Pause plaint: Complaining break

I would like to take a moment to complain.


Our beautiful new apartment has:

termites eating the exposed ceiling beams (noisily: did you know termites can make a crunching sound?)

mosquitoes (yes, in March)

high humidity, causing salt to crystallize on walls

sewage smell coming up through plumbing

dust crumbling off the exposed-stone walls and ceiling of the bedroom

a scorpion (now dead, thanks to my very brave friend Lynn)

not enough windows.

Let me add to my complaint. The customer service representative I talked to on the phone today had:

an extremely thick Corsican accent.

Now let me force myself to see the bright side:

Once you finally forget that you're paying 50 cents a minute to call customer service, because instead of being free, it's charged at a HIGHER rate to get help over the phone in France, and once you figure out what the customer service representative is actually saying, a Corsican accent is really cute. It sounds a bit like someone trying to speak French and eat marbles at the same time. I think I will learn to talk like that and see if people think I'm Corsican. Then I will go there and go to the beach. I hear it's beautiful.

And I really love our new apartment. That's the reason it pains me when it seems like it’s going to fall apart. It’s got gorgeous pickled-pine parquet floors, it’s all recently re-painted and re-tiled, brand new appliances (including a WASHING MACHINE), the bathroom vanity is adorable, all fresh and modern looking…we don’t have to climb up onto a ledge to get into the shower, we have a REAL BED, not a loft, with a brand new mattress...

And it's. . . get this. . . two rooms. I am not kidding. Sometimes I go into the bedroom and just kindof look around in awe and wonder if I'm dreaming. A real bedroom. And I no longer lie awake at night with Josh's elbow in my ribs, wishing we weren’t sleeping in a bed just a bit bigger than a twin-sized. It’s just that now I lie awake wondering if the ceiling is going to collapse.