Apartment shenanigans

A lot of people are asking me if I've moved yet, and the answer is no.  I should be officially moving out of my current place on Thursday.

So I think I posted on here before that the mother and I tried to get into the apartment for me to see but we could not open the door to get in, and neither could a random lady we asked to help.  We weren't sure if it was perhaps the wrong key, but it didn't seem like it.  Her husband was away at the time and had the other key so we weren't able to try it with his.

Then she forgot to leave the key for me while they were in Montpelier, in the south, for a month.  I was annoyed about that, but it turns out it would not have done me any good - when I finally retrieved the key on Sunday I tried to get with the other key, the same thing happened.  Keep in mind that in between those two visits the father went by himself and was able to get in without much trouble (he said).

So I asked if he would come with me today to the apartment, hoping it was just that there is some trick to opening it.  But when he tried, he had a lot of trouble.  It took him more than five minutes to get it open.  It's even hard to open when it's unlocked!

He says he'll give me some oil tomorrow to put on the key and the mechanism and it should work - I really hope so, because if not I won't be able to get in to move my things.

Anyway, it was the first time I had been in the apartment, although I had some pictures of it.  It is super tiny, as I expected, but I had completely forgotten that the mother had warned me a while ago that the ceilings are low.  And indeed they are quite low!  It's essentially an attic room, so the ceilings are slanted.  There is a wooden beam between the room and the little kitchen area, and the bottom of the beam is a little below my chin - meaning it's about 4'7" from the ground.

It does have two burners, a little fridge, and a washing machine (yay!), which is the same I have here.  However it does not have a toaster oven; now that I know how to use one I want to keep it!  Sadface.  There is also a somewhat disproportionately large TV...not sure what I'm going to do with that as I don't really watch TV and it takes up some room.  I have decent cabinet space and a closet.  The bed is not really a futon but the same concept - it can fold into a couch but it's not a pull out bed either.

When I'm able to get in on my own I'll take some pictures.

One of my nerdier French Studies friends suggested I will be a modern grisette. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisette_(French)  Um, presumably without the prostitution implications.  They pretty much all live in tiny attic rooms and then die of consumption - think Mimi in La Boheme (or Rent), Fantine from Les Miserables, or some of Zola's characters.

This quote from Twain on grisettes is pretty awesome (note that I am moving to the very heart of the Latin Quarter, still overrun with poverty-stricken students):

Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are another romantic fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so beautiful—so neat and trim, so graceful—so naive and trusting—so gentle, so winning—so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible to buyers in their prattling importunity—so devoted to their poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter—so lighthearted and happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs—and oh, so charmingly, so delightfully immoral!

Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying:

"Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette?"

And he always said, "No."

He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette. Then he showed me dozens of them. They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw—homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding could overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting; they were ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I knew by their looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and finally, to my thinking it would be base flattery to call them immoral.

Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth another idol of my infancy.

Garlic and onions!  THE HORROR.