Pet Rescue

Friday I arrived home from work, anxious to get showered and changed so I could head out for an evening with the girls. Normally when I walk into the house, it’s only a matter of seconds before I’m greeted by the sound of a tiny bell, jingling its way towards me, Fintan. I listen out and I look forward to seeing his little self round the corner and lay on his back at my feet, looking for a belly tickle. He has missed me all day and this is his way of showing it.

However, today I hear nothing. Weird, I think. But I assume he is still outside playing so I go about my business of decompressing from a long day. But it’s starting to get dark, time for him to come inside. I walk around the side of our house towards the back where he likes to play. I call him and once again wait to hear the sound of his tiny bell racing towards me. But nothing. He must be playing in the neighbor’s house, another one of his hangouts, so I walk towards the fence that divides both our gardens and call out again. Still nothing. Something wasn’t right. It never takes him this long to respond. A little bit of panic hits me and I start walking down towards the creek, calling and listening, calling and listening. At one point, I think I hear something. So I stand still and perk up my ears. Yes, I definitely hear something that sounds like my kitty. I call his name again and hear a tiny cry. Sh*t, that’s not good. I’m walking around trying to follow his little meow. I know he’s in trouble. I can’t hear his bell, which means where ever he is, he can’t move. I keep calling and he keeps responding, I think it’s coming from the neighbor’s house, so I immediately go and knock on their door and ask if I can look around the garden for Fintan.

The neighbor was sweet enough to helped me look. He too could hear him, but was unable to figure out exactly where it was coming from. At this stage it’s getting dark and cold. I’m starting to freak out. My cat is trapped somewhere and I can’t find him. I race into the house for a flashlight and try to call Husband. No answer. I call again and again and finally I get him. I’m in total panic at this stage. I’m thinking the absolute worst has happened to Fintan and I just can’t get to him. Husband makes a few calls to have some friends come over and help me look. With flashlight in hand, I continue to search. At one point I hear his bell, good that means he can move. I remain frozen to the spot and listen hard. I hear his bell again, then a bunch of leaves fall down next to me. Oh my god, he’s up in a tree. I turn the flash light upwards but can’t see him. At this time of year, he is the same rusty color as the remaining leaves and cos my eyesight is not great, I think ever cluster of leaves is him, until I turn the light onto a certain spot and see 2 tiny eyes flash back at me. I found him. Somehow he managed to get himself stuck up in the neighbor’s tree. Way up. About 40ft or so. At this point some friends arrive thinking they are just going to help search for Fintan, but quickly they discover that they are now in fact part of a rescue operation.

A group meeting begins, how are we going to get him down? Fanz wasn’t to climb the tree herself and even though she is an excellent climber, unless she’s spider-woman, its going to be slightly impossible.

Ian wants to hold a blanket out at the base of the tree, start throwing stones in an effort to force him off his perch and rocketing towards the safety or the blanket, but I’m horrified at that idea.

A grown up suggestion comes from Chuck, ladders. But nobody had one ladder long enough to reach him. Chuck however had a couple of ladders that somehow if we could tie together then we had a shot at reaching him. And so began the ladder project.

Once all the ladders were tied together, we had the huge task or trying to negotiate it into place. Honestly, it looked very wobbly and unsafe. But we got it in place and discovered that it could now reach right up to where Fintan was stuck.

It was Chuck who took on the dangerous task of climbing the shaky ladder to rescue my kitty. I would have taken a few photos of the actual rescue, but we were all frozen in silence and doing our best to keep the ladder secure as Chuck worked his way slowly to the top. Thankfully Fintan co-operated and latched onto to Chuck straight away and stayed perfectly still until they made it safely back to earth. My god, the relief. The relief that the ladder did not collapse and send Chuck plummeting to the ground and the relief that my cat was not going to die of hypothermia or starvation up there in the tree.

Big thanks has to go to everyone who pitched in and helped recuse Fintan. But the biggest thanks clearly has to go to Chuck for getting the ladders, setting them up and then climbing those shaky things.

Lets Escape

Since my little Fenway got mangled in a threesome, oops, I mean, a three-car pile-up, I had been riding large in a Ford Escape. Yes, the insurance company hooked me up while I waited patiently for the life assurance policy on Fenway to cash in, and I have to say, “I LOVED IT”. It’s an SUV that doesn’t scream “Soccer Mom”, but it does scream “Sporty”. It’s neither too big, nor too small, it’s simply my Goldilocks, everything about it was just right.

I told Husband I was keeping it. The Ford Escape was now “Mine”. The insurance company could say whatever they wanted, but the vehicle was in my hands now and I was keeping it. So inspired by the name was I, that I even planned road trips and day trips up into the mountains, just me and my Ford and a couple of friends. Life was so much better with my Escape. My daily commute to work had become a joy, wait, that’s the wrong word, commuting to work every day is certainly no joy, but in this car, it was definitely more bearable and fun.

“Was, had”, all words representing the past tense, cos sadly, the check arrived the other day for Fenway and so my foster vehicle was ripped from my kong fu like grip and returned to it’s rightful home, back at the rental agency. To be honest it took everything in my power to not throw myself on the floor and start kicking and screaming like a spoilt 2 year old. I wanted to keep it so bad. Husband told me I could drive his truck until we sorted out another car, but I took the keys from him with a bowed head and puffed out lower lip mumbling something about it not being the same. Childish I know, but I couldn’t help myself. I Loved it. I got attached so quickly and I miss it every time I get behind the wheel of any car I drive lately.

Look at his shiny, sporty self. So perfect

Fintan did his best to stop the insurance company showing up to claim back their vehicle by constantly patrolling and securing it's perimeter. Such a loyal kitty.

Thanksgiving Catch Up

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I’ve been very quiet. I did mean to put up a blog wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, but obviously, I never got around to it. So happy belated to all those whole celebrate the day of Thanks.

As is the norm for us each and every year, our house is bursting with quite the international bunch. This year we had 8 Irish, 1 Hungarian and 1 American. Yes, we felt it only right to throw in the token Yank, since it is essentially an American holiday. The lucky Yank this year was of course Husband. For the past 3 years he has been the sole US representative at our Thanksgiving table. The rest of the table is usually made up of some of our European athlete friends who have based themselves state side to do a chunk of their winter training. As a result, the food is more European than it is American. The potato was hugely popular this season, something to do with all the Paddy’s (Irish) I guess. We just can’t help ourselves, we love our spuds. Mashed, roasted and baked, whatever we could do with them we did and served it all up with pride. It was carbohydrate heaven, or hell if you’re from the Atkins School of eating.

Après dinner, the dining room table was cleared and transformed into a poker/blackjack table for an evening of “friendly” gambling. It was hard to tell from all the yelling and abusive language that it was faux casino filled with friends and not a bar filled with warring gangs. That’s what happens when you fill a room with highly intense and competitive individuals.

Some of the lads show their support for Husbands turkey slicing skills.

Let the shoveling begin.

Danny is beside himself with joy over all the food.

Happy to be finally getting fed.

Timing is Everything

My new job has me partaking in that clichéd, rat- racers, morning and evening rush hour commute. Yes, I get up even before the sun, to take my place in the lines and lines of slow moving traffic in an effort to get to the office on time.

For the first couple of mornings, I was unsure how long the commute would take, so I left in plenty of time to allow me some wiggle room for anything unexpected that may show up en-route. You know, like the odd 3 car pile up, cough cough. Well, when I was arriving at the office a good 30 minutes before I was due to, I figured I could afford to steal an extra 10 minutes of sleep and still be able to make it to work on time. And even though it may not sound like a big deal, trust me, if you get up at 5am every day, that extra 10 minutes can make a world of difference to your mood, to your energy levels and not to mention the dark circles that start to present themselves under the eyes. But the first morning I experimented with my later departure, I almost didn’t make it on time. It’s hard to believe but those stolen few minutes, translated themselves into a commute of about and hour, as opposed to my standard 35 minutes. So instead of being under any punctuality pressure, I needed to surrender my precious 10 minutes. Not cool.

But on top of all that, each and every morning, I find myself locked in a race and a battle of wills against one of those giant symbols of American culture…………….. the school bus. Let me tell you, it’s driving me crazy. One in particular rolls through our neighborhood at about the same time as I leave the house and if I manage to get stuck behind it? Then whoa, you’d want to hear the ranting and raving and extensive use of colorful language that falls from my mouth.
I just don’t get it. First of all, the thing only moves at like 10 miles an hour. Then it stops every 50- 60m to pick up, sometimes just one child. No joke. It stops at a corner where there's maybe a child or two waiting. Then it drives, every so slowly, roughly another 60m or so where there is another child standing, alone. Once that child is locked and loaded we proceed another few meters and stop. But there is nobody around. So why are we stopping? I wait patiently, ok that’s a lie, I have absolutely no patients for this and I am going nuts in my car trying to figure out why we have stopped. Is the driver just trying to piss me off, cos I don’t see any children? Then the driver toots his horn and a few seconds later a child appears from the door of a house and runs towards the bus. Are you f*#king kidding me? So now the bus is a taxi, with special individualized service. It’s blowing my mind. It makes absolutely zero sense to me. I mean why is it so hard for all the kids from the same neighborhood to congregate at one designated spot and have the bus just make one stop per hood, load them all up and get on its merry way?? Why? No, instead we get this slow moving, unnecessary daily parade, designed specifically to work my nerve first thing every morning. Yes, for me and this particular bus, it’s become personal and I do feel slightly victimized.

Maybe its cos I’m European that I’m unable to tolerate or comprehend such an ordeal in ones daily travels to school. We just don’t operate under the same system. There is no government mass production of buses, in any particular color, designated solely for shuttling kids to and from school. It’s just not done. But don’t get me wrong; I’m not against the school bus concept. What I am against is this unnecessary stop/start charade that’s happening every couple of meters and is costing me a good 15 minutes just to get out of my own neighborhood, as opposed to 5 minutes if they adapted my one stop per hood technique. It makes sense and seriously, it wouldn’t hurt any of those kids to take a walk to a bus stop every morning.

Broken Woman

I’m so glad this week has come to an end. To say the least, it’s been a f*#king nightmare. I could blog forever about some of the other stuff that’s happened over the past few days, but honestly, I’m so down and emotionally drained that I just want to move on and forget the whole thing.

Even yoga couldn’t help me. I went on Saturday to see if I could balance my inner most self and have Wanda, our yoga instructor, use her smelly candles, her plinky plonky music and her magic brass gong to release the negativity that’s been hanging around my karma lately. But alas, not even Wanda could help. Once I left her class, my day did manage to take yet another turn for the worst. But she did give my muscles a serious stretch out.

So I’m ready for a new week. Or is it that I’m just ready for last week to be over?? Probably the latter. I'm a broken woman. And in the absence of any great will and fight left of my own, I will pull on the words of the great Tim Gunn (of Project Runway fame) to help me through this testing time, “designers, carry on”. And that's just what I’ll do. I will “carry on”. Damn it.

A Face Lift

Yes, I'm afraid there is more playing around with the blog layout. I'm desperate to give my blog a bit of a makeover. To add more of a personal touch. But what the people at blogger offer is kinda limited, so I'll just have to spend some time doing a bit of reseach and educating myself with some HTML, (lord help us, I don't even know what it stands for), in a effort to customize my little corner of cyber world.

"Its a Crisis"

This week has been rough going. Monday I started a new job, more about that later, and as is the norm with all new jobs, you want to get off on the right foot and make the best impression straight out of the blocks (a bit of track lingo there). Little things like being on time, dressing professional, being on time and being on time are tres, tres important. So me showing up 40 minutes late, on my first day, well, that would be frowned upon now wouldn’t it? But there I was, 40 minutes late. Honestly, if your going to be late go all out, that’s what I say. None of this 5 or 10 minutes crap, that’s only for amateurs, 40 is good, but a full hour, now that’s a set of balls, but also in the high risk of being fired before you start category.

Anyway, my reason for being late? A 3-car pile up, which I was involved in. It was pretty bad. So bad that my car, we all remember little Fenway, well he didn’t survive. He is dead, totaled, written off or whatever the right terminology is. He was badly injured and once the standard procedures of pulling off the highway, calling the Husband and then the cops, giving the statement and filling out the reports was all complete, Fenway was rushed to the emergency mechanic. He fought hard for a few days, but at approximately 5pm today, the insurance company declared him, DEAD. Pause for a second in remembrance…………..Myself and the 2 other drivers all managed to escape without injury. Which right now, I am very grateful for, however at the time of the accident, all I was worried about was being late for my first day. It was much later when the whole thing clicked and I realized how lucky all 3 of us had been, delayed reaction I believe its called, things could have been much worse.

On a totally different topic, but very much a theme in my life right now….. babies. Babies are everywhere. Obviously I shared Silja’s news over the weekend, but it doesn’t stop there. My brother, Edward, the older one and his wife, Sarah are also expecting their first child this February. Very exciting. Then yesterday, another friend of mine, Caitriona, came clean, via e-mail, that she too is with child. As Helena, friend from Belgium ("Hey Girl"), was saying a few weeks ago while we were discussing this very topic of too many people we know having babies, “It’s a crisis”. Yes, according to Helena, having all these babies, much like the present economy, is a crisis. And she may have a point, pretty soon, most of my spare time may in fact be taken up with babysitting duties and that my friends, may very well be a crisis.


But I have a feeling I'll be playing favourites, just a bit. Below is my little niece or nephew in the making. You can see its still very much a work in progress, but no denying, its definintely a baby and I think it has my ribs. We do know the sex of the baby, but I'm not allowed to say cos my parents want it to be a surprise and I certainly do not want to be the one to ruin it for them.