Why Being a Moose Rocks the Hiz

We all have ambitions. Matthew wants to win the lottery so we can finally buy a 'shag pad' (his words, not mine) in Budapest. My parents apparently want all three of their daughters, both sons in law, the grandkid, and the associated five dogs all to move permanently into their one-bedroom house. Most of the world's news agencies would like to see Pippa Middleton marrying Prince Harry while wearing a mini skirt and thigh-high stiletto boots. And that could be Pippa or Harry in the skirt, by the way.

My ambitions are simpler than that. My goal: be reincarnated as Moose. 

A Moose. Plus another one. At my parents' house.

Not A moose. Not two moose (see plural moose, pictured right). Not the kind of moose that wanders into my parents' back yard, eats their aspen trees, makes itself comfortable on the back porch, and stares menacingly at the dog. No, I want to be our Moose. The dog Moose. The Moose that gets to track mud all over our white carpet and not get evicted from the house. The Moose that eats much better than we do and then is allowed to wipe his face all over our newly-covered sofas. The Moose that takes great pleasure jumping on the bed at four in the morning  and nudging us out of our warm sleeping spaces so he can have a bit of a snuggle.

That's the kind of Moose I want to be. 

This is a well thought out ambition, I will have you know. I mean, it isn't as if I am not satisfied with my own life. Let's just take the past two months. I went to Wyoming for six weeks, during which time I worked both my real job and my dream job simultaneously (mindblowing multitasking!) and got to hang out with the parents at said one-bedroom house. I also had knee surgery (shall we call this epic multitasking?) and attended a staff meeting. And recertified my EMT card (how does she DO all this multitasking?). And then I picked up and went to Croatia, where I wandered around in the sun, ate incredible seafood, and drank insane amounts of red wine from a plastic bottle (slow down, multitasker!).  So as I was saying, it's not half bad. 

But let's take stock of the things a Moose has that a Lera does not. 

1. A tail. An oft neglected dog feature (especially in the States where some dogs' tails are docked) that shows emotion, looks adorable, can thwap people in the face, and can purposefully knock all manner of items off a table while making it look like an accident. Moose even dipped his tail into a glass of champagne the other day, just for fun. 

2. The ability to bite people and make it look like emotional distress. Well, OK. I will admit that if I ran up to someone and bit them it might look a lot like emotional distress and/or a strong dose of hallucinogenic drugs. Whereas when Moose, for example, ran up and bit a visiting priest last week, he only earned a mild scowl and a swift trip inside. 

3. Predictably bad breath. No, I am serious about this one. You know when you wake up in the morning and you kiss your husband/wife/partner/one-night-stand and you worry that your breath just stinks? Moose doesn't care. 

4. His very own blog. I couldn't possibly have a blog that is dedicated to myself. No, I am far too mild mannered and humble for that sort of thing. But Moose, you see, has his very own blog to detail his adventures. I am just his publicist, if you think about it. I want a publicist! 

So there you have it. Four very good reasons why I want to be Moose in my next life. The only problem with my design is this: what makes a Moose life so grand is the fact that his publicist, chef, massage therapist, life coach, and sleeping buddy happens to be me. So in order for me to die and reincarnate as a Moose I would also have to not die and not have to reincarnate as anybody. So...multitasking? Translife, multi-dimension multitasking. I despair. 

A Rat Called Basil

Reader, I want you to look carefully at the photo above. Do you see the devilish glint in his eye? The sheepish look on his furry face? The aura of self-satisfaction? Yes, that is one pleased looking little rat.

I will tell you why he is so damn pleased with himself. Matthew and I, as new homeowners, seem to have entered into the Saturday home improvement club. Our Saturdays are dedicated to cleaning, fixing, planting, mowing, weeding, installing, perfecting, and taking endless trips to Homebase (today's trip will be in the endeavour to obtain a loft ladder and various other exciting pieces of hardware).

So this morning, while Matthew was down at the bottom of the garden picking what has turned into an enormous crop of blackcurrants (courtesy of the previous owners and a good two years of neglect), I was on the deck planting a pot of basil. OK, before you accuse me of actually giving two hoots about gardening (I don't), I should clarify by admitting that the basil came as a patty (looking an awful lot like a chocolate chip cookie) and was incongruously included in a pack of Lurpak butter. I don't know what basil seeds and butter are doing together in the aisles of our supermarkets, but it's really none of my business, so I won't pry.

Anyway, since Matthew and I managed to kill our parsley (actually, Moose killed our parsley by knocking over the pot repeatedly), we had an empty, comfortable home for our patty of basil/butter seeds, so I got out my green thumb and did some minor gardening.

Erm, actually, I should come clean and admit that the patty really only had to be placed on top of the soil and watered, and then broken up an hour or so afterward and left to do its thing. Look, I already said that I am not a gardener, OK? Leave me alone.

But I tell you, friends, that the basil had not been nestled on top of the soil of a plant we had previously killed for more than three minutes before our ratty little Moose gobbled up the basily, seedy, buttery goodness! He ate the ersatz chocolate chip cookie in one remorseless bite!

Life with a Moose is tough business, I tell you. Dog eat dog. Dog eat basil. Dog eat tube after tube of Lera's almond chapstick.

It's only a matter of time, dear friends, before he is tossed out onto the street.

Oh, but look at how sweet he looks! And how innocent, with his sweet puppy eyes.

How quick we are to forgive. Alas.

Mooserable?

Oh, does the bad blogger of the year award go to me? I am speechless. I'd like to thank so many people for this hard-earned award. Thank you to Matthew, for marrying me and whisking me off on our great Romanian road trip honeymoon.

Thanks to work for firing me (and everyone else) and then employing me as a freelance editor anyway. Thanks to Christmas being held in two countries at once. Thanks to my grandmother, aunt, and uncle for cheering on the Oklahoma Thunder with Matthew and me (that was awesome). Thanks to the shower at 53 Princes Road for flooding every day, leading Matthew and me to throw in the rented towel (literally and metaphorically) and buy our own place. Thanks (oh, especially thanks) to the annoyingly slow vendor and the even more annoyingly pedantic solicitor for taking their damn sweet time completing the sale/purchase of our new house. Thanks (genuine, heart-felt thanks) to my in-laws for letting me stay at their house for a whopping six weeks, sans Matthew, while said annoying vendor and solicitor farted around with the house sale/purchase. Thanks to Lovells for being such shite builders that installing our washing machine and dishwasher became a DIY engineering miracle. And thanks to my meniscus for tearing after I tripped over a root while walking Moose. Yeah, thanks a lot for that one. Really makes things special.

OK, actually life has been absolutely amazing since I last put a sarcastic and figurative pen to this blog. But because it is my calling as sarcastic blogger to write with cynical slant, you will forgive the jaded introduction. I haven't blogged since August, people. I've got a lot of wit to pen. Or type. Whatever.

In the interest of writing a blog that covers more than the last nine months, I think I am going to write about my new neighbors. Neighbours. Look, can we just all make peace with the fact that some of my readers are Yanks and some of them are Limeys, and that my spelling is inevitably going to boomerang between the two? Yeah, thanks. Anyway, the people who live next door. They're nice, probably, but they seem not to have taken to the Moose. To the degree that we have been here just two months and they have already complained about what, to them, seems to be incessant barking. Yes, to those particular neighbors, our furry darling is a pest, a nuisance, a menace. Er...actually, that would be a pretty good description in anyone's book. But to them, he is nothing but a barking machine! We were worried about this, of course, on the occasion of said complaint. However, upon further investigation (ie. too many drinks with the neighbors who live on the other side of us), it became clear that the offending barking was, in fact, two incidents of no more than a minute each. In other words, Moose might actually have done nothing wrong. At all.

Unlikely, right? And yet...probable. Could it be that Moose is not, in fact, a black ball of pure evil? I will leave you with photo evidence, and you can decide for yourselves.

Happy Mooseday!

Er...remember how I said about two months ago that I was going to be more regular about updating the MooseBlog? Right, sorry about that. What I meant, apparently, was that I was going to drop off the face of the planet, stop updating, ignore emails, and generally fail to exist as any kind of normal correspondent or friend. But look, people, I'm planning a wedding. I'm working full time. I herniated a disc in my back. My sister came to visit. I...

Oh, forget it. I'm a bad blogger.

But look what I was doing instead of blogging! I was busy baking Moosecakes! Yes, that's right. The darling puppy had his first birthday on August 17. I cannot believe that our fuzzy ball of evil is a year old already. And is every bit, I should add, as mischievous as he was the day we brought him home. Nonetheless, I decided to celebrate his birthday with a special doggy birthday cake.

OK, I want it to be known that, despite my general skill in the kitchen, the doggy birthday cake did require a recipe. Which I was going to follow, of course (ahem). But Waitrose (er, so what if I bought the ingredients from an upscale store like Waitrose?) didn't have plain chicken baby food. Chicken with parsnips and apples, yes. Chicken with butternut squash, yep. Of course, they had chicken with rosemary (what baby would eat chicken without rosemary, is my question). But no plain chicken. So I bought ground beef. I forgot to put shredded carrots in. I refused to top it with bacon.

Yeah, so I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Or at all. But it turned out fine! Well, it turned out OK. Well, it turned out like a rubbery, beefy frisbee. With yogurt as icing. And a carrot stick candle. Perhaps not my single best effort.

Needless to say, Moose loved it. He dived right in, got yogurt all over himself, and assumed a down to business, legs-sprawled-out, face buried right in the cake, eating position, the envy of competitive eaters world-wide.

A happy birthday indeed.

In tribute to Moose and his year on this planet, I would like to say a few words. Our house never smells right. We have some things that could have gone forever without having been peed on (but haven't). One day we would like to be able to leave things on the counter without them getting stolen. We could be £12 richer a day, if the dog walker didn't charge so much. We would have a more active social life if we didn't have to come home to rescue you. But you are sweet (SO sweet). You are silly (you make us laugh all the time). You are soft, cuddly, and warm. You eat the carrots that come in our veg box every week, but that we never manage to eat. You take us for regular walks. You make us very, very happy. So thanks for giving us the first year of your life! We're sure it's going to get better and better. And we don't regret a moment.

Happy Mooseday!

The Center of the Universe

As I sit writing this long overdue blog post, I am watching Moose eat (yes, actually rip into pieces and consume) a wooden door stop. I should stop him, really. But how do you stop a force like a Moose? He is, after all, the center of the universe.

Or so he believes.

I'm not really sure that I blame him for this belief, no matter how inconvenient it is for us. You see, he may not actually be the center of the universe, but he certainly is (for not entirely good reasons) the center of our lives.

Who is our weekend alarm clock? Moose, of course.

Why does our house have to be thoroughly cleaned every weekend? Well, because Moose makes it dirty.

What dictates our activities on weekends? Moose (he needs a long walk every day).

Why do we have to pour bleach on our patio every couple of days? Er...well, I'm not going to get into that one.

This morning, Moose spilled a cup of bright pink, raspberry tea all over the counter in my future mother-in-law's formerly clean kitchen. The fruity liquid flooded into a drawer, which allowed the tea to form a pool and then drip into the cabinet below. Awesome. He learned how to open the lid to the rubbish bin (you can imagine the trouble that caused). He stole a pile of clean laundry and trailed it all over the kitchen. He harassed the chickens in the garden. He ate a sponge. He ate two pairs of my underwear. He stole a gardening glove. He shredded four plastic bags. He figured out how to open the back door. (He already knows how to open the fridge and exercises that knowledge regularly).

...and now he is eating that door stop.

He is, you will understand, the center of our universe.

Unfortunately for Moose, being the center of the universe comes with certain consequences. He has to be kept clean, so he is treated to at least one bath a week. He must be able to see (so that he can lord over his loyal subjects, Lera and Matthew), so he has to be groomed on occasion. And his lovely, soft coat needs to be protected from the constant English rain, so we help him out with things like this:

Heh. Being a dog is so hard, isn't it, Moose?

So very hard.

Moose on the Loose!

Go Westward, young Moose...

There comes a time in every young Moose's life when adulthood calls, independence beckons, and the need to fly the coop simply cannot be contained. The parents aren't cool anymore. The dog walker is just lame. And the walls of the park are nothing but extension of The Man, suppressing the free thoughts of the Moose.

Today was Moose's day. The day to break free. Today, the Moose was loose.

And scared his parents half to death, I might add.

Today was my first day back at work after more than two weeks stuck in bed with bronchitis. I had only been at work for three hours when I received the call that every dog mommy dreads: the call from the dog walker. Now, as every dog mommy knows, the dog walker is not like your kid's teacher. He doesn't call just to check in. He doesn't call to give you a doggy report card. He calls for one reason and one reason only: your dog is missing.

I knew this when I picked up the phone, and yet I still expected other news. In fact, I expected him to be calling to ask whether or not I would be at home, as during my illness I scared him out of his wits on more than one occasion, since he never expected me to be sitting on the sofa when he came in to pick up Moose. Poor guy.

Unfortunately, this really was the dreaded call. He told me, rather calmly if you ask me, that he had been putting Moose in his car after a long walk in Richmond Park when suddenly Moose bolted. Apparently Moose just decided to do something a little different today and ran as fast as his furry little legs could carry him, which is damn fast if you ask me. The dog walker quickly lost track of him and called in reinforcements to help find the escapee. He also called me, which of course caused me to call Matthew, and within minutes the two of us were speeding toward Waterloo Station and then on to Richmond to join the search for our fuzzy little renegade.

Now, before I get too caught up in the ridiculousness of the situation, I just want to pause and say that I have never been so worried. My poor puppy was lost in (I thought) the wilds of Richmond Park and I was terrified that he might chase after some runners (one of his favorite activities), get dognapped, or (worst!) get hit by a car. Moose can be a real pain sometimes, but I would be absolutely devastated if something happened to him.

In any case, as Matthew works closer to Waterloo Station, he was able to get a train before I got to the station. He was about ten minutes ahead of me but promised to get home, pick up the car (ahem, our new BMW), and retrieve me from the station so we could look for the Moose together. Bless him, he is so cool under pressure.

And then I got a totally unexpected phone call. From Matthew. Who had run home from Richmond Station, gone into our house through the back door, gathered keys and kennels and leashes, and then gone out the front door to get the car.

...and who should be sitting right by our front door but Moose? Yes, that's right. Moose LEFT a walled and gated park. Navigated several busy roads (and possibly a roundabout). Chose one of about four different, winding, possible routes. And made it home, cool as a cucumber, without getting hit by a car.

He was so pleased with himself.

Matthew and I both have been entertaining ourselves thinking about Moose's little adventure today. Did he go straight home, do you suppose? Did he walk out of Richmond Park (surely through Richmond Gate, at the top of the hill) and follow the sidewalk right, down Queen's Road, until he reached Park Road? Did he then cross the street (at the pedestrian crosswalk, do you think?), walk up Park Road, cross another street, and then turn right again down King's Road until he reached our street? Or did he leave the park and go across the busy roundabout? Did he walk down the promenade that overlooks the Thames? Did he, perhaps, stop for a pint at the Roebuck, as Matthew and I did just last Thursday? Or did he meet some doggie friends, have a wrestle, and sneak a cheeky cigarette before meeting Matthew at home?

Only Moose will know the details of his journey. What I do know is that this morning I was the proud mommy of a Moose. Tonight I go to bed the (extremely thankful) mommy of a man. Well, a Moose-man. A manly Moose? A...well, you get the point.

For a map of Richmond: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=richmond+london&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Richmond,+Surrey&gl=uk&ei=8_DES7v2CJTw0gTHhpTRDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ8gEwAA

The Best Days Apparently Come at a Cost

Some of you might know I recently had the best day ever. Really, I mean it. I woke up earlier than I would have liked but then had the most impressively awesome, hyperproductive day ever. I took the tube from Richmond to Hammersmith to St Pancras and met a good friend for lunch at the British Library. Fun.

I took the tube from St Pancras to Tooting Bec (OK, I will admit, not so nice) for my awesome National Insurance interview. Here I should note that I have some choice words about the fact that I had to have an interview out in East Jesus, London, for the honor of paying into National Insurance, but I am talking about my best day ever here, so I am going to shelve that rant for the moment. And actually, though I waited for forty-five minutes to have my interview, the actual interview took about two minutes and I didn't have to plead my case, show evidence, or stress about it at all, so we can consider that a win.

I then took the tube from Tooting Bec to Stockwell to Victoria to Chiswick Park, where I had arranged an appointment to try on my first ever wedding dress. Uh...everyone who reads my blog knows I got engaged, right? Well, I got engaged. And I scoured the internet for the perfect dress because while I desire to look fabulous in my wedding dress, I have no intention of wandering with my entourage to every bridal shop in London and sipping cheap champagne while trying on every poofy, sparkly gown under the sun. No. I want straps. I don't want sparkles. I don't want to look like a fairy princess. I don't even want to look like a regular princess. I want to look pretty, but like a pretty adult who is taking the wedding seriously. Don't even show me a tiara. Er...right, so I went to Chiswick to try on my one wedding dress, loved it, decided my search was over, and moved right along. Wedding dress: done aaaaaand done!

As I was leaving the bridal shop, I decided to check for missed calls on my phone. You see, I had been invited for a second interview for an editorial assistant position at an educational publishing company and had been told that I would receive a phone call about the position on Friday (my best day ever). Well, the day wore on and on and I had convinced myself that the longer it took, the less likely I was to get the job. But...I got the job! Yay for me! I'm going to be an editorial assistant!!! Whee!

Uh, so then I went and got a Starbucks latte. I mean, wedding or no wedding, I deserve a sugar-filled dessert-disguised-as-life-blood latte after landing a job, right? Right.

THEN I took the tube from Chiswick Park to Stamford Brook (er, I missed the Turnham Green station, like the shining idol of awesomeness that I am) to Richmond and went home in time to meet Matthew...who had just picked up Moose...who had just had the worst day ever.

The vet's post-care letter home to us read (in case we didn't know, having booked the appointment): "Your dog has been castrated."

...

...

...those bastards castrated my dog? They said they were going to neuter my dog! They called it The Big Snip! But...castration? Good Lord, people. Where is the decency? Who does that to an animal? What if he misses his buddies?

OK, just kidding. It was That Time. He's old enough, was marking all over the place, and he was definitely paying the lady dogs a little more attention than before. Sniff. My little baby is growing up.

Anyway, it is fair to say that while I was busy having the best day ever, Moose was busy having the worst. Sorry Moose. But my day was awesome!

So I put Moose to bed. I gave him tons of lovely things to chew on (to distract him from looking for certain items long gone). And then I took the tube from Richmond to Monument to London Bridge to have celebratory drinks (Happy Birthday, Caroline) with friends.

Thanks for the great day, Moose. I'm sure karma will soon work its equalizing ways for us both, buddy.