La petite maison dans la prairie

Monsieur J and I have been playing what I've taken to calling "Little House on the Prairie." Why, you might ask? Because we've been sans hot water for 3 weeks. 21 days folks, 22 tomorrow.

To heck with sugarplums, I've been dreaming of a hot shower. Can you blame me?

But instead we've been reduced to boiling water in the kettle, pouring it into a bucket and "washing" in the shower. I use the term washing loosely, as I haven't felt especially clean lately.

The good news is, this is France. And somehow I still smell better than 90% of the other people on my bus. I tolerate other people's stinkiness on a daily basis, consider this my contribution...or better yet, my revenge.

With the exception of picking up a warm baguette, everything else takes longer in these parts.

Unfortunately this applies to things breaking in the rental apartment, which sets off a long chain of tedious tasks:

1. Call rental agency x however many times it takes them to realize there really is a problem

2. Rental agency realizes you are not making this up

3. Rental agency calls repair service

4. Wait several days for the repair service to call you

5. Schedule an appointment

6. Wait at least a week for said appointment to roll around

7. Arrange your schedule to be home for the appointment

8. Repair service investigates the problem and sends an estimate to rental agency

9. Agency contacts owner to see if he will agree to the repair

10. Continue waiting, as the owner avoids phone calls from the agency

11. Agency finally gets the owner's agreement and alerts repair service

12. Schedule a follow-up appointment with the repair service to actually fix the problem

13. Wait at least another week for said appointment

14. Arrange your schedule to be home for the 2 p.m. repair

15. Revel in your tenacity and take a hot shower.

We're at step 14 and if I'm not basking in a hot shower when I get home from work tomorrow night, then I'll be channeling George Costanza and his infamous line, "serentity now"!

Here's to returning to America for Christmas, cheers!

Laissez-moi vous expliquer.

You know you're in big trouble whenever a French bureaucrat says this to you. This particular form of "let me explain" is not meant to be helpful, but rather to establish who is in charge: them, never anyone else.

On Monday, March 1, Monsieur J and I went to the préfecture together with our passports and our newly delivered livret de famille, a booklet that proves you're married and where your children's names will one day be inscribed. Evidently this was all we'd need to obtain my green card equivalent. Ha!

Now keep in mind that I'd gone to the préfecture several weeks prior to find out what was expected of me given that I would be marrying a French citizen. I asked all the right questions: is there a dossier I need to complete? What documents are required? Do I need to schedule an appointment? Non non non, just come with your husband, your IDs and the livret de famille.

Per usual, I got all of the wrong answers.

When we arrived, there were 50 people ahead of us in line. The last equation I ever understood in math class went something like this: distance equals rate times time. 50 people = 12 people x 60 minutes, or a roughly 4 hour wait. Super. We promptly abandonned ship and found a bookstore nearby where we bought road maps of the Pyrénées, guidebooks and a few postcards to send to my nieces and nephews. Anything to distract. As predicted, in our hour away only 12 names had been called. What can I say? I spend a lot of time here, I know the drill.

When it was our turn to approach the troll at the counter, I had everything ready. We briefly explained the circumstances; she asked for my papers; I forked them over. She then asked Monsieur J for his ID and he slipped his passport across the desk. This is where things got ugly. Then there was a rapid fire exchange between them en français that went something like this:

Troll: This is NOT a valid form of photo identification!

Monsieur J: Is this a joke?

Troll: I do not appreciate your tone of voice!

Monsieur J: No really, I honestly thought you were kidding. It's a passport ma'am...

Troll: And let me remind you that there are fake passports out there!

Monsieur J: umm, ok?

She then proceeded to present us with a dossier to fill out, a laundry list of documents we would need to present in original and photocopied format on the day of our appointment on March 25th. Is it just me, or did I already ask about all of this circa late January only to get a completely different answer? In retrospect, make that a non-answer.

At least now Monsieur J understands why I have to curl up in the fetal position after dealing with these people. I'm not an emotional midget, it's just the rampant incompetence, I promise!

In the meantime, I'm still incredulous that a passport is considered the ultimate form of photo ID in every country except France. Typical.

You've Got Mail.

I wish I were writing about that cheesy romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but alas, I'm not that lucky. Instead, I received a terrifying lettre recommandée aka certified mail from the Préfecture yesterday. For those of you who don't already know, the Préfecture is the official headquarters of all bureaucratic migraines, especially if you're not French and exponentially more so if you hail from a country outside of the E.U. It is a place that I will always associate with amoeba-esque lines, conflicting notions of personal space, monotone zombie personnel, incorrect information, B.O., and minimum 3 hour waits. This place is the bane of my French existence. In an effort to help you understand, I've provided a facetiously literal translation of a very nonsensical letter, in hopes that you too will feel my pain:


Miss,

By the file deposited at the Préfecture on the 29th of September 2009, you have sollicited a change of status in order to exercise a salaried activity.

Under the application of article R5221-17 of the labor code, in order to grant or refuse the work permit requested, the Prefect of the Department takes into consideration the following elements of appreciation notably:

- the situation of the job

- the adequateness between the qualification, the experience and the characteristics of the job to which the foreigner is applying

- the respect by the employer of the legislation relative to work and social protection,

The statistics of the Regional Direction of Labor and Employment and of Professional Training in the Midi-Pyrénées make to appear for the position "trainer", of 101 offers of which 8 are temporary contracts inferior to 1 month out of 402 requests.

And yet, the employer proposes a temporary contract for the duration of one year in addition to occasional overtime but does not indicate what type of mission this is about.

Moreover, the company has confirmed that upon signature of the contract only a temporary contract can be envisaged without further perspective in the coming weeks and without further information on the concluded market that would impose upon this organism of training a specific and occasional recruitment.

As a consequence, given the situation of the company and its way of using temporary contracts and in considering the situation of the position, your change of status is not conceivable. We invite you to approach yourself to the nearest Prefecture in order to submit a new dossier requesting a change of status within the next month.

I pray of you to accept, Miss, the expression of my distiniguished sentiments.


And I pray of you, M. le Préfet, well... nevermind.

Fortunately, my boss and I are going to sit down tomorrow to get to the bottom of this bureaucratic nightmare once and for all. And who knows, maybe she will understand the more sublte nuances of this communicative masterpiece better than I. At any rate, it's high time to figure out what sort of contract and additional information about my "mission" as a "trainer" will be needed to get this file approved before I turn into a pumpkin, I mean, an illegal alien. Now that I think about it, perhaps we should specify that I'm only certified for "foreign langauge training" lest the Prefet think I wish to exercise in the dog or potty training sectors, I would truly hate for there to be any confusion.