Milo and Lillie are on their way

We've been in the moving process for a while, but until this morning, it's been all paperwork and electronic plans.

We've filled out custom forms and picked up Elliot's medical records and made hotel and airline reservations, but today it really feels like it's all really started.

Today Milo and Lillie were picked up.  Milo is about 100 pounds and Lilie is about 60 pounds, so their airline crates are too big for any plane that flies in and out of the Stavanger airport.

So, in the exact opposite way they arrived, they left this morning.

Yesterday, a man drove from Oslo, spent the night at a hotel here, then came by this morning to drive them around the country today.  And tomorrow morning he will put them on a plane to Atlanta.

They will arrive sometime on December 2nd and will be taken to what I like to call "sleep away camp" where they will stay until about early January or so when we are somewhat settled in our house.

It's kind of odd that our dogs will be back in the United States before we are.

I have really mixed feelings* about leaving, but just today, Elliot and I had been in town for his last check-up and a great leaving lunch with some friends.  We were walking back to our car and we ran into some of our dearest friends.

Instead of just heading home, we sat and visited for much of the rest of the afternoon.

I'm not sure how often that will happen back in Atlanta.

So if you happen to be anywhere near a kennel in Southwest Atlanta over the next month or so, stop by if you have a minute and say hello.

I'd hate for our dear hunds to be lonely.




*In the ideal world, we would have stayed another year.  Our friends are fantastic and the travel has been  wonderful, but I miss the US and most of what that entails.  And we miss family like crazy, plus dear Elliot needs to know his cousins...

Lillie's Security Blanket (OR How the Hunds Spend Their Days)

The Pack at the Park

Or at least 3/4 of us...

How's Milo?

Occasionally I'll get a note saying, "We see you, Husband and Lillie all the time, but what about Milo. How's he doing?"

And the answer is, "He's fine."

For readers who don't know, Milo is my step-dog.  He'll be seven on his next birthday, which he shares with me as well as my sweet nephew James (if you believe the date on his adoption papers.)

He's been living with Husband since he was about 6 months old.  So clearly he's been around much longer than I have been, but we've been fast friends since the very beginning. 

We became The Pack about four months after Husband and I began dating when we decided that we needed one more. So we added Lillie, who we (meaning mostly me) refer to as our first daughter. 

(She came home with us on February 16, 2007, which is exactly one year before our wedding.)

 

So while Lillie is my constant companion and dear household clown, Milo is well and happy, too.  

He appreciates you asking of him, though. 

We went to the dog park a few days ago.  

Both of them spent some time running about and making new friends.

Then the hunds were parched.

(Milo first because he's lead house dog or as Lillie might say, "Age before beauty.")

Then sweet Lillie, but Milo had some more as well...

Then we all posed for a minute before it was time to go home. 

Jeg heter Elizabeth

I started Norwegian lessons this morning.

Tiziana, my teacher is fantastic.

She's been talking to Husband, who she'll be teaching as well, all weekend about our different skill levels and to schedule our meetings.

I suspected that she would be a little bit energetic from the conversations she and Husband had touched on subjects including, but not limited to:
Couples taking language classes together: "Very bad. Never works out for the couple."
Americans taking language classes from her: "May I be so bold as to ask your ages? I hate to teach old Americans."
Canceling our first meeting (which happened to fall on a sunny day: "Hack Hack Hack, I am so sick."

I figured that either I would love her or would hate her immediately. There would be no in between.

So this morning, I get a call from Husband. Tiziana is running late because she needed to stop and get petrol, so a few minutes later, the dogs barked and I leaned out the window to say hello and that I would be right down. And who is standing on the walkway?



Yep, Tiziana is Janice Soprano, if Janice Soprano was a Norwegian teacher born in the Netherlands who probably does not have sociopathic tendencies.

So Tiziana comes in breathless and a bit harried. I introduce myself, take her coat, then am immediately horrified when Milo sticks his nose up her skirt. She matter of factly tells me that it's okay. Dogs do that to her all the time. She's allergic though and would like to wash her hands. Then she teeters up the stairs in her little skirt and tank top and tells me she will take some tea.

(When we trade phone numbers, I saw that her screen saver is a picture of herself all dolled up with a total come-hither look on her face. So odd, or maybe it's just Norwegian...)

She pulls out a scrunchy and pulls up half of her hair into a perky ponytail and we begin with gossip smattered with Norwegian phrases. She doesn't like to tutor Chinese because it's always tick tick tick. The company that handles this for her is a pain because they have her buy the books and then they don't pay for two months. The neighborhood where we live was once on the edge of the water, but was recently dammed for construction, so there would be more land. (When you ask? In the 50s.) I have pretty eyes. She doesn't like Norwegian haircutters because they take a razor and go chop chop chop chop. We have the same hair, but she has more waves. My husband is nice and sounds like he's from the midwest. She has a contract with NATO until summer break, so we'll have to be flexible on time until June 18th. My nice husband says I don't like to get up early.

And that was the first three to five minutes.

Then she propped her boobs on the table and we went to work on basic sentence construction, articles, question words and the like.

Hvor er du fra?
Jeg er fra USA.

Hva heter du?
Jeg heter Elizabeth

Ja, vi har 2 hunder.
Jeg har en bulldog og en husky.

Apparently I am a great parrot and after a bit, I don't even sound American.

I can't wait for the next lesson...

First Day at the Beach

This Sunday we went on our first pack outing.

Husband is a surfer.

He started dabbling in it in South Carolina when he would visit his friend Matt in Foley Beach. Then, after moving to Norway the first time, took a few weeks at a place called Surf Experience in Portugal. And on clear days, in his last Norwegian incarnation, he headed out to Solastraden (which means Sola Beach), which is a few miles out of Stavanger.

He's been watching the weather, refreshing the webcams and longing for the water, even though it is still well below freezing.

So last Sunday, we loaded up the surfboard and Lillie and Milo and piled into the car.

When we got there, there was not a wave on the water. At least not nearly enough for Husband to put on his wetsuit and wade in...


(Oh no, Husband. Watching really really intently will not make the waves come.)

But it was okay and we hung out for a while anyway.





No Lillie is not lounging. She just fell down.


Then when it was time to go, Husband grabbed the poo. Gotta love that.

How the Pack Began (and A Small Life Lesson)

I'm still in Gainesvegas where Big D is starting to feel just a smidge better.

She's still connected to tubes and won't be able to lift anything that weighs more than about ten pounds, with the exception of her arm, which does not weigh ten pounds but cannot be lifted either. The bruises have changed from a deep purple the color of grapes to a lovely mottled rainbow.

The meds are tapering off slightly and she's started sneaking out of bed. Her orders are a little less meek and much more bossy and she's been a little sassy. So, while we wait for the pathology report, all is about as well as it can be...

I worry about how my sister will handle it all alone, but am working on a plan for that. It will all be in place before I take off on Thursday afternoon, which brings me to the next bit...

I am so excited about going home. Not only will Husband be there to pick me up at the airport, our sweet fur peoples, Milo and Lillie, have arrived.

Milo has lived with Husband for the past six years or so, since he was a pup. This is his second arrival in Stavanger.

Milo in his best fancywear



Then there is sweet Lillie ...... AKA The White Menace AKA Lillie von Hundenberg AKA Princess Sassypants AKA the Poot Factory AKA My Very Favorite Furball in the Entire World.

Lillie, almost a year old



We had been dating about three and 1/2 months and Husband started talking about getting another dog. We visited the Atlanta Humane Society several times and almost settled on an adult dog named Dora. She had been returned several times for being untrainable and anyone who knows Husband knows he believes in order, so there were no worries that we could deal with her.

But I wanted a puppy or at least younger dog.

And while I think Milo is handsome and dignified, I was longing for a solid square faced monster. But on every single visit, there were none. And we believe in getting shelter dogs, so we weren't going to go to a breeder.

So after one fruitless visit, we stopped by the PetSmart, who hosted dogs from the Georgia Humane Society. And there she was, squirming with a few of her brothers.

They told us that she was a purebred American Bulldog, which is a cousin of the English Bulldog....In any case, she was sweet and clumsy and the cutest animal ever; I loved her instantly, but knew it was up to Husband.

So I deposited her into his lap and sat back. And he sat and visited with her. And we deliberated a bit. And then he was silent for a while. After an hour or so he looked up and said, "Okay, what next?"

It is one of the few snap decisions I've ever seen him make.

This is from the very first afternoon.

Lillie's baby picture


For a while she would travel with me between Husband's home and my apartment. Then my mean crankypants downstairs neighbor* decided that she didn't like having a dog around, so she got sweet Lillie evicted. So Lillie moved into Husband's full-time. I didn't want to put the double dog burden on Husband, so I would pop around more often.

And that is the story on how The Pack began. Exactly one year later, to the date, The Pack became official when when Husband and I got hitched up...

Milo and Lillie have been living in a kennel waiting since February 10, waiting for their blood tests to come back. They flew into Oslo last week by way of Amsterdam. Then this morning were driven around the country to our front door.

And after months of waiting on the two of them, now they're all waiting on me.



*A small life lesson: Being a crankypants downstairs neighbor gets you nowhere except your own little dark apartment where you can sit and think your mean crankypants thoughts. But, having a crankypants downstairs neighbor sure did work out for me. So, thanks Jody! I didn't appreciate it then, but do now.

Fish and Guests

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Whenever I tell people that we live in a renovated sardine factory, they inevitably ask "Does it smell like fish?"

And the answer is "No. No more than a renovated factory loft in SoHo smells like sewing needles or the sweat of exploited workers."

Norway is so far north in the world that over the course of the year, the amount of sunlight varies radically depending on the time of year....In the winter, there is very little sunlight, often just four or so hours. And those hours can look like twilight when the sun doesn't get very high over the horizon.

In the summer, there can be as many as 18 or more hours of sunlight...

Also, it rains. Alot.

So, having dark sleeping quarters is just as important as having ample windows. So you can both soak up as much sun as possible, while still having enough darkness to sleep.

Which are only part of the reasons why I love our house. It's on a hill, so the downstairs, which is storage, sleeping and bathrooms is pretty dark. Then upstairs is an open layout with high ceilings and windows 3/4 of the way around.


(No, all that furniture is not ours. Neither is the dog. His name is Rufus and belongs to our landlord's girlfriend. Lille and Milo will be here soon...)

Plus, it has a red and blue door. And you're welcome anytime.