No Starbucks to be found, but Cinnabon is nearby

I’m settling into my new apartment in my new city. So far, Minsk, the apartment and my assignment are all fabulous.

Yes, it’s going to be a lot colder than I have been in awhile, but I got a short reprieve upon arrival and made do with a light hoodie. That’s going to change quickly but I’m enjoying it right now. Friday’s a holiday and I’m hoping to wander around in what might be the last decent weekend weather-wise.

My apartment is pretty awesome. It’ll be lost on me, since I’m pretty boring and don’t entertain, but it’s still the envy of the housing pool. I’m smack dab in the city center. It’s about a mile to the office; I’m hoping to hoof it as much as possible and it’s a nice walk. Granted, it’s going to be a cold and dark walk in the winter, but that’s the intention. I have a couple of metro stops nearby and that’s an option, but as I understand it, it takes about as long to metro as it does to walk so, unless I’m in danger of frostbite, why not walk? (We’ll see how that plays out …)

Location aside, the apartment itself is still pretty incredible. I have a bedroom with a walk-in closet bigger than Wendy’s living room and the apartment itself is larger than the Tallahassee home. The bathroom is phenomenal, probably bigger than Zippy’s bedroom, although it’s not shaped like a square. It’s kind of a triangle with a Nebraska-like foot sticking out. The whole thing is absolutely huge and made me wonder how to heat it in the winter, but then I realized it had heated floors. That’s awesome!

My guest room has two twin beds and my office has enough room to have a big workout space once my shipments get here. The kitchen, too, is pretty large as far as I’m concerned. It’s kind of a shame because in reality, I’ll camp out in one chair and my room. Oh! Speaking of, there’s a little balcony off my room, too.

Really, it’s an amazing apartment. I don’t deserve it, and I mean that. My department is really hierarchal, and I’m on the bottom. The apartment is for someone who’s far closer to the top than me, but because it was the only thing available when I arrived, I got it. Score.

Looking forward to my new assignment, too. I’ve got a cool opportunity as the first one in my position in about 10 years. There’s a lot to wrap my mind around and prioritize. So far everyone is really nice; there aren’t many American staff in the office so the arrival of new one means I can take over some of other people’s workloads. That’s not limited to American staff members’ work, but in shouldering anything, it frees up people’s time to focus on other stuff, something that’s welcome.

Minsk is very nice. Everyone says it’s great living and that you can find everything here. (I found peanut butter, so that’s a good start.) There are a lot of American places. Of course, there’s McDonald’s; we’re also having Domino’s today. Oddly, though, there’s no Starbucks. In Guangzhou, I had two within sight of my apartment. There’s a Cinnabon, though, which is pretty incredible. I remember one being in Yerevan, but other than that, the only ones I’ve seen are in U.S. malls. So that’s cool. According to my map, there’s one 600 meters from my house. There’s a movie theater that has an English language movie for a heartbeat every once in awhile (show showing: Shawshank Redemption!) 890 meters away. I’ll be checking into that for sure, though not for something I’ve seen 17,821 times. Ford v. Ferrari is coming soon.    

Besides McD’s, there’s also a TGI Friday’s right near my house. It’s across from this really cool department store called GUM. (I saw it on the map and thought it must be a gym, but no, it’s GUM.) It’s a Soviet-era department store in an old building and is apparently organized in a haphazard way. I went into the bottom floor and poked around the household stuff. At some point, I have to do a shopping spree for fun stuff like a broom, vacuum and TV but that can wait.

Yeah, the initial cash outlay is going to hurt in a few weeks. So far, I’ve been posted to places that didn’t need me to bring stuff like dishes, TVs or flatware. As a result, all that stuff – which I do own – is sitting, out of reach, in a warehouse somewhere. So now I’m checking out Target, Walmart and the local stores and trying to price stuff I’ll need.

Friday is a holiday here, so I can do some staycationing. No idea what I’ll do. There’s so much!

Been awhile

 I’m back, meaning both America and Florida. I’m midway through my home leave; time flies.

Arrived on Mackenzie’s birthday, but since she was out of town I’d planned on going to the FSU game. Zippy got me at the airport and had her little pups with her, so we went home first. I noticed Rally got out of the car at home and immediately went to pee, and I saw he hiked his little leg for a much longer time than would be normal. However, the poor little thing has a torn ACL, so I didn’t think much of it.

I'm not a vet, but I knew immediately what Rally had.

Nor did I think much of Z telling me that Rally kept waking her up several times a night to pee. He’s a pesky little thing, so that seemed normal. However, while at the house before the game, I saw that he asked to go out a couple of times, and each time he seemed to hike his leg up longer than it takes to pee.

We headed out to the game and decided to hit The Wharf for fish before, then popped back by the house to give Rally and The Bat some leftover cheese grits. For the first time ever, Rally turned down People Food.  Something seemed wrong. I asked Z if she’d noticed Rally actually peeing, because, so much as I’d seen him hike the little ACL-torn leg, I didn’t remember seeing a pee stream. She hadn’t noticed. Perhaps realizing we were talking about him, Rally got up and went to sit behind a chair, where he just stared listlessly. Bless his heart. No was Z was going to leave her favorite son like that.

After doing such internet searches as “dog can’t pee” and “how to help dog pee” (the latter yielded this video: https://www.handicappedpets.com/blog/how-to-express-dog-bladder/, which I tried but never really figured out where Rally’s bladder was), texted Wendy, who said to take Rally’s temperature. Never mind the correct kind of thermometer, we didn’t have a thermometer at all, so I called Allied, the Pup ER that’s maybe two miles away. After explaining the symptoms, they said yes, we should come in because something sounded really wrong.

No Evening at Doak for me. Instead, we loaded up both Rally and Batgirl, lest she be left alone, and took the little boy in, where he was subsequently X-rayed. The result: massive amounts of bladder stones, essentially a rock collection going from his bladder to his little pee pipe. He’d been trying to pass the stones – which ranged in size from sand to pebbles – probably for weeks. He’s too dumb to tell you something is wrong, so no telling what kind of pain he’d been in.

The verdict: surgery. Well, initially, I think “procedure” would be a better word. He had a catheter put in to flush as much as possible back into his bladder so he could then have surgery by his regular vet on Monday, which, presumably, would cost less than emergency surgery.

Having traveled to and lived in countries far poorer than the U.S., it really wrenches me to see how we treat our pets here. Rally’s procedure, surgery and tooth-cleaning (which we tossed in because he would be under anyway) cost roughly the amount an Indian earns in a year. I just don’t know how to feel about that; there’s guilt on several fronts. First world problems, but it’s Zippy’s baby, and he’s worth it to her.

Batgirl went home and Rally stayed at Allied for two nights. We went to visit him the second day, after his successful pebble flush. He had a catheter in and was passing some of the little ones, too. But visiting him was pretty bad. He had on his little Cone of Shame and was so utterly confused at being there. When we went to visit him, he was the only overnight guest and he was so baffled as to why he was put into some kind of jail cell wearing an Elizabethan collar, a needle in one paw and a pipe shoved up his own pee pipe. Seeing Mama come to visit him but not take him home put both of them into fits.

Rally's by-products.

Batgirl, though, after being initially baffled where her brother went, seemed fine with it. We wound up picking Rally up from Dr. Winter on Tuesday, and after three nights alone, she had started adjusting. She was happy, though, once he returned, even though he did come in wearing that darned collar. He was pretty thrilled, too, despite the collar. He had a bunch of staples that Wendy came over and removed after about a week, so he’s pretty good to go now.

The how-they-formed verdict was both from some kind of infection and his diet, so he’s supposed to be on some special diet from here on out. We’ll see how seriously that gets taken. I’ve noticed both of the little spoiled monsters get all kinds of treats daily. Sticks, greenies, some kind of Newman’s Own dog treat, little snap things, People Food, etc. They are not dogs in need.

They’re pretty spoiled with me here, too. They’ve been coming along for rides more often, because sometimes I’ll take Z to pickleball and bring them with me to pick her up. We walked around Lake Ella, too, which those little fat monsters really need to do more often. And in general, four hands are twice as good to rub tummies.

In other home leave happenings, I’ve been doing yard work, but not planting grass seed. It’s been ridiculously dry and hot, which does not make for ideal fall grass-growing weather. Instead, I’ve been tackling the existing yard, taking down branches and raking, although, two weeks after raking, you can’t tell I did anything.

Leanne had a garage sale, so I helped with that and took a lot of Zippy’s stuff that did not sell in her garage sale last year. Between that and random ads here and there, I unloaded some china, my old Breyer’s horses (though I decided to hold back Misty and Stormy) and more stuff Mimi painted. Reduced the “needs to go” to about two boxes instead of a car full, which wasn’t bad at all.

To Z’s surprise, I sold Batgirl’s chair. Not as in I sold it without it being OK to sell, but she didn’t think anyone would pay money for it, but within two days, a guy came for it and didn’t even try to talk me down. In fact, when I helped him load it, he offered to tip me!

Z was shocked, but not near as shocked as Batgirl was. She sauntered in to the living room and went to jump on it and it was gone. I never thought a dog could do a double-take but she did. She’s made herself at home, though, on the back of the sofa, so she’s not wanting for naps. But man, taking both Rally and her favorite chair out of the house must have been a little bit disconcerting for her.