Well, I can't say that I wasn't warned, but for the first time this week, I found out the hard way what everyone who knows has been telling me about living at a boarding school. Your life is like a fishbowl. On tuesday morning, after I saw Joe off for more new-faculty orientation at about 8:30, I lazily crawled back into bed for a little extra sleep. At about 9:15, I hear "hello?" coming from my OPENING FRONT DOOR! Here I am, in bed in my pajamas, and there is someone poking their head into the front door to the apartment.
"HOOOOOOOLLLLD ONNNN!" I screeched, leaping out of my bed, and slamming the door to the bedroom, which, of course, is almost in direct line of sight to the front door. I scramble to put some clothes on, all the while, screaming "JUST A MINUTE!"
Finally, I get to the door (by this time, they had closed the front door and were waiting politely on the front porch) and there are two men there, one is a contractor, and the other is the director of facilities at the school. They need to access our basement to run a new gas and electric line to the apartment upstairs (used to be a dorm, now it's faculty housing, so they need to install a kitchen).
Well, I'm pretty sure I had pillow marks on my face, and drool crusted at the corner of my mouth, so that's AWESOME. While they were traipsing around in the basement, I ran around like a house-wife-on-crack trying to clean up the mess in the living room and kitchen - all the remnants of making polenta and ragu from the previous night's dinner (btw - yum!).
Anyway, they apologised, and gave me warning that they'd be back the next day to do more work.
Seriously, in NYC, you could pretty much assume that someone was trying to kill you if you heard an unexpected knock on the door. It was a standard clause in our brooklyn and queens leases that the landlord can't come to our apartment without at least 24 hours written notice.
I guess I have to adjust to this. And start sleeping a little better dressed.
2 comments:
Yikes! Not the way I would want to be awakened in the morning. I guess things will definitely be different now that you are living at a boarding school. Maybe now they've learned their lesson (I hope) and won't do that to some other unsuspecting sleeping beauty!
that's totally hilarious. as a boarding school brat myself, i completely agree with the fishbowl thing. at least you're not living in a dorm! we really didn't understand the concept of personal space (we were 16 and the world revolved around us-- duh) and often knocked on faculty doors and opened them, saying, "hellooooo?" and assuming that that was OK. NOT OK!
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