Meeting our landlord and other spooky happenings

Meredith just informed me that it’s officially been over a week since the last post. I’d say I’ve been super busy, but in reality I’ve just been super lazy.

This break was much needed after a strenuous 15 hours of work over the span of two weeks, and we’ve been very successful in doing almost nothing. That being said, I suppose there are some things that have happened in the past 10 days.

Things that have happened:

Thing 1:

Carson was taking a shower when I heard a noise that sounded like more water than usual dripping from the second floor into our kitchen. When I looked up toward the noise, I saw that there was indeed a mini waterfall streaming down onto our microwave. Although I am no plumber, I figured that this was probably a bad thing and that we should contact the landlord. Carson, unfortunately, had to go yet another day unshowered.

Weirdly enough, our landlord was coming to Lille the next day and said he would come over to check out  the tub in the afternoon. I was a bit worried that there was a huge issue with the pipes that would cause us to temporarily move out. Luckily—after some questionable experimenting—I realized the pipes were fine. There were just some tiny holes in the tub’s sealing, and if the showerhead was pointed toward these holes water would leak into the kitchen. That didn’t seem like such a big deal.

As always, something was lost in translation when the landlord arrived, and when I tried to explain that it would be an easy fix, he for some reason decided that there wasn't a problem at all. The conversation went something like:

Me: There are little holes here in the sealing causing the leak, but if the showerhead is pointed the other way, there really isn’t a problem.

Him: *Turning on and off the water, directing the showerhead solely into the drain, ignoring me completely* Yeah, everything seems fine here. I think the sealing is fine. But you know, if you break it at any point, you just need to use caulk and fix it.

Me: No, I mean, it isn’t a big deal, but this leak exists. We did not make up this leak.

Him: Yeah, really all seems fine.

Me: Okay...well, can you get under the tub and I will point the showerhead at the actual holes before you leave?

...Just to make sure, you know, that I didn’t imagine the giant leak that is obviously in our ceiling?

Him: *Gets under tub*

Me: *Sprays the crap out of the tiny holes*

Him: Ah, ah. Yes. Turn that off. Yes, good. TURN IT OFF. Yes, it’s good you showed me this. You see, there are tiny holes here in the sealing.

...Sure, definitely not the first thing I said in this conversation.

Him: Well, I’ll just come on Wednesday and fix it. Until then, you can just shower on this side of the shower. This is safe.

...Once again...I already said...you know what, whatever.

In any case, our shower is now fixed and our landlord is actually a nice guy. It was great to finally meet him (I think I already explained he lives in the south) and confirm that he exists.

Thing 2:

Other than that small almost-disaster, we have been having a great time with our friends just hanging out. We’ve hosted several dinner parties/get-togethers and are going to have some Canadians over tonight. Little do they know, it’s a Halloween party...

Which brings me to the most exciting news of the week: Carson got a Halloween care package from his mom and it is the best thing that has ever happened. We spent a lot of yesterday decorating and here are the results:

Cathy also sent socks with grips on the bottom so that going
up and down our stairs would be slightly less dangerous. Hooray!

Tableau of creating a tableau 

Carson wanted to make the skeletons scarily hang from one of the
trees...kind of went the other way with that one.

RIP reece's cups. Your term here was short but unforgettable.  

The largest spiderweb ever known.

Also, here's a festive dinner I forced Carson and Will to participate in:

Pumpkin peppers!

Stuffed pumpkin peppers! 

They really were good sports about this.

Thing 3:

We found out that we have two mailboxes: one that’s inside the building, which we knew about, and another outside that was unknown to us entirely. As you can probably guess, all of our mail was going to the secret mailbox and we just thought we had been using the wrong address.

Luckily, as we were leaving to go to the market yesterday, the shop owner was coming back from lunch and stopped us to ask if we knew that we had a metric crap ton of mail. He led us outside and opened the box. Sure enough, there were a bunch of important documents from our bank (which we had already told them never arrived), stuff from the OFII office, and Carson’s package slip.

As I seem to be saying in every post, we are dumb. But now, with our shower that doesn’t leak, festively decorated apartment, and ability to receive mail, we feel ready for the inevitable issues that are yet to come.

More on those probably in the next post.