A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.

Remember last week when I was so happy and excited? I had a job, possibility, fun things in my future? Well the rainbows and butterflies disappeared pretty quickly to make way for a seriously crappy week. Several things all went wrong at the exact same time. It wasn't pretty. On the surface, what I'm about to tell you may not seem that bad; it was compounded by the fact that I've been irritable since about two weeks ago, when I lost feeling in the tips of my fingers and the end of my nose. It has not yet returned. So begins my miserable week.
It's cold here. Like really cold. And it will get colder. I just didn't expect it to be this cold this fast. It's generally been hovering around the low- to mid- forties (Fahrenheit) with the occasional dip into the upper- to mid- thirties or, a couple of times, a rise to the low-fifties for an hour or two in the afternoon. It's also very wet and windy. it rains about 4 or 5 days out of the week, and looks like it is seriously considering it the other 2 days. Yesterday we had hail for 45 minutes or so. Nothing huge or damage-causing (the stones were between the size of a penny and a nickel) and I was inside, so I didn't mind it too much. Now I can handle all that cold and wetness. If there's the possibility of escape. But the heat in our apartment doesn't come on for another three to four weeks. Most days when I'm in the apartment, I'm wearing at least three layers, including both a sweater and hoodie, super thick socks, a scarf, and gloves if I'm working on the computer or writing anything. So I've been pretty irritable. I would much prefer to be freezing than sweating like a pig every minute of the day, but I'm from Texas. We don't do cold there.

Monday was pretty good. I got up early and rode the Metro out to the babysitting job, and everything went pretty smoothly. For some of the morning, the Mom was still there, which made it a little difficult. It was the first time for me to really interact with the kids, so to have the Mom there the whole time made it harder since they were always running off to see what she was doing. They really didn't listen to me at all while the Mom was still in the apartment, which was annoying. After an hour or so in the apartment, we went over to a nearby park by ourselves and just played around for an hour or so. Maisy, the 2-year-old, had a minor mishap involving tripping over her own feet, and George fell off his scooter on the way home, but everything went much better discipline-wise once I had the kids on my own. When we got back to the apartment, the kids ate lunch while I helped the Mom decipher some French off of the computer (She's British and speaks very little French). Then I went on with the rest of my day.

Tuesday is when it started to go downhill. I woke up on Tuesday with a pretty bad cold. Sniffles, sore throat, coughing and sneezing, the works. Then I turned on my computer only to find an email from the Mom thanking me for my time but pretty much firing me from the job. She said something like the dynamic just wasn't what she was looking for in a babysitter, yada yada yad. If you all have been following my facebook or the subtle hints in previous posts, you know how hard it was for me to get that job. I was pretty crushed. It's not the end of the world, but my pride was hurt pretty badly. I do still have one other opportunity with a family that is closer to my apartment, so it's not totally the end of the world. But I'm still feeling a bit indignant and wounded. I've been babysitting since I was about 13 or 14, and I have never been fired or passed over as much as I have in the last six weeks. It's been rough. So my cold and I went back to bed for most of the day, venturing out once for a sandwich and a trip to the pharmacy a couple blocks down.

The rest of the week pretty much continued in this vein. On Wednesday, the train to one of my classes broke down in between stations and I was stuck on the foul-smelling prison for about 45 minutes, missing my class. Later that same day, somebody on the metro picked my pocket. They took 20 Euros and change. That may not seem like a lot to you, but it's a lot to me. Thursday afternoon, I slipped on a hailstone and went flying. All of this while having a pretty bad cold, worrying about all my friends and family on the East Coast, and living in an ice-cold apartment.

Today, however, things started to look up. It was still freezing and raining and generally gross outside. I got soaked on the way home because the wind blew my umbrella inside-out and it ripped, and I'm still sneezing and sniffling every few minutes, but a very nice man at a crêpe stand gave me something wonderful today. I don't eat a lot of crêpes because I'm training for a 5K and trying to drop a few pounds. There's a nice little stand close to my metro stop, and once every couple of weeks I stop and get a nutella crêpe. They are delicious. Today, the guy making the crêpes looks at me while he's cooking it, making small talk, etc. I'm soaking wet, sneezing and sniffling up a storm, and the guy just looks at me and says, "Things are just not going well for you, are they?" And then you know what he does? He makes me a big fat crêpe, adds some fresh sliced strawberries and bananas to the nutella, folds it all up nice and tidy, and then refuses to take my money. "A special crêpe for a beautiful lady. Things will be better now." And they were. That crêpe was freaking delicious. I'm pretty sure that crêpe is what God serves to the people in heaven he really likes. Well, until next time everybody!