This morning, I am standing in my kitchen preparing to cut a pear (I know, who cuts a pear… what am I 90?) and thinking about what a disastrous mess my apartment is but how it’s OK because it’s just me and the kittycakes living there now, when the doorbell rings (maybe only the second time this has happened in the past year and it’s always a “what-the?!” moment). It’s the upstairs neighbor wondering about the water damage in my bedroom and could he come right in and look at the damage now? At 8:45 am.
I put him off until tomorrow at 8 am (!) and now I’m stressed about tidying up enough to allow a stranger into my apartment without him leaving of the mind that I am a cluttered nutter. Maybe I’ll tell him I just moved in. That would explain the boxes in the hallway. (Yes, there are still boxes in my hallway. B lives on an air mattress with camping-style kitchen basics and nary a chair to sit on in Sweden. And I’ve got boxes and boxes of things moved from Belgium that we haven’t even opened yet because they are meant for Stockholm. Ack!) So stay tuned tomorrow when a bleary-eyed Jodi lets the concerned upstairs neighbor into her apartment to deal with more water damage!
The other thing of note about the early rising upstairs neighbor is the he knew exactly where my water damage was because he “caused it.” I said something to the effect of “This building is so full of water damage, blah, blah…” and he was like, “Yes, but this one is because of me. I caused it.” What are you doing up there, buddy? The stairs are already rotting and the hallway ceilings are stained and you’re flooding the bathtub or effing with the pipes up there?! This building’s got enough problems without your noodling around with anything containing water, thanks.
In other news, there has been hammering on the other side of the living room wall. Mind-warpingly incessant hammering that begins each morning around 8:45 and stops… when? I don’t know. The whack-whack-whack-whack-whack (whack-whack) really makes me want to do something awful. Whack. (Too awful to write here.) This morning I wanted to throw my bowl of cocoa crispies and bang back at them on MY side of the wall. You know, to send the apartment dweller’s universal “shut up” signal. But instead I slurped down the rest of my bowl and left Cochino there to suffer through it. Come to think of it, maybe why that’s she’s been so bugged out when I get home from work these days. Surely the hammering affects her kitty sensibilities, too!
I am also convinced that this banging is the cause of my current internet woes. My technological grasp is on par with someone at least two generations above me (See above, the “cutting of the pear." It all adds up.) so that I just *know* the hammering over there has done something to my router. (Like, maybe it’s upset the hard-working, cable-plugging mice inside?)
That blinky light box, it's a router, right?
File under “Fun With French”…
The other day I bought some oregano oil because, though an over oregano-ed pizza is my personal food hell [I speak of the despicable dry stuff here], I’d been reading about oregano’s wondrous ability to clear a cold or boost immunity and all of that. I managed to find it at the fancy pharmacie on the corner of Rue des Archives and Rue de la Verrerie. I double checked with the counter guy that it was in fact oregano oil. I got home, put a few drops in a glass of water, took a drink and…. burning, burning, BURNING! Mucous membranes on FIRE! I went into panic mode… I was having a reaction to the oil! I live alone! I was going to scald my insides and die a writhing death while my cat sat idly by, concerned only with how she could get the crunchers in her own bowl.
Turns out I bought oregano oil for a diffuser (WHY anyone would want to smell this business, I don’t know… again, pizza hell) so it was not meant to be ingested. Dum-dum over here drank the smelly oil. I was fine (I am writing to you now) and, yeah, now it's actually pretty funny. If it was any other kind of oil, I might invest in the diffuser. But my smelly pizza oil is going in the trash.
