You are cordially invited to My Pity Party

So I have been in Paris for just over 19 weeks now.  The weather is better and we see more sunny days than rainy days...for now.

Once again, I am alone in Paris...well, Reilly is here with me.  Bill is home helping Emily move out of her dorm after a great year in Baltimore.  They met up with Carrie in DC and celebrated her birthday and toured the DC monuments...before the ROAD TRIP home.

Today they are home in Massachusetts and will be visiting with family and friends.  Bill is spending the day on the golf course...celebrating his 50th birthday with Steve, Brian and Charlie.  Tonight they all meet up for a huge family birthday she-bang...his 50th, a niece's 30th...a couple of 21sts and a few other, not quite so milestone birthdays too. 

Tomorrow is Mother's Day in the US and I am in Paris with the dog.  Bill will be at the Red Sox game and my girls will be sleeping in...in their own beds, later catching up on the activity of the past few weeks and heading to Johnson's for ice cream.

I have laundry...

So for the past 19+ weeks I have tried to find my Paris stride.  I have met some very nice people.  I have explored the main streets and back roads of Paris and I keep trying to find the fit...to live so that those who are jealous/envious/happy for me at home won't be disappointed.  But I just can't find my groove, my mojo, my je ne sais quoi.

Bill is gone a lot of the time...and when he is gone, it is for what seem like long stretches to me...eating dinner alone for the fourth, fifth...ninth night in a row sucks. 

These past four months have not been without speed bumps...for want of a better illusion.  Initially, there was the general angst and nervousness of moving to a new country and all the accompanying issues of ex-patriation.  Next came the flu sans doctor...5 days of agony and disgusting bodily functions for me...followed by round 2 for Bill , after which he immediately boarded a plane for Boston for 10 days.

February brought a surprise in that the two courtyards in our apartment building needed immediate repairs due to water damage of the stuccoed surface.  On February 10th the scaffolding went up in front of our building...blocking the view from Bill's office where it remains still...and the accompanying echafaudage was assembled in the enclosed courtyards...thus effectively blocking all natural light to 1/3 of the flat.  We have 3 windows that open into the courtyard...and these windows are also a main source of ventilation for the kitchen and bathroom...we don't have a fan that helps remove steam and moisture in the bathroom...no, you open this window out into the courtyard and voila...fog free mirrors.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the window, just a crack, hopped into the shower and when I was done, towel securely wrapped about me...hearing someone wish me a bonjour from the inner scaffold!  I slammed the window shut...and learned to either take my shower before 7:30 am or in the evening before bed!!  By the way...the work is scheduled to continue until JULY.

On February 15th, the month of jack hammering and banging began.  Every day, Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 4:45pm, the workers operated jack hammers, sledge hammers, brooms and shovels to scoop up the decimated stucco and omnipresent dust...I pray there is no asbestos in this stuff...it is everywhere. On February 25th, the first of the twice monthly building council tours began.  Representatives of the apartment building/homeowners association...that is, just about one person from each of the 20 flats...except our landlord...enter each flat and inspect the work from any available window...tracking in dirt and dust from the other apartments and hallways.  In this my first meeting,with the council, Bill was traveling (surprise!) and fortunately one of the representatives spoke English and was able to translate the very heated discussion ensuing in the middle of my rented flat.  The arguement had nothing to do with anything with regard to this apartment...but rather a continued brouhaha between the council president and the foreman of the project.  25 minutes later, the bloviating moved from my flat to the hallway and upstairs to the next apartment.  I summarize the events of the meeting and send a report off to our landlord's daughter/our interlocutor in absentia and proceeded to mop the floor for the second time that day.

March brought another renovating surprise and yet another council meeting in our apartment.  On March 4th, we were informed via a letter written in French posted on a bulletin board next to the elevator that there are very old lead pipes in the building and they will have to be replaced.   (I took a picture of the letter, copied the text into Bablefish as well as sent the photo to our interlocuter, Gabrielle) On Friday, the plumber joined the council on a tour of each apartment and described in detail all the work which must be done to remedy the situation.  Enter the council...dusty feet and all apologies for the footprints...  The plumber wants to run a copper pipe along the ceiling and down one wall into the powder room...disconnect the old pipes, leaving them in the walls...and put new pipes on the wall next to the necessary...and then break through the wall into the kitchen and add new pipes, leaving the old in the walls...to the water main and water heater.   So, the newly renovated apartment we moved into on January 4th...and the renovation was beautiful...with exception of the radiator glitch (more on that to follow) will have this shiny new copper piping right there for God and company to see...and by the way...the plumbers won't paint the pipes...you must hire painters to do this or live with the raw pipes.  I sent Gabrielle another report about the situation and told her about our concerns (as seen through American eyes that have spent the last 10 years renovating our home in MA).  She immediately called me and thanked me for my thorough report...and told me she will make a separate appointment with le plombier to go over the plan...I would not authorize the plan with him and the council...we just rent the place!  Wednesday the 10th brought Gabrielle and the plumber to the Bill-less flat...yup away on business to the US. She and the plumber discussed the plan...I add my 2 cents worth asking if the pipes can get run in the walls...oh the look I got...you mean break the walls and put pipes in there and then repair and resurface the walls...oh, la, la...no...let's run the copper pipe along the ceiling, down this wall, poke a hole....and so on.  The plumbers will arrive at 7:30 am on Monday, d'accord?  D'accord.  I have to give the two young men who did the plumbing work credit, they were efficient, as quiet as one could be when drilling holes and redirecting pipes...and they stayed until the job was done, including sweeping and "washing" the floor...they finished around 7:30pm...really unheard of in France.  I think the fact we are Americans led to the decision to make this a one day project.  The advantage/disadvantage of not being fluent is not getting the gist of quick conversations and head nods between the French speaking parties...but I must admit, I understand a bit more than they think I do...although I still cannot converse in anything more than short, rudimentary sentences.

That work done and phase 2 of the stucco work begins as April roars in with a tempest! More banging.  Slopping and slapping of slurry...and sludge sluicing through the seams of the windows...I exited my kitchen with a load of laundry and slipped on a puddle of ooze that had come in  through the space in the jamb where the two door-style windows meet in the hall...and all the windows to the courtyard have been splashed with this new coating...obliterating the chance for any potential light that may come in once the offending scaffolding is removed!  I am expected to clean that crud from the windows...once the work is done in July!!

Easter...and it quiet descended on the flat!  For the last month (April 6-May 9)...no work...the stucco needs to dry.  Bill and I celebrate our first major holiday in Paris in quiet...ah...and of course Mass at Notre Dame with 2000 of our neighbors and curious tourists. 

Monday came and Bill headed to the UK for a week of meetings.  Alone again...or so I thought.  Remember when I said there was work going on in BOTH courtyards of the apartment building.  Well the work in the other courtyard...on the opposite side of the building was not going as smoothly as the work on our side.  After yet another building council meeting on April 6th, it became apparent that there was far more damage to the wood and other support materials in the walls...not just stucco damage.  And guess what...the damp would encourage champignon growth...that's the fancy French way of saying mushrooms...which is a nice way of saying wood fungus.  And according to the council this fungus also attracts...bugs!  Punky wood loving, people biting bugs!  We were informed of this fact on April 12th!  But, I am jumping the timeline and the shark here...

Bill left for the UK on Monday 4/5...and I developed what I thought was a rash Monday night.   I didn't say anything  to Bill until Wednesday...I was really blue and lonely and itchy. In the meantime, Gabrielle had just left with her project manager...they guy who did the initial renovation to the flat, to discuss the painting of the pipes and repairs to the radiators which were not properly re-installed after the work was done almost a year ago.  It was decided that Monsieur Contractor will return in May after the bank holidays and taking a day or two fix, touch up and repair. They will call when he finds time in his calendar.

Finally calling me after a day of meeitngs on Wednesday the 7th,  Bill thought I had lost my mind...really.  He thought my homesickness and sadness about being alone here was causing me to psychosomatically break out in a rash...he thought I was nuts...not in a good way.  I thought that there was something else afoot...but I couldn't find any evidence of mites, fleas, mosquitos...nadda...So I applied hydrocortisone and vacuumed the dickens out of my 16th century parquet flooring.  Bill came home on Friday and we went out to a charming restaurant for dinner and we had a disturbing discussion...about my mental fitness and emotional stability...could I be so unhappy that I was allergic to Paris?  He was unhappy because I was unhappy...and manifesting it in such an odd way.  Well we polished off the wine and walked home...watched an episode of 24 (season 2 on DVD) and hit the hay.  I woke up around 4am, in need of a Benadryl when I saw it...some sort of bug on my blanket!  Honest to goodness, I yelled at Bill and said, "It is not in my head it is on the bed!"  He lept out of the bed from a sound sleep and we searched the bedding finding the little sucker.  We spent the rest of the pre-dawn hours asleep on the couches in the living room. 

Saturday had us attacking the bedroom...stripping the beds and taking them apart...we found 2 more bugs in the parquet floors...not on the bed.  I washed and dried the bedding, blankets and pillows in hot water and dried at 70* celcius...nothing was going to live through that.

That Saturday night, we were invited to the home of Gabrielle for dinner, and her dad, our landlord was the guest of honor.  So do we call Gabrielle and tell her about the bugs hours before her big dinner party, or do we wait?...we compromise...we sent an e-mail and asked that she get back to us on Sunday or Monday.  She called Monday morning...thinking our e-mail was a thank you note for a delightful dinner and finding a plea to help us figure out about the newest thorn in our sides.

Gabrielle called a couple of the other building representatives and discussed the situation...they knew about the bugs since late FEBRUARY (with 5 building council tours through my flat in the interim), but didn't think they would affect the people on the other side of the building.  When I say other side of the building, I mean, walk out the door and step six steps across the hall and knock on your voisins door...there were four apartments affected...but no notice until the Americans "complained".  Well, that brings me back to today.  Bill in the US, me in a hotel across the street from the apartment  for 24 hours because the apartment was sprayed with what we hope is the second and last treatment for "les punaises".  Since the first treatment, we have only found a few dead bugs...and no more bites.

So friends and readers let me recap the past 19 weeks and ask you a few questions:
*  Moving at lightspeed to a new job, new home in a foreign country
*   I realize I am not as young as you and I may think...I am set in my ways and I am a home-body!
*  The flu...in all its nastiness
*  Famous blog meltdown
*  More travel than expected for business (almost 50% of his time has been spent away from Paris and me)
*  Unexpected and unannounced (at most, no more than a day or two's notice) renovations and repairs in an apartment we just rented
*  Crappy, unexpectedly cold, wet and windy winter
*  A terrible cold and cough...and no cough medicine
*  Bugs
*  Sad, disconcerting news from here and home...oil spill, floods, Time Square bombing attempt, volcanic ash, economic collapse...
* Mother's Day alone while the rest of my family is together in Groton

So...am I being too sensitive when I ask myself and you through this blog... What the hell am I doing here?  Should I change my name to Job?  Is this more than a reasonable person should expect when making a major life change like we have?  Am I entitled to a freak-out, breakdown, hissy-fit and pity party?

Today, in order to get through this day, I am telling myself...you just have to make it through to next Thanksgiving...we have family and friends coming  to visit this summer...tickets have already been purchased...I promise no bugs...but if I can make it to November, I can go home...I want to go home.

Whaddya think?