The Garage Band, Scene 1

Scene 1:
Curtains open.  On the stage is a white one-car garage.  A truck is parked outside and a man is carrying boxes from the truck into the garage.

Man: Whew, that's the last of my stuff.  I'm glad it all fit...I was starting to get worried!  Now I'm off to enjoy five months in Sweden.  I'm sure glad all of my stuff will be safe here in this secure garage!

Man gets into truck and drives off stage left.
After a few moments, a squirrel scurries to the middle of the stage from stage right.  He pauses, sniffs the air, and then stands up on his hinds legs and looks around.  He sits back down and a second squirrel approaches from stage right.


Squirrel 2: tktktktk.  Is the coast clear?
Squirrel 1: Eep.  Chkchkchkchkchk.  Yep, he's gone.  Did you see all those boxes he was carrying, Bushy?  There's gotta be some good stuff in there.  If there was only some way in.
Bushy: Are you blind, Pushy?  There's a huge crack under the door.  You could squeeze 10 squirrels through there!  That guy was clearly only concerned about keeping people out.
Pushy: Let's go investigate!
Bushy: Whoa, not so fast.  tktktk.  He might be coming back.  This is the eighth time we've had this conversation in the last 2 days.  Let's wait for at least three days.
Pushy: Three?  Since when could squirrels count?  Do I look like I have a calendar?  I'm tired of waiting, let's go now!
Bushy: OK, fine.  Let's go!

The squirrels run through the crack under the door.  Curtains drop.  End of scene 1.


...To Be Continued...

Harley

This first post now that I'm back is a sad one.

Before I got back to Minnesota this summer, MCRS (the Minnesota Companion Rabbit Society) contacted me to see if I would be willing to foster a rabbit with some "behavioral issues" (not the first that I have dealt with).  I agreed, and they hooked me up with Harley, an intelligent and energetic rabbit who had the unfortunate tendency to bite people.  (His temporary name when he came to MCRS was Mayhem along with his sibling Mischief.)

 I had Harley for just over 4 months starting in the beginning of July.  When I first started with him, he would bite and run from me any time I got near.  Recently though he started to let me pick him up and pet him, or lie down near where he was flopped out on the floor and scratch him behind the ears or rub his face or just hang out next to him.  He liked climbing on me and nibbling my hair, doing full-speed laps around the living room, and constantly exploring and investigating.  As is the case with many biting rabbits, he was rather intelligent and bit because he had learned that it was effective.  It took some time, but I eventually trained him that biting would not keep me from picking him up, but that being picked up was not that scary anyway.  He had improved to the point that I was ready to tell MCRS that he was ready to be adopted or transferred to a regular foster home.

 A few weeks ago, Harley was out getting his daily exercise.and I forgot to close the basement door.  Being the explorer that he was, Harley made his way down into the basement and got into an altercation with Pretzel.
 Pretzel is one of my bonded pair of Dutch rabbits, Triscuit being the other.  Both reside in the basement.  Although Triscuit is the more aggressive of the two, Pretzel is a jealous partner.  He does not hesitate to defend his damsel at the slightest provocation from another boy.
  Anyway, by the time I was able to intervene, Harley was sprawled out triumphantly in the middle of the basement surrounded by tufts of fur while Pretzel was huddled underneath some shelves in the corner.  (Triscuit had apparently stayed uninvolved in the whole fiasco.  This summer when I would let all of the rabbits out in the yard to play, Triscuit and Harley got along fine.  Maybe even a little bit more than "fine"... Triscuit can be rather flirtatious and I had to separate them at least once when their fooling around turned into humping.  That may explain why Pretzel tends to be overly protective.)
  I returned Harley to his cage upstairs and proceeded to treat everyone's wounds.  Pretzel had a pretty deep gouge taken out of the top of his head and a couple other, more minor injuries.  Harley had a small bite on his face that was easily treated.  Everybody got hydrogen peroxide and a stern lecture.
 Two days later, I noticed that Harley was limping when I let him out for his exercise time.  I investigated closer and saw that I had missed a cut on his shoulder.  I treated it with hydrogen peroxide and requested permission from the rabbit society to take him to see the vet.  The next day (Saturday), I received permission to take him to the vet as soon as they opened Monday morning.
  Saturday night his condition started to worsen.  He started eating less and seemed to be in pain.  By Sunday night he wasn't eating at all (not even treats) and I had to force him to take a baby aspirin to try to ease the pain.  I stayed up with him and held him all night, as that seemed to make him feel more comfortable.  At 4:00 AM, he had a seizure and then died in my arms.
  Even though Harley was "only" a foster, I still cared about him a lot.  We had gotten pretty close over the last couple months as I had been training him to trust people and be more friendly.  Now that he's gone to that big field of clover in the sky, I know he's happy running, playing, and exploring, but I hope he thinks about me every once in a while and knows that he is missed.
  
  






I'll return to more light-hearted posts, but I felt that Harley deserved an obituary.  Thanks for taking the time to read his story.

The greatest thing I've found so far in Sweden

I could describe this, but the picture is pretty self-explanatory.  It's bacon flavored squeeze cheese.  Lots of this is coming back to America with me.

English in Sweden

I still haven't learned Swedish...I gave up a while ago.  So in any given day, I spend a lot of time listening to other peoples' conversations in Swedish, having no idea what they are talking about.  But Swedes use quite a few English words in their conversation.  So a typical conversation goes: "Blah blah blah Facebook blah blah blah big deal blah blah blah oh sh*t that's awesome!"  I've started keeping a list of English words that I have heard in these "blah blah blah" conversations.  Enjoy!
Facebook
Google
Awesome
Awesome Sauce
Epic
Epic Fail
Nice
Gay
Dude
Disgusting
Sign me up
Instant coffee
I am not surprised
Boyfriend material
Granny panties

On a related note, being in Sweden has been like a huge, 5-month game of Taboo, Pictionary, Charades, and Catchphrase all rolled into one.  People generally speak very good English, but often struggle with more obscure or niche words.  So they start describing or acting out the word and I have to guess what word they are looking for.  It's great fun, and with so much practice I will DOMINATE on board game night when I get back.

What I miss about America

First, I would like to qualify that, although these are things that I miss, I'm not saying that I prefer them or that they are better.  I'm just saying that I miss them.
Although some of them are definitely better.

1. Dollar Stores
Dollar stores are incredible.  You can go shopping for hours and spend less than $50, and you come away with such great stuff!  They don't seem to have dollar stores here, and that makes me sad.  You know, sometimes I just want a cheap piece of crap that will get the job done.  I'm only here for 4 more weeks!  I don't want something quality; I want something that some Asian slave labor cobbled together just well enough to last long enough for me to lose the receipt.  Is that too much to ask?
2. One stop shopping
I love department stores.  You know, stores with different departments.  Walmart is even included in this.  I want to go one place and buy everything that I need without having a clerk give me directions to 3 other stores that may have what I'm looking for.
3. 24-hour shopping
I realize that this is turning into a shopping-themed list, but when I discover at 3:00 in the morning that I want something, I want to know there is SOMEWHERE that I can get it.
4. Cheap
To continue the shopping-themed spree, I can't wait to get back to a place where gas is under $6/gallon, fast food is that magical combination of fast AND cheap, and I don't have to choose between having another drink or eating tomorrow.
5. English
I knew when I moved to Sweden that not everyone would speak fluent English.  In fact, unless you are talking to someone over the age of 30, you can communicate just fine with people in English.  I just miss English being the default.  Usually when I'm not paying attention it's because I'm not interested.  Nowadays, I don't pay attention because it's in a different language.  I hear 3 words of Swedish and I head straight for imagination land.
6. The ability to read
I can cook as long as they have helpful pictures and numbers to tell me "put it in the oven at 200 degrees".  But when I learned to read in 1st grade, it was like a whole new, fantastical world opened up to me.  I could read ingredients on the cereal box.  I could read books, I could read directions, I could read the signs at the store telling me where to stand in line.  Now I can't do any of those things
7. Driving
I miss driving.  I miss traffic jams, I miss finding parking, I miss being able to travel to a place further away from me than the distance I can walk.
8. Commercials
I can still get most of the TV that I watch via torrent.  The problem is that all the commercials have been removed.  I know lots of cool products must have been released in the months I've been gone...but I don't know what they are!
9. $1 Bills
In Sweden, the smallest bill they have is the 20 SEK note, which is about $3.  For 10, 5, 1, and .5, they use coins.  Now, In America, if you lose a coin, it's no big deal...In Sweden you actually have to keep track of them.  Their smallest common coin is the 1 Kronor coin, worth between a dime and a quarter.  When people get a .5 coin (50 öre, half-way between our nickel and dime) they throw them away like we throw away pennies.(at least I do.  Throwing pennies on the groung isn't littering, is it?)
10. Basic American products
Did you know that Baking Soda is an American product?  Sure, you can get it here in Sweden...a small envelope of it for $1. In America, you can get a box the size of a loaf of bread for like $2.  Bicarbonate Soda, is that really so hard to sell?  it absorbs odors, helps in cleaning, can probable remove some stains (sorry, I left my "Martha Stewart Housekeeping Handbook" back home), makes great science class volcanos...but you can't get it in larger than a 30 gram bag.

King Gustav is on Facebook (shhh, don't tell anybody)

King Gustav wants to become computer-savvy.  He jumps on my computer and hops around on it while I am asleep.  He wasn't getting much done, however, so I helped him create a Facebook page.  Here's the problem...I didn't show him how to update it.  Now put yourself in the shoes of a rabbit...a rabbit who wants to update his Facebook page.  You know that Facebook is on the internet, which is something outside the computer.  But how do you get on the internet?  Well, what would you do?

King Gustav's solution was to chew through the ethernet cable.  That's logical, right?  I imagine his thinking was something along the lines of, "Hmmm, I know the internet is around here somewhere.  Maybe it's in here?!"

So that's why I haven't bee able to update my blog in a while.  Don't worry, I'll try to explain the internet concept to the rabbit a little better soon.

By the way, rabbits are in no way allowed to have a facebook page.  I couldn't call him "King Gustav", I had to use his original name "Moomin".  Since nothing is really official until it's on Facebook, I think it's reasonable to believe the converse is also true.  Therefore, King Gustav's new name is now Moomin King Gustav.  So, until somebody tells on us to Facebook and they remove him, feel free to add him as your friend!

Best. Hat. Ever.