Open mouth, insert foot, shrug

That’s kind of how I feel about my day today.  I don’t know whether I can blame it on my sickness or not, but that would certainly be an easy way out.  Also: oh gosh, this is a long blog post.

As of today, my voice is pretty much officially gone.  Sometimes I was able to actually make speech noises, but not necessarily for the duration of an entire sentence.  My throat feels fine, like nothing’s wrong, but when I go to speak, no sound comes out.

However, this morning I was still hopeful that I could teach my Terminale class at C by speaking softly (it’s a class of only 4 or 6) and using handwritten signs.  So I got up, got dressed, ate breakfast and drank my tea, brushed my teeth, and started to head out the door… except my keys were gone.

Moment #1:

We all (the four of us) leave our keys on a desk next to the front door of the apartment.  Since I always store my keys on the desk, my first thought was, “someone must have taken my keys by accident, or maybe Annabelle lent them to a friend because of their project presentation today.”  Normally, I would take someone else’s keys and head out, assuming the swtcheroo would be fixed that evening.  But there weren’t any keys on the desk at all.  I was the only one home.

When I decided to just go to school and worry later about how to get back inside, I discovered that the door was locked.

I was locked in the apartment, and supposed to teach a class in 30 minutes.  Joy.

You see, French doors are locked using deadbolts (2 turns to fully lock, for some reason), but the deadbolts can only be turned/released using keys.  Doesn’t matter if you’re inside or outside, a key is required.

I looked through all the drawers, on all the tables, in my purse: every place I could think of, and found no keys.  So I texted people (I’m hoarse, remember?) to ask for help and/or let them know.  Isabelle was at a massage, and Annabelle was in the middle of a test (I found out later).  Paul’s University campus is far enough away that it wasn’t worth trying to get in touch with him.  So at 10:55AM, after 25 minutes of scrambling and searching I finally called Carnot to say that I was stuck and could not teach my 11AM class.  The man at Vie Scholaire was kind enough to call the administration for me, since I was obviously straining to overcome my hoarseness in addition to being locked indoors on the 2nd (1er) floor.  Sigh.  Thank goodness that the German teacher Kirsty and I talked to yesterday gave me the number for the school, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do!

However, this situation then led to my first bête (idiotic, foot-in-mouth) moment of the day – I eventually found my keys in my purse, at the very bottom of the pocket.  D’oh.  I remember putting my keys on the desk last night, and I checked my purse before I called C.  Oh well, *shrug*; with my sore throat it was probably better for me to rest anyway.

Moment #2:

Isabelle was going to the doctor’s office today, and told me to come with her so that I could get my throat checked out.

The doctor isn’t in on Wednesday afternoons, but I made an appointment for Thursday.  On the way home, we swung by the pharmacy to get a refill of one of Isabelle’s medications for her knee pain.  However, there was a significant, unforeseen delay in this leg of the trip, because our car was hit by a Divia bus on the way there.

Now when I say “hit,” I actually mean that the side of the bus scraped the side of the car at roughly 5 mph. We were both turning left and the bus driver unintentionally cut us off by turning from the right-hand lane (the traffic patterns are being redesigned, so the lanes are constantly in transition).  “Unintentionally” because he thought there was only one lane instead of 2. 

It was a weird and slow experience, though, because we were turning… I could see that there wasn’t much room in the “goal” lane… the bus’s turning radius meant that it was getting closer to my side of the car… the side of the bus was 2 feet away and closing… and by the time I tried to verbally/scratchily react beyond, “wow, that bus is close to us!” the distance had already been closed and we were being pushed and jostled by the bus, in the middle of the intersection.  We could hear and feel some of the metal being bent and the bumper being damaged. 

The car was still drivable, once we got the bumper lashed back “on,” and the rest of the delay was waiting for the Divia people to arrive, inspecting the damage and filling out the report (Isabelle, not me).  Surprisingly, everyone was quite friendly and at ease – I was really worried that the situation would be tense and hostile.  I’ve never been in a car crash before (knock on wood!), but I imagine in the States there would be yelling and it would be a generally unhappy time for everyone.  Maybe this was different because it was a public bus instead of two private individuals, and Divia has a formal procedure for this sort of incident.  Not because it happens very often, but because they have to.

Anyway, I got a closer look at the French accident citation process this afternoon than I ever expected to.  This moment was much more of a “sigh” moment because I was feeling tired and kind of sicky, and I just sort of quietly observed the whole thing, feeling as though I was experiencing things kind of behind a curtain.

Moments #3 and #4:

These foot-in-mouth moments are not nearly as exciting as the first two; they were more of the standard “why did I write that…” moments.  I’d like to think that if I were well I would have thought through those Facebook posts a little more fully, but who knows.  Neither was very serious, and both were easily fixable by explaining what I’d actually meant, it was just sort of the icing on the cake. 

Suet isn’t meat, as it turns out (aka I need to pay more attention when I read recipe ingredients), and suggesting going on a walk when talking about someone’s figure (because you’re aware of the bridesmaid dress you need to wear at the end of this month) is easy to interpret offensively.  Sigh/shrug.

Moment #5:

Because of the aforementioned sore throat, I emailed the teacher whose classes I have tomorrow that I may not be able to speak in class.  She (Florence) wrote back, saying, “you will come to school tomorrow whether you can talk or not… I’ll prepare another activity in case you can’t talk.”  AKA, she wanted me to take part of the group of kids no matter what, even if I just give them an activity to do on their own.  I thought the phrasing was a bit brusque, but hey, okay, I can do that.

I’m glad I emailed back to confirm, because she sensed that something wasn’t right and then clarified in another message: “you should see if you’re feeling well in the morning, and if so then come in and teach.  Otherwise, she will prepare an activity to give to the students herself.”  Aha.  Makes more sense, though I can imagine her meaning the first version as well.

“Verrai,” not “viendrai.”  Oops.  Normalement (if I were well), I hope, I would have read the verb properly.  Tonight, I’m just glad I emailed back to confirm.

And… that was my day.  It was definitely one of the more crazy ones that France has thrown at me so far.  Next post I’ll try to include some pictures so it’s more interesting for you.