By trying to be a good samaritan. That’s how!

Five days before finally leaving for our long awaited honeymoon in Jamaica, I was out walking the dogs and talking to neighbors when two collared but loose dogs wandered across the street. Thinking they were going to get hit by a car, my neighbor suggested to his wife that she take their dogs home, while he tried to get the strays to come to him. One of them ran off, while the other came happily over and wagged its tail while being petted.

I told him I’d take my dogs home, and call animal control. Of course animal control didn’t answer, and had no voicemail, so I called the police, who told me they might be able to get a car up there “in a few hours”. Mindful of the fact that our neighbor was now trapped on the corner holding a strange dog’s collar, and loathe to tell him to just let it go, I had a bright idea. I’d take out one of my dogs’ spare leads, put it on the stray, and tie him to the fence, so the cops could come at their leisure.

I explained all this to my neighbor, who thought it was a good idea too. So very gently, we attached the lead to the dogs collar, and started to walk him across the street to the fence. Half-way across, he froze up and growled. Carefully, so as not to startle him, I turned around to look at him and tried to make reassuring noises, at which time he snapped at my hand holding the lead, which I dropped, and then he ran off down the street.

We were disappointed, but figured we’d tried our best, and walked home. It was only later, when I was washing my hands, that I noticed the single, unbelievably tiny, scarlet droplet on the back of my hand that indicated that the dog had broken my skin ever so slightly.

Now it was serious. I called my doctor’s office, who directed me to the county department of health, who sent me to the emergency room with special papers requesting, you guessed it, rabies shots. Fortunately (I’m told) modern rabies vaccination no longer requires long needles to be jabbed repeatedly into your abdomen. What it does require, however, is dozens of small shots delivered to a startlingly wide variety of places over a fourteen day period. Five days before we left for Jamaica. Do you see the problem here?

Yup, that’s right, the course of treatment *must* be taken over a period, with no breaks, or the rabies, assuming you’re infected, pretty much kills your ass dead. The best part? Jamaica has almost no rabies vaccine available, and you can’t bring any with you, because you might be a terrorist, off to create a weaponized biological agent in a seaside resort. So unless we found the dog, and it tested negative, no honeymoon for us.

Fortunately, after three days of combing the neighborhood, someone in our neighborhood association identified the dog from my description, and they brought it in to keep it under observation. Honeymoon disaster averted! Also, I got away with only 9 shots, since I didn’t have to complete the last two-thirds of the treatment.

And so, off we went to Jamaica!

No good deed goes unpunished! We went out two years ago and paid a ridiculously large sum for a super-efficient, fancy-pants, eco-friendly refrigerator, to do our part at being environmentally/socially responsible. Great idea, right?

Oh no, my friends, we would have done so much better to just buy a standard one, and donate the difference to some eco-cleanup project. Three months ago, the thing started blinking it’s control-panel lights at us. We searched through all the documentation, and found no mention of such behavior. Two weeks later, we came home to find about $300 worth of defrosted and rotten frozen-goods we’d just purchased at BJ’s. Fortunately, we had purchased the extended service warranty. Nothing to worry about, right?

Well, kinda… The service guy was there within a week, and told us we needed a new motherboard, which he replaced two days later. After replacing it , he watched the machine for a half-hour, and said it wasn’t the motherboard after all, but rather a “constriction in the freezer side refrigeration line”, which would require a return visit and lots of plumbing. He left, and the freezer promptly began working just fine. I reported this to the repair service, and they said “Great, it must have just taken longer than we expected to cool down. Saves us a trip!” Two weeks later, there went another $200 worth of frozen food. So out came the repair guy, to replace loads of plumbing, right?

Heavens, no! This time, you see, we were told that since we had an installed refrigerator, they wouldn’t come out unless we had a professional remove it from its installation. The only problem? IT ISN’T AN INSTALLED REFRIGERATOR! It just stands there in the corner of our kitchen, no cabinetry, no finishing. It took a week of arguing, and photographs of me pulling it away from the wall and rotating it 180 degrees, to get them to come out. Finally, it was fixed.

End of story, right?

You know better! No, of course, six weeks later, you guessed it, right after buying hundreds of dollars worth of frozen food in preparation for a party, it stopped freezing things again! This time, we demanded they replace it. After weeks of arguing, Lowes agreed to give us store credit for the original price we paid, since that model was no longer in production. Finally, some progress! So off we went to Lowes, to find a new fridge, where we discovered all models in the same size/functionality range now cost at least $400 more than the original one had. We decided, in the interest of “just being done with it”, to just grit our teeth, pay the extra, and buy one. We plunked down the cash, made delivery arrangements, and went home.

Finally done, right?

Hah, fooled you! Four days later, Sabrina called me at work, to say “They won’t put it in the kitchen.” “What?” “The refrigerator. They won’t take the old one out, and they won’t move the new one in, because of the kitchen island!” So there it sat in our dining room, waiting once again while we battled the forces of insanity. Apparently, the same two delivery guys (Sabrina remembered them) who had, two years earlier, just lifted the fridge right over the island and put it where it was, now refused to pull it back out and lift in the new one, despite a) us already having done the work of disassembly for them and b) the new one being slightly smaller and significantly lighter than the old one. If we wanted it put in, we’d have to do it ourselves, or hire a crew.

Over the next two weeks, I yelled at supervisors. I yelled at department managers. I yelled at the store manager. I yelled at the extended warrantee people. It became sort of a hobby. I made it a game, to see how late I could make people for their lunch breaks, or whether I could fill their voice-mailboxes completely while they were away. I got to know people by voice. Finally, one afternoon, just when I was starting to think I might have a harassment suit filed against me, the store manager broke down. In the most frail, almost teary voice, he sighed, confirmed my home address, and said “We’ll have a someone out there on Friday. Please stop calling.”

And they did it! Three gentlemen showed up, took away the old fridge, assembled the new one, and put it in our kitchen. So it was finally over, right?

So far, so good…..

We had our first tragedy this weekend. One of our ferrets, Loki, got a bad flu and succumbed to it within 24 hours. RIP Loki… Mommy, Daddy, and your brothers and sister will miss you desperately.

So it took four months and a looming “Pampered Chef” party, but we finally got all the wedding gifts and wedding stuff put away, preserved, or disposed of, as necessary. Who knew that would be as much work as actually planning a wedding?

Now it’s time to start planning our Spring/equinox/St Paddy’s/beach party. I wonder how long it will take to clean that up……..

Well, we’ve just had our first christmas together as a married couple. I’ve got to say, it’s really almost identical to christmas as a non-married couple, except now all the family gifts have both our names on them. Still, we had a great holiday together, and look forward to a great coming year.

To all our friends and family, the Hartley clan (Sabrina, Blaise, Moose, Willow, Loki, and Gremlin) wishes everyone a wonderful holiday season, and a most excellent New Year!

The photographer has updated her website with hundreds more pictures from the wedding. And we mean literally hundreds! You can check them out at the link below:

   

Sabrina has begun her name-change odyssey. The paperwork is officially filed with the social security administration and the DMV, after untold hours of line-standing and hoop-jumping. Two down, only 75,000 more administrations, memberships and bills to go!

So things are finally back to normal! Sorta.

Our dog Moose is mostly over the self-inflicted injuries he got trying to escape the kennel while we were on our mini-moon. The doofus decided he could jump over a 6.5 foot gate, and succeeded only in slicing up his front paws. We still have another week of antibiotics to give him, but the wounds seem healthily repaired.

We’re back to dancing again, and the general grind of day-to-day seems to have resumed. Other than the fact that our house still looks a little like a Mayan king dumped his temple into it, all’s back to normal.

We keep asking each other “Do you feel any different?” So far, the answer’s been “nope.” But last night something stood out. For the very first time, I found myself in a situation where I had to introduce “My wife Sabrina”. THAT was a startling moment! We both kind of blinked at each other for a few seconds, as it sank in…

So, since Sabrina’s a teacher, we couldn’t take a full-length honeymoon right after the wedding. We’re planning a Jamaica trip next summer, but in the meantime, we needed to take at least a few days just for us after the wedding, to de-stress and wind down. To that end, we decided we needed to go somewhere drivable, to eliminate the stress of air-travel, and luxurious, so we would feel pampered and special.

Enter Fern Lodge, an ultra-luxury log-cabin/B&B deep in the Adirondacks. Just 75 minutes’ drive from home, it was the perfect balance of close and inaccessible. We left at 3PM on Sunday, and by 5 PM, we were checked in and lounging in front of a cedar fire with glasses of Argentinian chardonnay in hand.

Our suite, the Birch Room, was a wonder of rustic style and space-age luxury. Under log rafters, and mixed in with furniture that was birch even to the lampshades, were a remote-controlled see-through fireplace, a glorious emperor-sized bed, and a private jacuzzi. In the 150-square-foot bathroom, his and hers sinks stood next to a steam-bath shower with four shower heads and multiple steam cycles. Our private balcony looked out on a large tranquil lake framed by autumn forests and backdropped by the Adirondacks.

We spent four days almost completely alone in the off-season Adirondacks, wandering from Lake Placid to Lake George, antiquing, and kayaking on what was effectively our private lake. We gave ourselves multiple spa-treatments in our suite, and ate continental cuisine at an inexplicable five-star restaurant in the middle of nowhere (duck bisque, anyone?). We de-stressed, in the most extreme way possible!

I thought it would take weeks to see our wedding pictures (there were thousands), but apparently the photographer is starting to post them as they get processed! When we have all of them, we’ll be posting our favorites here, but in the meantime, you can browse the first 50 or so from the link below: