airport we’ll give

Bella the pill right so that when we get to the airport and put her in her carrier she’ll already sort of be relaxed chill out and not care um now the pills last around I think she said seven or eight hours which is good good right no no 6 hours six around 6

Hours and so after 6 hours she’ll start to come out of it and then the vet said now we we have a layover in Frankfurt I think for about eight hours so the vet said when you get to Frankfurt take her out of carrier exercise or try to find

In the Frankfurt airport try to find one of the doggy Comfort stations there must be one right and she said try to get her to drink some water try to get her to pee and then depending on how long you next flight is or how she’s acting right

Either give her another quarter or don’t she said you know if your next flight is like two and a half three hours you may not feel like you need to give it to her and she may be settled to being on a plane so it might not be so traumatic

The second part right she said you know for the most part dog don’t know the difference in riding in a car or a plane right so she’s she’s not going to like be off the wall about the vehicle motion right the only thing that I think Bella may be upset about is

Being confined in the carer because she’s never been confined right we will update you after our trip and let you know just how it all played out so there we are with that now is there anything else that we have done we said goodbye to this cute little

Mazda Miata we had bought the car after our sport utility was damaged in the last hurricane and I drove that car up onto the Ramp I think that’s pretty much the update for now it is now you’re seeing this on Sunday I can tell you that the following Sunday next Sunday there’s probably not going to be another video from us because as I mentioned we’re not going to have internet and need to edit my

Videos using internet right and we will have just gotten to me so we won’t see you next Sunday but we will do our best to get internet somewhere and try to give you another update from nce so the next update will be from nce exactly even if it maybe

It’s just a little mini video that I upload to um my Facebook group post cards for my golden years okay so so we will try to give you little updates maybe I’ll upload them to Instagram so if you’re not following us yet on Instagram look us up postcards for my

Golden years on Instagram yep join our Facebook page we may upload some little snippet videos on there and as soon as we get internet and we’re able to shoot some more video and start our weekly VL Vlog from niece you will see us there so thank you so much for

Watching we will see you next time bye for Now

We’re on the home stretch. Moving day is less than a week away now. Join us as we catch you up on the most recent preparation for the big day.

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Hi! I’m An Scott. I’m a happily retired 70 year old woman with my “golden years” on the horizon, living the “good life”, whatever that is on any given day, with my fun husband Jeff, and our “bossy” little Yorkie, Bella. Now that my husband Jeff finally retired from his long career as an award winning Architect, we are finally moving from SW Florida, in the good old USA to Nice, France to live out our “golden years” on the sunny Mediterranean coast of southern France, in Nice France.

Moving from the USA to a foreign country is no small “project”. Through my videos, we’ve been taking you through the process, sharing the steps, talking about what we’ve learned and the ups and the downs. This is probably going to be our last video, here in the USA, sharing our preparation. From this point forward, we’ll be sharing our new life in Nice, France, as we navigate the process of settling in and adjusting to the French way of doing things.

SUBSCRIBE, FOR FREE, to my channel and come with us!

MUSIC CREDITS:

Most of my videos are shot with my Samsung Galaxy S20 Note Ultra Smartphone and a circular ring light, as needed.