I has a visa!
It is very shiny. They apparently have some kind of weird-ass color bubblejet, because it’s printed right on the first blank page of my passport. How you print a hologram dealie, I do not know.
So! I totally finished packing last night. I mean, everything but the plate I eat on and the cat’s bowl, the things I’ll throw in a FedEx on my way out of town. Would you believe, I don’t have a mover yet? Last one coming to quote today.
Whee!
November 19, 2008 — 8:50 am
Comments: 53
The Taj Mahkitteh
Today’s Hair Across Weasel’s Ass: plane-legal pet carriers. A regular, take-her-to-the-vet-sized pet carrier will not do (never mind that mine is 30 years old, solid as a brick shit-house and served perfectly well to fly a bigger cat than Charlotte from Tennessee to Rhode Island). If the airline doesn’t turn the cat away, there are grievous fines on the UK end for shipping an animal in a container they consider too small.
And so, of course, they provide really precise instructions for choosing the appropriate carrier.
Ha ha! Just woofin’ you. Every document describes the requirements s-lightly differently. It should be the height of the cat standing, the height of the cat sitting or two inches above the ears of the cat standing. There has to be ventilation in all four sides, or it doesn’t matter as long as it’s 13% open to air. The animal has to be able to stand up turn around and lie down again (which makes jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton spin up on my mental Wurlitzer). The problem is the confluence of airline regs, US government regs and UK government regs.
I particularly liked this instruction from DEFRA:
Containers for cats should have litter trays which are either heavy enough not to move around or fixed to stop them moving.
Litter trays! Holy pooperscooper! Charlotte needs at least a five foot radius to operate a box properly. She’s a sweet girl, but stupid. She stands with all four feet inside, hangs her ass over the side and pees on the floor.
Whatevs. I bought her the biggest carrier that’ll fit in the Weaselmobile. And it occurs to me I never told you what needs to be done to bring a dog, cat or ferret into the UK. It’s a hell of a deal, but I won’t complain — they don’t have to go through six months of kennel quarantine on the British side now. They essentially allowing the pet to serve out quarantine at home. Zo! In this precise order:
■ Spay and microchip. (Very important — that microchip is checked before every stage of the process. Some people drop a couple hundred bucks for their own chip reader, just to be sure).
■ Vaccinate for rabies.
■ Some time later — twenty days is recommended — draw a blood sample and have your vet send it to Kansas State University.
■ They send back a document certifying presence of rabies antibodies (my documentation didn’t have the official seal, so I had to chase them to send another one).
■ Six months after this date, the travel documents can be applied for. If the rabies booster comes due before you’re ready (ours did), booster and documentation.
■ When the time comes, gather all the documentation and FedEx it to the nearest USDA veterinary office. They FedEx the docs and the stamped travel permit back. This document is good for four months.
■ Not less than 24 nor more than 48 hours before Puss gets on the plane, one last vet’s appointment. She gets de-ticked, wormed (must contain Praziquatel!) and the vet makes a final entry on the USDA and airline forms.
■ Show up at the approved airline’s freight service six hours before the flight. There are, incidentally, one or two government-approved cat-flying airlines for each city that flies to London.
■ After going through People Customs at Heathrow, hop a taxi and drive four miles (oh, the cabby’s going to love me!) to the Animal Reception Center. They say it takes 3-4 hours to process a cat through. Why? I don’t know!
And…umm…ta-dum, I guess. All for the filthy little crooked-tailed, squint-eyed, bug-eating feral Goblin Princess I trapped in my garage five years ago.
Oh, well. One good thing I’ve gotten out of this: pee pads! They’re giant Kotexes for bed-wetters. You put one in the bottom of the travel kennel to mop up accidents. I got a ten-pack of 30×36″ pee pads for six bucks at Wal*Mart.
So that right there is nine wonderful, lazy Sunday mornings I can say to myself, “nah. I don’t feel like getting up yet…”
November 18, 2008 — 1:12 pm
Comments: 36
Positively the Last Ever TGIF
I’ve tried not to think too many “this will be my very last…” thoughts. I don’t do finality. Or change; even change from bad stuff to good stuff gives me the shivering willies. But, well…this will be my last TGIF. Next Friday, I’ll be unemployed and headed to Nashville to visit my dad, and whatever I do to earn my keep in the UK is unlikely to involve a traditional five-day workweek.
This will be my first significant period of unemployment since I was 15 and shelved books in a university library. I have baked pizza and I have slung doughnuts. I have worked freelance and I have punched a time clock. I’m not a big fan of making things mandatory, but paying your way working shit jobs for a few years is an enormously educational experience. I could think of an awful lot of people who would benefit from this education, many of them in Washington at this moment.
By shit jobs, I mean jobs that don’t pay for shit. I actually loved my minimum wage jobs. They were fun and physical and no big deal if you screwed up. And every day started anew; no leftover junk from the day before. If I could live on that kind of money, I’d still be doing them.
I have, however, held two jobs I absolutely hated, in succession, the Summer before I went away to college. That, too, is an educational experience.
The first was drawing pastel portraits at Opryland. I was in the New Orleans section. A live band would march down the street every half hour playing When The Saints Go Marching In until I sincerely yearned to be hauled behind them in a coffin.
I’m not good at quick sketches. Or portraits. Or pastels. I always loathe doing work I’m not good at. Also, you have no idea how many people with serious facial deformities elect to sit for their portraits at these things. There is no perfect way to say, “So, first trip to Nashville? You want the portrait with the hairy mole covering most of your forehead, or without?”
I think I lasted six weeks in Dixieland. The next job was my official Worst Job Ever: driving an icecream truck. The guy didn’t want to give me a chance. He told me it was no work for a girl; that I couldn’t handle it. That did it. I had to prove him wrong.
The physical part — loading the van in the morning — was tough, but I could manage. The driving an unairconditioned Chevy van around Nashville in Summer during a heat wave? Not so much. I’d wet down bandannas and freeze them in the icecream freezer and hold them to my fevered brow.
My territory was considered excellent: it was extra slummy neighborhoods. Rich people think icecream should be a rare treat. Poor people will spend their very last buck buying the kid a creamsicle. Of course, the occasional driver gets mugged at knifepoint in those places, but wuddryegonnado?
One day, it reached 110° outside the van, and I went home and collapsed under the aircon with a headache like an icepick to the eyesocket. I quit the next day. Told my boss that an aunt had died and left me a small legacy, so I didn’t need the work any more. I am a lying sack of weasel, but I suspect he figured out that I was, in fact, a girl and I could not, in fact, handle the job.
So…you? Worst job? Best job?
November 14, 2008 — 12:33 pm
Comments: 78
Rub weasel on your behbeh
Turns out Mustela is a kind of French skin cream for infants. Who knew? They have a whole range of products, but I’m having problems with my Flash plugins so my browsers throw up on the website.
Yep. I got nothing.
Rushed a PowerPoint out the door for somebody today and had a mover’s estimator show up and case the joint. If you’d told me a year ago that all my worldly possessions would fit into a container ten foot by ten foot by seven foot, I’d go, “pff! Yeah! If you leave it on the surface of a really high-gravity planet for like a year until all the atoms smoosh together into some super-dense Weaselium alloy. Yeah. Maybe then.”
But it turns out, 80% of my precious shit was shit. And now it sits on a landfill somewhere, its sightless eyes staring up forever into the wide, empty sky. China, maybe. Or Arizona. Or the Atlantic. Where does our shit go, anyhow?
People keep asking me if it’s a liberating feeling, tossing my shit. It is…but in a horrible, nihilistic way. It’s the liberation of watching your house burn down. It’s the liberation of knowing that everything you have amassed in a lifetime that is worth a damn would fit in a 10x10x7 container. And half of that is probably kind of crap.
But enough poopies! Now that my visa has arrived at the Embassy, I really — finally! — feel quite happy. A little anxious still, but it’s dawned on me…I will wake up to an alarm clock five more times in my life.
Not that I’ve slept until the alarm for years and years, but it’s the idea, man. The idea.
November 13, 2008 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 24
Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Boxes.
November 8, 2008 — 8:23 am
Comments: 25
Today’s Fun British Fact
It is illegal to mail horror comics to the UK.
For reals. I tried to find an online citation for that, but I couldn’t. It’s true, though. The lady at the Post Office showed me the regulation sheet.
I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to mail Uncle B an air pistol. A BB gun. PO Lady wouldn’t let me, on account of it’s “a weapon.” And I say, “a reproduction weapon.” And she says, “well you could hurt somebody with it.” And I say, “I could hurt you with this Customs Declaration form if I tried hard enough.”
I lost. Of course I did. Nobody ever argues the regulations and wins.
My real guns are going in the shop (most of them, anyway). But I have a couple of CO2 pistols I’d like to keep. They’re perfectly legal in the UK, but one looks exactly like a Glock and the other looks like a Walther PPK. I figured I didn’t want to pack them in with my household stuff, on the off-chance they turn up on an x-ray or something and get everything confiscated. So I decided to mail them on ahead.
I’m sure the comic regulation is some fusty old thing left over from the pre-Code comics era. Like the comic I stole this header graphic from. Which is in my horror comic collection.
Which is packed with my stuff.
Oh, piffle.
October 30, 2008 — 2:41 pm
Comments: 39
Say it — with socks!
When was the last time I cleaned my sock drawer? I’m going to say…1985. I found three pairs of big poofy velcro’d shoulder pads way in the back. (Gosh I loved shoulder pads. Football shoulders made my waist look tiny. Big hair, however, made my brain look tiny).
These preposterous cheap lacy panties? My mom gave them to me shortly after I took up with Uncle B. “These are for him,” she said. Eyebrow waggle.
And I’m, like, “that’s a really nice thought, Mother, but I’m pretty sure they’re too small for him.”
And she rolls her eyes and goes, “oh, they’re not for him to wear.” Living out in the boonies all those years, Mom kind of went native and lost her funnybone.
You know what else I realized? Uncle B has a history of pledging his devotion with novelty socks. Which I guess is more romantic than the stuffed bear that plays Rule Brittania and farts when you press his belly.
So now I’m like the Caesar of underthings. I decide who lives and who dies. I took all the socks and panties and I’m washing my way through them. One by one, I wear each pair and evaluate it for size, condition and general elasticity. The ones that pass muster are coming to England.
The ones that don’t? “Guards, seize her!” I say, flipping the offending garment into the bin, “this panty displeases Weasel!”
October 8, 2008 — 12:38 pm
Comments: 69
Once, my son, the plains were dotted with them
My real estate agent asked if I would mind letting my buyer in to take some measurements last night. And I said, “I thought buyers and sellers were like matter and antimatter…” and she said, “I think this will be okay.”
Which it was, because as it turns out, my buyer is the nicest kid you could hope to meet. Twenty-six, single, currently living with his folks about a mile away. He described himself proudly as an “auto body technician” — which is how the local trade school describes this noble profession in their TV ads. (He’s restoring a 1966 Dodge Dart; the two-car garage was a selling point).
But the real selling point for him? All the little 1940’s gracenotes that made me fall in love with the house: the fixtures, the tile, the woodwork. I was just sure some ignorant boo-boo would buy this place and gut it, but he’s keeping the lot…right down to my beloved Delta kitchen faucet (“the chrome…!” he sighed). An elderly plumber unclogging my drains once called his apprentice to come and stare at this great American classic, one of the last ever spotted in the wild.
I don’t know where Mister Autobody Technician got his aesthetic sensibilities, but he didn’t miss a single architectural quirk of Weasel Manor.
So that’s good. Sure I’m getting reamed — but at least I get a nice, respectful young man for the job.
October 1, 2008 — 8:18 am
Comments: 42
Burning down the house…
This is the first time in my life I have been squished between those giant lumbering retards, The Government and The Market. I’ve lived in the same house for twenty years, had the same job for twenty five. No kids or student loans. However angry it made me in the abstract, government never really touched my life, beyond the steady slow drain of taxation…and that itch between my shoulderblades when I have to deal with an impertinent bureaucrat. The market’s ups and downs were, for me, largely theoretical. Sure, my 401K took some serious hits over the years, but doing the mental math, Zeno’s arrow will hit me in the ass before retirement does.
But now, after years of planning for this overseas move, the final step — selling my house — comes right in the teeth of this shit-storm. Ohhhhh, NOW I feel the flying fist of government incompetence, alllll the way up to my duodenum.
I was back and forth on the phone with my real estate agent last night. Good news! The last guy who looked at my house loved it so much, he offered me $12,000 less than my minimum break-even-and-walk-away-with-nothing price. Erm…no. Six thousand less? I don’t think so. Three thousand, and she waives a thousand of her fee…?
She said — I be not a-shitting of thee — “I just hate to see us get this close to a deal without closing it.”
Yes, I took it. After I sell my car, my guns (oh <sob> my guns! My beautiful guns!), siphon the oil out of the tank in the basement and cash in my unused vacation time, I might just be able to limp into Heathrow with my cat and my fambly heirlooms.
Government has just stolen sixty thousand dollars from me. Let’s be clear about this: THE DEMOCRATS STOLE $60,000 FROM ME. Yeah, I know…all that fucked up impenetrable financial bundling on Wall Street, all the house flipping by yuppies…the final economic cause of death was complex and fairly bipartisan.
But the underlying AIDS that destroyed the market’s immune system was Fannie Mae. It was created by Democrats explicitly to make dodgy loans, its quasi-governmental status bent the market out of shape and forced other lenders (without government muscle behind them) to make dodgy loans of their own, it was HUGE, it was corrupt to the core, and Democrats fought any and every attempt to do anything about it.
Since 2001, Bush tried dozens of times to rein in Fannie Mae. McCain predicted this collapse in 2005 and sponsored a bill that would bring it under control. Shot down by huffy Democrats. Every time.
The Democrats OWN this crisis, the Republicans tried hard to stop it, and Bush and McCain refuse to hang it around their necks. Just so we can pass a bipartisan bill that props up greedy assholes and screws people who didn’t act like idiots. Republicans should totally PWN on this issue, and Obama got the polling boost.
You could light cigarettes off my forehead today.
Okay, you know what? Screw this spreading the blame around thing. I hereby adopt-a-pol. Barack Obama got $126,349 out of Fannie Mae employees and I want my half. Your stupid crisis pinched $60,000 I can’t afford to lose…sixty grand in carefully nurtured home equity. Three decades of frugal living and good decision-making. All my slack, all my seed money.
GIVE IT ME! I WANT MY MONEY BACK, YOU BASTARD!
September 25, 2008 — 2:22 pm
Comments: 67
2 br, 1.5 ba, 1 wzl
Somebody was scheduled to come by and look at the house tonight, but my real estate agent just called to say he canceled.
“I don’t know why,” she said, “he drove by the house yesterday morning and liked it, but he drove by again later and there was something he didn’t like.”
I’m guessing that thing was…me. In my new Wal*Mart lawn chair. With a book and a drink and a cat draped across me (no, the other one) like I’d just won the Miss Big Fat Housecat pageant and they gave me one for a sash.
Maybe it’s the change of seasons, or maybe I pushed so hard getting the house ready and looking for Damien that I have somehow exhausted my ordinarily inexhaustible reserves of gloom, anxiety and crank, but I’ve felt all float-y and peaceful this week. Like opiates, but without depleting my stash. All I want to do is sit in my chair and snooze in the sun.
Not to worry. I’ll have a shiny new hair across my ass before you can say, “fuck off and die in a fire!”
May 28, 2008 — 4:20 pm
Comments: 19