Archives: February 2005
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This has been a weird couple of days. I have a lot of work to do, but things keep popping up and I haven't been able to get half of the stuff I have on my plate finished. Sometimes work goes smoothly, sometimes it doesn't.
First, I found out yesterday that I tested positive for gluten intolerance on two counts, and that I also have two genes for gluten intolerance. So, by all counts, I'm considered gluten intolerant. That's a crazy thing to me, because I got tested on a hunch due to some advice from these women in an online support group that I'm a part of. They suggested there might be a link between gluten intolerance and some other problems I'm having, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch. I didn't think I would actually come up positive, but I wanted to eliminate the possibility before investigating into different possible causes further. It's pretty insane that those women were right to have suggested I get tested! I don't have full-blown Celiac disease, although my score for intestinal damage was dangerously close to the limit (285 out of 300), so there's that.
This news is likely going to change a lot of things for me, which is sort of weird. For now, the task is a little intense. I'm seeing a doctor on Friday for a different problem, but I am going to ask her about a possible gluten link, and see what she says. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to slowly phase gluten out of my diet. I don't feel that I have to stop eating gluten full-stop this week, but I am going to go gluten-free once I finish the last box of cereal on my counter. I think I will try the diet for six months and see if it helps. All of the mysterious health problems I have had over the last few years are symptoms of gluten intolerance... it's sort of weird to have them all link up as an auto-immune response to something as simple as a slice of bread or some pasta.
Sigh. I am going to miss chocolate chip cookies and baguettes, but if eliminating gluten can answer a few other issues, I'm willing to give it a try.
Second, I won a great set of needles on E-bay. It was my first win, and I feel deeply satisfied. I figured out that you have to not bid at all until the last minute, and then sneak up and steal the sale out from under some poor, unsuspecting soul's feet. That's how I lost my big lot of 100's of needles from some dead lady. So I instead won a beautiful set of wooden needles for 40 bucks. The price seems ridiculously reasonable to me because one pair of wooden needles here is automatically at least 7,50 euros. Multiply that by eight, and I believe you have more than 40 dollars.
I'm waiting to see about a sewing machine and a tortilla press. After that, I will have to stop the E-bay party. I might just let the sewing machine go, and buy a cheap one in a real store. However, I haven't been able to find a tortilla press anywhere here, so I'm pretty intent on winning one. And knowing now that I can't eat anything with gluten, I'm all about the corn tortillas.
Third, my vacation is already more than halfway over and I haven't done much work at all! I'm not too happy about that.
So, on that note, I have to go run to the cinema right now to go see "Ray."
Here's a good idea: Don't drink and E-bay.
Just a thought.
Especially when you told your friends you couldn't go out this evening - even though it was a goodbye party for one of them - because you couldn't afford it. Especially when your friends had to pay your taxi home. Especially when you're totally counting on putting anything you win on E-bay on your credit card.
But dude! Hundreds of knitting needles!!! For under $50? I got outbid on my mega deal of $26, I'll be damned if I get outbid on my deal of $50.
I was going to buy new glasses, but they can wait until next month, right?
As Ray Ramano would say (before he was a sit-com star and was just a lowly character on a Dr. Katz episode - aka back when I thought he was a demi-god), "That's how they get ya. That's how they get ya."
Do you ever get cotton brain? I call it cotton brain - the term is fashioned after the ever-famous cotton mouth - but cotton brain is far more serious.
About once or twice per month, I have a few hours, sometimes even an entire day, where I feel as if I have cotton stuck between my skull and my brain. The cotton makes it hard for things going on outside of my head - conversations, lectures, movies, what have you - to get inside my brain. I see them, alright. I hear what you're saying. But it's just not registering. There it is. I see it. Yes, yes, I'm nodding in recognition. But, oops. Now it's gone, and I forgot what it was we were even talking about in the first place. It's like the pathway is blocked, and things. just. can't. get. in.
I absolutely HATE cotton brain. It's a very specific feeling, and as far as I can tell, it's not really related to anything I can pinpoint.** It's not fatigue-related, because I generally get it after a good night's sleep. It's not due to a long day's work, because I get it most often around noon, long before the day can really be considered over. It's not drug- or alcohol-related, because I'm a good girl. I just can't figure it out.
Anyway, today I went through a good five hours of cotton brain time. I was so off in so many ways: absent-minded, incapable of following conversation, generally clueless as to what was going on. When this happens, I really, really feel out of sorts.
A perfect example of how this affects me: I went to a wine-tasting shin-dig (another article to write, but the experience was so great I'm afraid my words are going to come bubbling off the page and into readers' faces) and left afterwards to go to the bathroom. When I finished, I flew out of the bathroom in a rush to catch a movie with a friend. Once I reached the door to leave the restaurant, however, I looked in my bag for my mittens and realized they were missing.
Do you know where I found them? On the bathroom floor, right in front of the toilet, sitting on the ground as if I had peed in the position of a track runner just before the starting gun shot. My mittens were my handprints, turned in towards one another about a foot away from the toilet base.
Who forgets their mittens THERE of all places? Who even puts them there in the first place?
After the wine tasting/mitten fiasco, I missed the movie, so I instead hung out with my friends and tried to follow their conversation. Annoying, I just kept falling behind. I really could not keep up.
I remember I used to know this girl in high school who was perfectly nice, reasonably pretty, and very athletic. The problem was that she was stupid. I still respected her because she fully admitted to it, and not in a ditzy way ("Like, I am so dumb!") but just in a really upfront, honest way ("No. I just don't get a lot of things sometimes..."). I've thought of her from time to time when I get cotton brain because that must be how she feels ALL THE TIME. How does she manage?
I fully knew today that I was just incapable of being the slightest bit witty or bringing anything extra to the conversation. I was a dead weight this evening, adding a general slowness to the group dynamic. God, the slowness of my brain was so painful.
In the end, I gave up. I came home around ten and took a bath. I still feel a little cotton-y but I'm sure it will clean up by tomorrow.
In the meantime, do you know what I've discovered? E-Bay. I know, I'm really behind. But dude, you can get knitting needles from dead people for really, really cheap, and I totally don't have issues knitting with a dead woman's needles for $12.95 (for 100!).
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**I have a medical expert friend who theorizes that the cotton brain-ness is a food allergy. I'm waiting on allergy tests to come back from the lab, so it will be interesting to see if I have any, and if they get rid of the cotton. My internet research has shown that my medical expert friend was not totally full of shit, and that it is a possible side effect. So at least I know I'm not just having fits of dumbness.
I spent last night in a hotel as a sort of "test drive" for a review I'll be writing up. The place was nice, but I'll spare you the details - you'll be able to get them, eventually, by reading the review, if you should so desire.
Instead, I'd rather talk about something else I (re)discovered is interesting: television.
Ok, I know it's pathetic. Staying in the hotel was nice. Their heating works, which is automatically a step up from my own home. There was a full bathtub there, yet another plus. And? Really freaking quiet there. I sort of missed The Crier and his nightly screaming, for a brief moment, but my sleep really approved of the lack of interruptions. My sleep was whispering in my ear all night, "See what I mean? This is how to do it... you've been getting it wrong all these years, don't you see?"
And then I woke up to a beautiful snowfall in Paris. The room was warm and cozy and bright, and I saw huge, comforting snowflakes falling from behind the pale yellow curtains of my hotel room.
I tried to sit and just appreciate the happiness of warm, friendly luxury. I mean, there I was, all bundled up in my nice room with a fresh cup of tea. Cozy and calm, that's how everything felt.
But I couldn't resist. The TV called.
So I'll admit it. I got my CNN fix (Bush in Germany, More Bush in Germany, and Oh My God! Do You Know What? President Bush Meets with Chancellor Shroeder!). What's wrong with that?
Oh, and last night I might have watched "Boyz in the Hood" on some cable channel. It was dubbed, which, granted, it's a film that doesn't really work so well in French. But I watched the whole thing and marvelled at how much spandex people wore in the early 90's. Those women were bold as hell, man. And they weren't exactly lean, either. And their spandex was in less-than-flattering shades like bright green and red. Oh, and you know what else I had forgotten about from back in the day? Those dresses that actually had shorts as the skirt part. No, not skorts. But the full-on dress version of the skort. Seriously. What a wild fashion concept. It looked hideous even on a cute girl with a nice body. What were people thinking?
I also watched a really bad reality show about a woman who comes into houses and observes parents for a few days before telling them everything they're doing wrong and correcting all their problems by teaching them how to parent properly.* I'm not totally sure how that managed to keep my attention for a whole hour, but I'm not going to dwell on it. I have, however, learned that children need limits, that nutrition is important, and that parents need to remember to have fun with their children. As you can tell, the show was highly informative and taught me many important lessons that I couldn't have learnt any other way. My favorite part was when The Nanny (aka Kathy or Cathy, I don't know) lectured the dad about how bad television is for children, and how it is not a substitute for bedtime stories or Quality Parent Time. How it's not an informative means of communication, either. The irony of having a television personality lecturing a dad about how television is bad was not lost on me, but it went right over the head of the good man with the grave face who just wanted to learn how to treat his kids right, no matter what Kathy or Cathy said.
I cannot believe I could just spend a whole paragraph on that show. Surprisingly, I've thought about it a lot since seeing it. I'm not exactly proud of that.
What I am happy to say is: a good night's sleep is a great thing. Television is the ultimate vixen, luring me so sweetly yet treating me so wrong. It's great that I don't have it at home. Can you think of all the wasted hours I would have on my hands - juggling BOTH distractions of television and internet? I don't know how you people do it.
Anyway, this post is going nowhere. It's 3.00 am and I'm on vacation, so I'm not even worried about only getting two hours of sleep. Life is so beautiful sometimes...
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*I love this run-on sentence. I refuse to change it.
Yesterday, I called the eye doctor because I need new glasses. Mine are just getting old and kinda gross, and I want something sort of sylish that I don't feel lame wearing outside.
So I called and made an appointment for the next day (today). Sweet. I got to the office, waited five minutes, went inside, and ten minutes later, walked out with my prescription and a trial set of contacts. It cost me 70 euros, 80% of which is reimbursed by my insurance.
This is health care that functions, people! Do you hear that? It works. I got what I needed, when I needed it, and at a reasonable price. Why is this concept so foreign to my homeland?
Tomorrow, I am bringing down my "Mutuelle" card to the eyeglasses place and saying, "Hi, I have 50 euros to spend on glasses. What glasses can I get that will give me the most money back? For instance, if I buy these 200 euro glasses, will I get 150 euros back? Lay 'em out for me, right there on the table. Spread 'em. Lemme know what kinda glasses I'm dealing with here, homes, and then we can talk."
Seriously? I cannot believe that I'm going to have - once everything is said and done - new contacts, an eye check-up, and two new pairs of glasses for something like 70 euros.
Never again will I do eye business in the United States of America.
Nothing quite says, "I'm over the flu!" like a dinner of 10 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Nausea of another form is still better than flu-style.
Really, though, you would think I would have thought this through. I ate nothing but boiled potatoes and bananas for four consecutive days. Just what makes me think I can handle oatmeal chocolate chip cookies? Well, the taste was good.
It is 4 am. I cannot sleep because I am so sick. I cannot stay up because I am so tired. My hardy meal of rice was not very filling, and I've lost everything I ate. I'm really thirsty but water has a pretty bad effect on me, too (don't worry, I'm still drinking fluids, although I'm sure I'm losing them just as quickly). I have big racoon eyes and am sort of delirious. Can you tell? It would be sort of fun if there weren't so much pain involved.
Let's hope tomorrow is a brighter day. Not too bright, mind you, because my eyes are sort of burning, too. No need to aggravate things, now.
Know what's crazy, though? I managed to do all the work I had that I could potentially do in my house. I skipped Spanish, which I had a serious issue with. No guilt, just remorse. Otherwise, I'm proud of my be-a-trooper attitude. I actually sat up the majority of the day, which is progress from yesterday's behaviour.
Tomorrow I have the first of a series of classes. I hate missing the first class of anything, but I'm a little nervous to go. It's not until 15.00, so we'll see if I'm not feeling dynamite by then. You never know. Miracles can happen.
I am home with the flu today. Apparently this year is France's WORST FLU EPIDEMIC EVER!!! Or so the news would have you believe. I don't know, I don't watch the news, but when I called two friends today to tell them what was wrong with me, they both mentioned that this year is the WORST FLU EPIDEMIC EVER!!!
I don't think I have ever had the flu. As a little kid, I was out of school at least twice each winter with strep throat. But otherwise, I never had any problems. In high school, I was never sick, that I can recall. So, this whole flu thing is sorta new to me.
I self-diagnosed, though. Yesterday, I started feeling a little not-so-great in the belly during my Spanish class, but it was just the beginning. Two hours later, back at home, I was shaking uncontrollably and making regular trips to the toilet. I spent the rest of the night trying to sleep, but was regularly interrupted by needing to run to the bathroom. I always find that sort of hard to do when I don't have my glasses on and the house is pitch dark.
This morning, I called in sick to work. I must have sat there trying to decide if the entire sick episode was over or not for at least three hours. Finally, I voted to stay home, and I am SOOOO glad I did. I think I would have had to come home early if I had gone to work today, and that would have been bad news. Honestly, I would not have been able to have ridden on a train for an hour - the nausea would have been overwhelming.
The plumber came this morning and I just about died of pain. It's very hard to have stomach problems when the plumber's tools are strewn all over the only toilet in the house. I spent much of his time here in the fetal position.
But no matter, because we finally have hot water! On tap for tonight: DVD rental (The Boy got it for me), a long hot bath, lots more sleep (I clocked in almost 16 hours last night) and several more trips to the toilet. Oh, the joy.
Ok, so. In your opinion, which is worse?
1. Spending 30 minutes with 18 year-olds and repeatedly telling them to stop talking over you - a conversation that eventually lead to a shouting match, that then culminated in your leaving the room with the students sitting in shock behind you (for what it's worth, they came an apologized in the teachers' lounge, but their behavior was beyond rude, and I don't regret making my point, even though the whole thing felt shitty... I can still feel their surprise as I got up and left. I had been sitting for five minutes - literally - just waiting for them to recognize how out of line they were. Unfortunately, they just never stopped talking and yelling and acting like animals in the zoo)
or
2. Going to send my frozen poop at the delivery place and realizing, when the woman asks me "specifically" what is in the box, that I don't know a better word for poop in French other than "shit" or "ca-ca." I opted for the latter. She handled it all quite gracefully, I might add, although I felt like a dumbass. Of course, on the way out, I came up with the medical term, which would have been quite a bit better, but what can you do? Ah well...
I just have to remind myself: six more days. Six more days and it will be Winter Break. Six more days and I will have two full weeks of vacation. Six more days and it will be ALL LIBRARY, ALL THE TIME. Look out thesis, here I come.
Sleeping in until 8:00 is going to feel great.
I have to get tested for gluten intolerance, and the best way to do so is to send your poop to the lab.
This is a little unconventional, I realize, but it's all in the name of medecine.
So here's the dilemna. I have to send my poop - which is now safely in a lab container, sealed and then taped for security - to the lab tomorrow via express shipping. Until then, I have to keep it frozen.
Ok, so it's already rather degrading to have to poop into a plastic lab container. It's equally as belittling to have to seal the container and tape it up. But I think the freezing-of-my-poop has brough me to a new low.
In a normal house, poop freezing would probably be no big deal. Just plunk the poop right into the freezer, making sure to keep the ice cream far to the right.
Our problem, however, is that our freezer is inaccessible. It gets whatever that snowy, icy crap is that freezers sometimes get, except it takes over our entire freezer within three days, creating a freezer-wide chunk of impenetrable ice. I have a defrosting party every summer, emptying the fridge and leaving the door open for two or three days, letting the sumer heat eventually melt the massive block of ice.
Unfortunately, there's no summer heat and I don't have a couple of days to keep the door open. I really need the freezer today. I was hoping it would get below freezing tonight, and I would just use my windowsill as my "freezer," no de-frosting necessary. But alas, Paris is having an unusually warm winter, and no forecast goes below 7°C for this evening. If I were to be able to send my poop first thing in the morning, I wouldn't care, but I work until 14.00 tomorrow, so the poop isn't going anywhere before 16.00. That shit needs to get frozen in the meantime.
And really, do you know? Nothing feels more pathetic than sitting in front of your freezer for two hours, holding a book in one hand and a blow-dryer in the other, hoping to clear enough space in your broken, crap-ass freezer to keep your poop in it overnight.
Even worse? I can't even take a shower when this whole fiasco is over.
I swear, one day I will have a house that functions.
I just discovered a bunch of writing that I had kept on disks. Some of it is embarassingly bad, most of it could be good with some work, and some of it I actually think is good as is.
The bad news is that I know I wrote a ten- or twenty-page piece that was saved on one of the disks, but now my computer can't read it. I remember it pretty well. As a matter of fact, it was what I was most excited about reading. Maybe it's lost now? Maybe I should bring it back to life? Don't know.
The good news is that there are a few things I am actually going to try to tinker with. To find something I wrote over three years ago, that I actually like and want to expand on - is a pretty cool feeling.
It all might look like crap in the morning, as I've started listening to Leonard Cohen, and he always puts me in a certain mood that is more conducive to sitting alone in front of a computer screen. But still. Maybe it might look good tomorrow, too. Can't hurt trying.
You know what's super uncool?
Going out to the bar (it was 80's night, we couldn't resist) until 3 am, getting up early the following morning to go work on a Saturday, riding the train for an hour, walking six (boring) blocks to the high school through some serious rain and wind, and then, oh yes, FINDING OUT I HAVE NO CLASSES.
You know what would have been cool?
If someone had had the decency to tell me.
As far as days go, this was not the best. Remember, I am very greasy at this moment. I also spent a lot of time writhing around my bed in pain last night, which made for a tough night of sleep. But no worries, everyone, I am a tough cookie. I still got up this morning, on time, and put on my shoes and walked out the door like the rest of the working world.
I just had oil dripping off my split ends. No matter.
So I take the metro to Les Halles, where I switch to get on the RER (express suburban-bound train). Then I read that there's some sort of problem, and I have to go to Saint-Lazare to get the train. Once I get to Saint-Lazare, they tell me that no, I could have just taken the train at Les Halles (whatever) and that I need to go to Auber to take it now. So I do that.
Read more »We have no hot water in the house, which we discovered when we came home to a house with no electricity. The Boy freaked ("But I won't have my blessed internet!") and we tested every circuit one by one. Turns out the water heater is the culprit, and the rest of the house is functioning fine now.
Having no hot water just mysteriously pop up as a problem is cool 'cause I already haven't showered in two days. I planned well, as you can see. So it will soon be three, potentially four, five days before we can clean ourselves. Love that early 20th century plumbing.
Mainly, I'm disturbed because our heating sucks so much that I use the shower as my heater. You know, get undressed, take a shower, and jump directly from shower to bed without passing go. If you do that, you can kinda conserve some body warmth and you won't spend the first half hour before you go to sleep trying to fight off hypothermia.
We also prepared for the no-hot-water disaster perfectly: our dishes were fairly severe (by my standards) and I just about froze my fingers off trying to pry the oatmeal off the pan.
Tomorrow, some random Senegalese dude named Neb is coming over here to come to our rescue. The Boy met him in the hallway of our building one day, and somehow he came to learn that Neb is a plumber/electrician. How does that happen?
"Hey, random guy, nice to see you..."
"Yeah, random guy, you too..."
"Hey, by the way, guy, what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm a plumber slash electrician, and you?"
Anyway. The Boy conserved Neb's number somewhere in his "system" (aka pile of papers of all sizes and color, in no particular order) and called the guy to come fix things. I was suggesting we try an actual service, but The Boy says we have to help the African struggle. I thought it was funny that he applied our electric needs to the African struggle - and so militantly, I might add - but I don't care who we call, as long as I get myself some hot water. So Neb better mean business.
Well goodness. Today just flew right on by now, didn't it?
You know what I hate? I hate when I find a book I love. Normally, this is a good thing, but I'm learning to find it more and more bittersweet.
When I find a great book, I bring it everywhere with me, and I actually look forward to my train rides because that makes for non-guilty reading time. I really let myself go and dive in, full force, into whatever the story is. Today, for example, I almost missed my stop because I was so deep in the world of Wolvogs and Pigoons. (Shout out to Margaret Atwood, yo!)
Inevitably, I cannot control my reading binges and I obsessively open the book every chance I get. It's amazing how much time I spend just waiting around. That time, normally such a dull and drab part of my life, turns into a Potential Reading Party, if the book inspires that kind of attitude. Good books do that to me.
Regardless, I always finish the book way too fast. Today, I couldn't help myself: I did that whole I've-only-got-two-chapters left thing, and finished it up without remembering to savor. When I shut the book after reading the last page, I actually whimpered.
Oh, the emptiness I felt when I was done!
So what now? I have to work tomorrow and I only have my New Yorker to accompany me on the train. And that's ok, but it pales in comparison to the last two days. This is weird, but I sort of miss the characters from the book already.
Tomorrow, directly from work, I am going to the library.
I've been getting up very early and being all extra go! go! go! ever since the weekend. I just can't seem to stop.
Today, I had to stop.
So I slowed down and got in bed at 15.00 and took a nap. I woke up at 16.00, ran into the living room, and said, "SHIT! I missed my class!"
"What?" said The Boy, "What do you mean?"
"I had a class at 9.00, but since I don't normally have classes on Wednesdays, I just slept right through it! I feel awful!"
...
"What?" said The Boy.
"I can't believe I slept through my class!" I said, really upset.
"But, um. It's Tuesday. You were taking a nap," he responded.
"What? Tuesday?" I asked. "You mean it's not Wednesday, yet?"
"No..." he said.
And I got back in bed. I woke up again an hour or so later and went to Spanish, but I was fully disoriented for a good half-hour after waking up. I must have needed the sleep more than I had realized.
The Boy is working on a big, scary project. When someone you love decides to do something crazy, you can either ask them what the hell they're thinking, or you can shut your eyes, clench your fists, and say, "I'm with you all the way, sweetie!"
I don't know why I chose the latter technique, but I did. Sometimes it's hard, because I have my own fears about everything falling through, but I've decided to support him and I do it 100%.
Still, his project is truly insane. Part of the craziness involves making contacts with record companies and editors from all over the world. This might be easy for those of you in the business, but both The Boy and I are pretty much small potatoes, and we know it.
Read more »I did it. I ate the whole damn chocolate bar.
Granted, I ate 3/4 of it this afternoon, and 1/4 of it three minutes ago, but the fact remains: the entire chocolate bar is now in my stomach.
I haven't bought - let alone eaten - an entire chocolate bar since I was probably 8. That was crazy. But damn, it was good.
I'm levelling with myself by saying, "Self, if you went out to dinner this evening like everybody else who doesn't have to work at 8 am on a Saturday morning, you would probably have gotten chocolate cake for dessert. So it's no biggie. That was your once-a-week treat, you just you gave it to yourself outside of your normal treat window."
Apparently, I have "treat windows" much like my dog does. I didn't know that about myself, but that must be part of this quarter-life-crises discovery shit I keep hearing so much about.
Meanwhile, I haven't had dinner yet so I suppose I'm going to go fix myself a healthy tuna-and-rice combo. Trying to relieve the guilt. Got a problem with that?
On a side note: I just got a phone call from the head of the English department at the high school I work at. They have been trying to change my schedule for the last TWO WEEKS, but couldn't seem to get it together. She finally called today to let me know, and they now have me coming in for ONE HOUR (and only one hour, although it takes me an hour to get there and an hour to get back) on both Wednesday and Thursday. I'm going to raise some holy hell, because this shit is not flying in my universe. Oh hell no, it isn't. In my universe, people who work while going to school don't spend ten hours/week on a train in order to work their twelve scheduled hours/week. My school last year was so understanding of the fact that I actually had more to my life than sitting on trains, but apparently these people think that I'm a train girl, through and through.
So stay tuned. This could get very exciting. Monday is big confrontation day, and heads are going to fly. Seriously. I'm not very into the whole standing-my-ground thing, but when I get riled up I can get pretty ferocious about it.
Because really, did they not think this through? Not only do I work on Saturdays (freaking crazy, I know, but I decided to let it slide because the best classes are all on Saturday), but they also want me coming in for ONE HOUR ONLY two days per week (while I still come in all day Mondays and Tuesdays)?? They all know full well how far away I live.
I'm not happy with this. Not. One. Bit. Because guess what folks? I have research to be doing, and my research has zip, zero, zilch to do with public transportation and all its inner-workings. So that leaves us with the following equation:
Time in day - time spent on trains = Not enough time left over to go to the library
Transcript taken from a Big Important Administrative place that happens to be an hour away from my house. I waited 20 minutes there before having the following 30-second conversation with the Bitchy Secretary Lady:
Me: Hi, I'd like to ask for a work permit.
BSL: Yes, are you renewing or getting your first one?
Me: Oh. I got one last year, but it was for a different employer. So it's my first one for this job.
BSL: It doesn't matter. Ok, so you're renewing. You need to give me all the documents on this list, put them in this folder, and drop the folder in that box to your left.
Me: (scanning the list) OK. One question.
BSL: Yes?
Me: It says here that I need to give you a photocopy of my previous work permit.
BSL: Yes.
Me: Well, I'm just wondering. Last year, I asked for a work permit for a contract that was ending in May. Oddly, they gave me a permit that only lasted for 9 days. I got the permit in the mail in June, so clearly after the nine-day period which had been, bizarrely, for March. So obviously it was all wrong. Do you still want it?
BSL: Why didn't you come in when you received it in the mail?
Me: Because my contract was already over by that point.
BSL: Well, you still should have come in.
Me: You're saying I should have gone an hour out of my way to point out a mistake that you made, even though that wouldn't change anything?
BSL: You needed to come in.
Me: Do you still want the card?
BSL: I just don't see why you didn't come in.
Me: Well I didn't.
BSL: You should have.
Me: (laughing) Right. You've said that.
BSL: You needed to come in when you got the card.
Me: YEAH. OK, fine. But the fact is that I didn't. So what should I do now?
BSL: You really should have come in...
What are you, crazy lady? My mother? The broken record version? Anyway, whatever.
End of story: I need a whole lot more paperwork than I had originally thought. I should have known that ahead of time (we are in France, after all), but it means that I have to go ride the train for another hour just to DROP OFF the stupid folder filled with photocopies. Oh, and get this: the place where I have to drop off the folder? Only open from 9:00 - 10:45. Because that's practical. And she wonders why I didn't come in.
