Nothing like accomplishment to knock me out.
This morning I went in for school registration. I waited in the wrong line three times, and I accidently paid my social security fees twice. But other than that, my time registering for classes went absurdly smoothly, given the general French aversion to anything functional. Until this year, it had been my impression that the Sorbonne was the pinnacle of Frenchness in its notorious non-functionality, but I was pleasantly surprised by the semi-coherent system organized for registration today. Of course, NO American school would ever dare use the rather bizarre system they had chosen to employ at the Sorbonne, but it got the job done with only minor glitches.
I will have to get those 150 euros back from social security, though. Really.
Regardless, I was so excited to get my student ID card - which in France is literally a piece of paper roughly the size of a 3x5 card with your picture STAPLED onto it - that I signed it in the wrong spot. That's a little embarrasing thing I'll be carrying around all year.
But still, thus far, I'm actually a little bit nervous because things seem to be going along just fine.
In a week, I choose my classes and get my books; I think at that point, it will feel like things have really started. I'm getting excited. I am such a dork. In my head I'm thinking, "Yay! Two more weeks before I get to sit in a lecture hall again! Intro to Language Semantics, here I come! Look out, Comparative Linguistics 383!!"
Anyhow, after getting home from the three-hour registration ordeal, I walked in the door to my house to find The Boy still asleep. It was 12.00ish. He woke up and shot out the door, determined to make it to a certain office before it closed at 13.30. I told him that when he came home, I'd be napping.
Instead, I assembled my IKEA bookshelf. And once I had the bookshelf assembled, I had to rearrange all my books. But in order to rearrange all my books, I had to clean off the top of my closets, where half of my books were just hanging out. And in order to put my bookshelf against the wall where I wanted to put it, I had to completely rearrange my living room.
Within an hour, I had gotten myself knee-deep in piles and piles of crap, through which I had to wade for the next eight hours as I slowly, slowly got my house in order again.
But oh! It's so LOVELY now. I took the television out of the living room (we don't watch it anyway) and put it on top of my closets in the bedroom. We can watch movies with it up there, and that's the only reason we use the TV, nowadays. In the corner where the TV used to be, I put a chair, which I hope to replace with a cozy, snuggly chair someday soon so as to make that my reading corner. But for now, at least, my living room feels much more like a room to actually live in, instead of its former state as an ugly center for machinery (TV, computer). It's amazing how much a bookshelf can change things in an apartment the size of an average American walk-in closet.
And I put my new plants on top of the bookshelf. What should their names be? Basquiat and Alfred are still under the window, whereas I pushed Jezebel back towards the fireplace that I'm not allowed to use. I'm tempted to take pictures to show you all how lovely the place is now, but you don't know how gross it had been before, so the novelty of the change wouldn't be obvious. You'd probably see it and think, "Wow! That's really freakin' small and cramped!" instead of thinking, like I do, "Wow! It actually looks like people live here in a pleasant home-like environment!" I get a little surge of joy every time I walk through my living room, now. Home improvement is so fun.
Tommorrow, I'm hoping to tackle my paperwork. I've already created four huge bags of garbage from today's "fall cleaning," as well as two bags' worth of books I'm going to sell. But the paperwork is going to be the real killer. I'm expecting at least three more huge bags of dismissed files. I still have to carry today's four bags down those six flights. I think I'll have to make at least three trips...these bags are friggin' huge.
Anyhow, it's been a productive couple of days. I'm feeling good, but man, cleaning house is exhausting, exhausting work.
I'm a bit scared of starting cleaning my room, on the grounds that it'll never end. I'll just be knee deep in crap forever, until it finally swallows me up and I'm found six years later under a pile of odd socks and broken board games.
I get that excited whenever my room is simply clean. That's a bit sad, isn't it?