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June 27, 2008

The Natasha Chronicals: Transition

Day 1: Thursday

Ms. WAS sits through a long afternoon meeting while Mr. MMB takes Maya to the vet for a set of routine vaccines. He has been instructed to pick up two cat carriers, and to convince the vet to give him sedatives to calm Natasha, Ms. WAS's angry and spiteful pet. Mr. MMB fulfills his duty admirably—explaining to the vet that simple children's Benadryl to "take the edge off" was not going to cut it—and the vet hands over some cat prozac.

Day 3: Saturday

Ms. WAS and Mr. MMB arrive at her place, with cat prozac and carriers in tow. The chubby cat Madchen walks right up to them, amicably hopping into the carrier. Natasha, suspecting something, hides under the bed—hissing and spitting as Ms. WAS pushes a plate of delectable prozac-laced strawberry yogurt as near as she dares. The yogurt, daintily licked, immediately produces foaming at the mouth and more growling. Prozac-embedded cream cheese receives an angry paw swat and dramatic flailing. So does prozac-embedded cheddar cheese. Ms. WAS and Mr. MMB cut their losses, grab Madchen, and hit the road.

Day 5: Monday

Having her food removed two days before, Natasha is more amenable to prozac-tainted food. Ms. WAS is delighted to see the cat imbibe her treats, but unfortunately the prozac isn't strong enough. In fact, the drugs seem to only enrage her more. There is no coaxing her out from under the bed. Thirty minutes of sweaty pushing and prodding (by Ms. WAS) results only in tiger-like growling, frantic spitting, and labored breathing (from the cat).

Day 6: Tuesday

Ms. WAS repeats the process of the day before, but this time with a sweatshirt to protect her arms and two heavy winter mittens to protect her hands—including the finger that has not quite recovered from the last moving attempt. Natasha is more amenable to the prozac-laced chicken in gravy, but once again, Ms. WAS makes no progress. In the attempt, however, bladder and bowel control is lost (by the cat) and tears ensue (by Ms. WAS).

Day 8: Thursday

Ms. WAS takes her case back to the vet, where she explains at length about the cat-moving-process. Stories are exchanged about hysterical cats, and eventually Ms. WAS leaves armed with enough sedative to kill Natasha three times over. She arrives at her condo again, determined that today is the day it will happen. And lo and behold, the sedatives are eaten (tucked in some pill treats), 90 minutes pass, and Ms. WAS cautiously pops her head into the bedroom. She has pulled up the mattress, removed all the portable furniture, and thinks all she will need to do is pick up the sleeping cat and pop her into the carrier. Unfortunately, the sedatives have only made it difficult for Natasha to walk—her rage is still in full effect. Biting her tongue, Ms. WAS girds her loins (literally) with a sweatsuit, re-dons the winter mittens, and uses a combination of two bath towels, a gigantic fleece bathrobe, and a strategically placed tennis shoe to manhandle the cat out from under the bedside table and into the carrier. More excretions are produced (by the cat), more tears are shed (by Ms. WAS)—but in the end, girl and cat wend their way down the 11 stories and into the car, ready for their trip to their new home.

Day 9: Friday

It's just after midnight. Mr. MMB and Ms. WAS have crawled into bed, exhausted from the day's activities. The puppy is sleeping in her crate, Madchen is somewhere eating her eighth meal of the day, and Natasha has groggily crept under their covers. Ms. WAS gets up for a glass of water, and when she returns, Natasha flips out—biting and lashing out—and refusing to cede an inch of the mattress back to her. Mr. MMB foolishly reaches out a tentative hand and is rewarded with a snarling attack. A tense twenty minute passes, and eventually everyone settles down. And then the puppy barks.

June 16, 2008

Cohabitating

With this blog entry, I am now switching from categorizing Mr. MMB under "boys" and moving him to "family". One small step for Movable Type, one great leap for Ms. Write Again Soon. Click on the picture to see the latest photos of Maya and her first swimming lesson in our backyard pond.

So a couple of weeks ago we had The Talk. The one about our respective living environments. The one about raising a child ("devil puppy") in a single home with an everyday routine. The one about sharing our lives together in a long-term, shared bathroom kind of way. And while we won't make any permanent moves until the end of the summer (when my Big Idea internships finish up), we are making major steps towards cohabitation.

We've gotten a melange of herb plants, which are happily thriving on the living room deck, and a solar umbrella (that lights up at night) to go on the bedroom deck, where we lay in the hammock and look over the community pond. I've gotten half of the walk-in closet, and there is a new dresser and bedside table arriving for me later this week. Upstairs in the loft, our project next weekend is to set up a home office for me, so that the Big Idea doesn't have to be run from the living room couch.

I brought a couple of gigantic wheels of cheese from my trip to Wisconsin, and so we felt obligated to buy a fondue set--otherwise we were going to be looking at 9 months of cheese-with-every-meal. And there is a new recycling bin in the kitchen, as Mr. MMB's concession to my eco-habits.

In perhaps the biggest transition, we will be moving the cats over to Mr. MMB's house later this week. Since I've only spent 12 hours there in the last 3 weeks, we figured it was time to reunite the family pets. Madchen is still pretty friendly, but Natasha has practically gone wild, so at Maya's vet appointment tomorrow I'll be begging for a knock-out drug (or possible a taser) to subdue her long enough to transition to her new home.

Of course, there are some hitches, including my mom's near daily phone calls espousing the horrors and the risks of cohabitation-without-marriage. And it means that when I suddenly need to go back to my place for a couple of days (like tomorrow, with Mr. MMB on a last-minute training course and me needing to be close to the Big Idea office) I am completely witless. I anticipate a lot of confused looks--from Maya wondering why we're back in the urban jungle, from the cats being horrified at this jumpy puppy, and from me pondering why my place suddenly feels like a hotel.

Still, I suppose the "off times" makes the nights when we experience peaceful, domestic bliss all the more rewarding. Especially when it's Mr. MMB's turn to take Maya our for her midnight potty break.

June 12, 2008

Rural Living

I’m in rural Wisconsin this week for a conference, staying at a lovely-but-rustic nature retreat where my lodging is a hermitage that best resembles a 1-room cabin from the 1930s. There is a wood-burning stove if it gets cold (which it is, but I’m too timid to play around with live fire in my combustible surroundings), an old-fashioned refrigerator (the icebox is located within the main compartment), and a hodgepodge of mismatched rugs, chairs, tablecloths, and draperies. It’s quite charming – at least for the 3 days I’m here. There is no television, no phone, and no Internet (although there is internet and a phone at the main building)—the last of which is killing me.

The nature center is founded on the principles of spirituality and a respect for the environment, and there are several nuns living full-time at the center. Work exchanges are available where, in exchange for 30 hours of work (cooking, cleaning, landscaping, etc.) you can have free room and board. It’s a great model, and there are people here to spend a couple of months writing a book, a couple of weeks on a spiritual retreat, or even one person who has been here for 4 years after just needing to “get away and reflect for a bit”. There are even two onsite “bodyworkers” (massage, reiki, etc.).

The food is amazing, bought from local Amish farmers, and the scenery is breathtaking. The tall green grasses and wildflowers ripple in the wind, and there are deer and fawns everywhere. It’s pitch black at night, which makes the stars seem to pop out of the midnight sky.

The people here absolutely love their community, with its 2-street “downtown” area (“six specialty shops!”) and its quiet pleasures. The locally famous B&B “mansion” (a 4-bedroom residence) hosts live jazz (the owner on bass and his colleague on the keyboard, singing slightly off-key) on summer weekends and the gun club positively bursts with skeet fans. People here talk about Minneapolis being an urban metropolis, and the small towns surrounding the twin cities being “too fast-paced”. Things here are slow, and intentionally so.

It reminds me a lot of my dad’s hometown in Kansas, where things move at a glacial pace. If you can get in the mindset of appreciating the community’s ability to really listen and take their time in doing things right, then it’s a charming place to live. If, on the other hand, you really like your Starbucks—this place is not for you.

June 11, 2008

It's the Little Things

I am sitting in the Chicago O’hare airport, where I’ve been patiently waiting for a disaster of an afternoon to resolve itself. I arrived back from South Africa last night—after 36 hours of transit in which my first 12-hour flight didn’t have individual television screens (so we were all forced to watch Jumper) and during my layover in Qatar my Blackberry managed to “walk away”. I’m convinced that it went missing in the 15 feet between the final security screening and boarding the shuttle to the airplane, but despite my very precise instructions to the Qatar Airways staff, the predicted likelihood of ever seeing it again is laughable.

Since I had an extremely short turnaround, arriving home from Cape Town at 8 p.m. last night and leaving for a conference in Wisconsin at 10 a.m. this morning, I haven’t had a chance to replace the phone—or to cancel the service. So if you want to call it now, chances are it will be picked up by a recent visitor to the Doha airport…but rest assured that the bill will be coming straight to me.

Through my own negligence (I went to the wrong gate, and didn’t notice my mistake until it was too late), I missed my connecting flight to Wisconsin. Fortunately, I was able to get booked on the next flight out—which was a mere 5 hours later. Theoretically. It turns out that weather delays and even local tornadoes have created a maelstrom of cancellations. So it’s now 7+ hours in and I’m still sitting here. Fortunately, I had plenty of work to do and the internet connection at the airport is decent. On the down side, not having a phone (and being unable to work the pay phones, horrid creatures) meant that there was a slight kerfluffle at the Wisconsin airport when my chauffeur (the event center is an hour away) couldn’t find me on the original flight. Extremely non-funny hilarity ensued and we finally got it all worked out, although I’m sad to report that said chauffeur is enduring the same waiting game at his end, albeit without a computer to keep him company.

But I’ve digressed. My main point is that despite having a horrific couple of days (minus the VERY nice 12 hours spent at Mr. MMB’s house cuddling Maya and marveling at the heat index at 10 p.m.), right now the thing that is really irritating me is that I don’t have the camera attached to my Blackberry. Because there is a woman—60 if she is a day—sitting across from me wearing obscenely skimpy shorts, a black blazer, gold bejeweled sandals, Jackie O sunglasses, and a jaunty sailor cap. Her nautical theme is completed with a mouth so foul I would wager she’s spent some time on the high seas. Apparently, she (and her male compatriot, a laid-back “grandpa type”) have not had any luck in getting on a particular flight. The term “fucking bitch” has been uttered SEVERAL times, and she has repeatedly stormed off complaining that “there are always seats available in first class”. And if ever there was a woman that screamed “first class”, she is definitely it.

So I’m sorry to report, dear readers, that there will be no picture of this woman to accompany my posting. And let me tell you, you are really missing out since she has now angled her legs up so that the back of her thighs (all the way up to her not inconsiderate buttock) are on display for everyone to see. I sincerely hope she’s on my flight to Wisconsin.

June 04, 2008

South Africa!

I'm in Cape Town, South Africa, this week for the World Economic Forum on Africa. It's part of my Big Idea work, although I have to admit that I feel like a bit of a fraud in getting paid for this trip when I would have gladly provided my services for the cost of the plane trip.

Speaking of the plane trip, getting here was no mean feat. I went from Washington, DC to Doha, Qatar (pronounced, I am reliably informed by the people of that country as "Cuttar") to Johannesburg, South Africa and then finally to Cape Town. Total time in the air + layovers: 32 hours.

On the other hand, I have to hand it to Qatar Airlines--they have the BEST in-flight entertainment system EVER. I got all caught up with my movie watching (PS - I Love You, The World Is Not Enough, Barefoot in the Park, There Will Be Blood, Dan in Real Life) and even watched four episodes of The Office--all of which I had seen before, but the combination of sleep deprivation and office humor made me laugh hysterically throughout each of them...I think the guy sitting next to me was slightly worried.

Other observations: Qatar is hot and dusty (reign in your surprise!), the security line at Dulles on a Saturday night is ridiculous (and in my overly-sensitive liberal way, I suspect the decision to screw over everyone traveling overnight to the Middle East is somehow racially motivated), Cape Town doesn't really count as Africa (as I've been repeatedly told at every opportunity by the people here), and M&Ms taste best at 2:30 a.m. when jet lag is at its worst.

So far, I've spent most of my time working on Big Idea assignments related to the WEF, but I'm having dinner tonight with a colleague from my alumni network who went to school in Sweden a year after I did. We're meeting at an "authentic Cape Town" location, which in her words means "awesome atmosphere, but don't bring a handbag because it will be stolen". And if all goes well tomorrow, on Friday and Saturday I'll have some time to myself to explore the city properly.