Hominess

The Boy and I live in a small (very small) furnished apartment. This is good in some ways: 1) we never had to buy any furniture 2) there's gotta be something else good about it. This is bad in others: 1) I hate the furniture my landlord chose 2) a lot of it needs to be replaced in a serious way and 3) my landlord is an incredible penny pincher.

I finally convinced her that the 7-year-old clic-clac (that's a fold-out couch) in our living room needed replacing. The whole process was extremely long and drawn-out. She had to come over, sit on it, open it, flip the mattress, sit on it again, etc until she finally agreed that, yeah, it should probably go. It's 7 years old, people! It's from Conforama, which is not even as high as Ikea on the quality chain! It's not meant to last seven years!

Even after I told her that I am embarrassed to invite people over because my couch is so jacked up, she still said, "And are you sure it's not just the mattress that needs replacing?"

Finally, she gave in and had to go clic-clac searching, and then she had to go on vacation, and then she didn't have time, and blah blah blah. A month whizzed by and finally she found a couch she liked, and I agreed to it (anything, just give me anything!) and a date was set for delivery.

That date was yesterday, but something came up and she couldn't deliver it. Meanwhile, we had dumped our old couch on the curb at the appointed time for the Parisian cleaning crew to come get it (you actually have to make an appointment with them for it!). I'll have you know the appointment time is six am, which had The Boy and I carrying the couch down several flights of stairs sometime around five am this morning.

So with no couch and little free time, we pushed the new couch delivery date back to noon-ish today. Upon arrival, the Landlady dropped off the couch and ran away to return the rent-a-truck on time (otherwise she would have to pay a late fee). That left The Boy and I to bring the damn couch up to the sixth floor by ourselves. Luckily, the guy who runs the kebab joint downstairs came by, and honestly, he did most of the heavy lifting. I'm still baffled by his generosity.

But six flights later we realized that my landlady might have looked really damn hard for a new couch, but she didn't think the MEASURE it first. Naturally, we couldn't get the thing in our front door. And we never will.

Now the couch is sitting on the little bit of space in front of my apartment door. My neighbors must hate me. My landlady is beside herself. And I am going to eat dinner on the floor tonight.

Because, of course, we have no kitchen table. Could you imagine the chaos that would bring?