I disappeared from here without warning in early May but my life became so busy that I couldn't get the time to write so I apologize to anyone who may be a dedicated reader. My busy-ness started with buying the new apartment. At the time, it had not yet been completely vacated by the previous owners but we had to get someone in there to repaint and do some minor repairs. The closing date was 27 May and the move date was 12 June so was there wasn't a lot of time to get everything done. On top of everything else, I was in the last 3 weeks of my French class and had to take the final exams on the 18 & 20 June.
The move itself was much more than I had anticipated...we were living in a 4th floor walk-up so hired a company to move all our stuff. The company dropped off a slew of boxes at the beginning of the week and we had to pack all of our lives into them by Sat. Needless to say, every moment of my days, outside of class time, was spent packing, packing and packing! Come Saturday morning three slightly older than middle-aged men showed up to move us. Seeing the age of these guys and considering the number of steps, I was worried that we might have to call the French equivalent of 911 sometime during the day. We had everything ready to move except the fragile items since our agreement stated that they would pack those but as it turned out the movers were overwhelmed with the amount of stairs and our stuff so we ended up stuffing paper around the glassware and packing them as well. By 3pm they had everything jammed into the back of their truck with our plants and a few odds and ends placed under their feet on the floorboard in the front seat. Once they started the engine and pulled out, Gabriella and I headed for the subway to meet them at the new residence.
Here, we encountered the first of several problems left by the painters--first, they had painted shut the locks on the double doors leading into our apartment from the hallway! The new apartment is rez-de-chaussée, ground floor, so we knew, at least, that the movers would be happy they had only 5 steps to climb but the real life-saver was that they could enter directly from the hall rather than by going out a side door through the courtyard and into a smaller single door that we use as our normal entrance. So, upon arrival, my task was to get that darn door unstuck before the movers appeared. Anyone who has tried to get a door or window opened after it's been painted shut knows what a chore this really is, now add to it the grand locking systems they use here in France and one can understand my pure frustration and fury the first moments in the new place. Each of the double doors has a large double square lock box midway down where the key is inserted and through which a metal slide bar moves, extending from the top of the door to the bottom. When locked the bar rests in a slot that's in the floor so before I could get the key tumblers, there are 2, to turn I had to pry loose the entire slide bars from top to bottom--the doors are about 9 feet tall. Since my tools were in the boxes yet to be delivered, I had to scrounge around for implements the painters had left behind to pry them loose. After about 30 minutes and just when the first boxes arrived, I succeeded in opening the doors!
The rest of the day into evening went as well as could be expected and we spent our first night with the bed set up and made....finally, home sweet home. Two weeks later I left for the States for a month then to Italy for 3 weeks....thus, a long pause on the blog.
