Final thoughts on the day of departure for Russia

Well here we are. In NYC. Ready to go.

At the moment sitting in a coffee shop at 96th & Columbus waiting for the the dog to have his anal glands cleared.

I kid you not. For $90 Playground Pups at 93rd & Amsterdam will clean and groom and clean the anal glands of your dog. Ostensibly to freshen him up for the plane this evening, and to meet his Russian hosts. NYC – GEN – MOS – IRK. We leave on Swiss this eve.

We’ve spent the past week in northcentral PA. Running all over the damn state trying to scare up a veterinarian approved by the USDA. Apparently such a person is required to sign off, five days before travel, on the health of your dog. Then you’re supposed to FedEx the report to a USDA agency, and get it back like the minute before you fly.

Such hell.

I spent Friday in the car between Williamsport and Danville and Harrisburg calling every dang vet on Yelp trying to get one to take Colorado. Most were suspicious. Traveling to Russia? Why? Are you a Communist? And No I’m sorry you can’t stop by. Definitely not. And incidentally, why would you fly ANYWHERE with a 15 year-old lab-mix? Well, because if I left him for a year he’d die of heartbreak. Though if we had left him in Sitka maybe he wouldn’t have decided to run off in Seattle in the middle of the night. Rachel and I spent the early morning hours working with the Seattle Police, and Paws on Facebook trying to locate the dog. 8 hours he was missing. Finally a couple women reported finding him sleeping in a grass dug-out in front of a bi-lingual pre-school. Steps away from the subway stop we had come from. About ten minutes from the house where we were staying.

I guess he wanted to go home.

Anyways I finally found an animal hospital in Danville. The vet there, a  woman with blond hair and clear green eyes who looked vaguely like Princess Lea, gave us a red plastic bottle of Trazadone, a dog sedative, along with USDA approval. The sedative would keep Colorado from getting too nervous – though, as Rachel pointed out, Colorado’s general demeanor is sedated, so it would be a stretch to tell if the stuff is actually working.

With this in mind, we gave Colorado a pill at 11:20 AM, then kept careful record of his behavior. Turns out the stuff not only doesn’t put him to sleep, or get him relaxed, but it gives him a heavy dose of the nerves and incapacitates his hips. He could hardly walk. It was sad. He’s still having issues. I’m worried I’m going to have to carry him up the aisle of the plane, which would be quite a sight, considering that he’ll be flying as a service dog. “Hey guys! Meet my service dog. He can’t walk. But that’s cool. He really helps me out. Really!”

The silver lining to all this running around is we discovered that one of the few USDA offices on the eastern seaboard happens to be in Harrisburg. So on Friday I got the clean bill of health from Princess Lea Vet, then yesterday – Monday – I drove to Harrisburg with said report. Only to find that Princess Lea hadn’t SIGNED the damn paper. This guy behind the desk mumbling, no we cannot take a fax. If you want to fly with your dog … so an hour and a half back to Danville, found Princess Lea in her cell aboard the Deathstar, got her to sign, circled back along Susquehanna Trail to Suite 250 at 2300 Vartan Way outside Harrisburg, interrupted lunch there to get the embossed seal that will convince the Pet Master at Domodedovo Airport not to quarantine our dog. Hopefully. If Moscow doesn’t take the dog, well, Swiss Airlines puts the dog down. I kid you not. It’s right there on the website. That Swiss charm.

So that’s the dog.

The girls are beside themselves, eager to get to “Kroshkin Dom,” the “House of the Little People” where they will be going to school. For the plane they have their respective bags – a bee and an owl – packed with stickers and games and treats that can only be opened once seated. Haley’s been going around the house yelling “appelseenavy sok” like it’s the line that will keep her out of the gulag. Kiera-Lee says “pajowsta” when she wants water. It’s confusing. Haley continually reminds us that she will soon know Russian better than us, and I do believe she’s correct.

We watch Little Pimsleur before sleep, featuring a wide-eyed non-gender-specific panda in a pink scarf who stares longingly at him/herself in the zerkala (mirror). When we can’t access the videos we go onto YouTube and type in Russian Little Pim. A couple nights ago Rachel typed in “Russian Little Pie” and let me tell you that was not Russian Pim. A whole different learning experience.

By the by I gotta say I find it surprising this American fetish for Russian women. Russians, Filipinos, Thai – these seem to be the women men favor as wives? Right? But Russians are not known for being submissive. Is it a desire to be dominated? Or some attraction to the storyline of plucking a woman from Soviet destitution? (This seems to be a good spot to insert a photo of Haley and I playing Buck Hunter.) This morning I jumped into a barber shop by Playground Pups and lo and behold my barber was Russian. He made it very clear that he does not understand the fascination with Russian women. And also said there is much criminality in Russia. He left Moscow in 1991 and never looked back. He also used ALOT of product in my hair, and wore a gold chain that could sink a small child.

Our exact schedule as far as travel: 7:25 PM depart on Swiss out of JFK. Land Geneva 8 hours later. An hour layover, then another four hours to Moscow. We’ll have seven hours to clear customs etc., then a flight at 9:15 PM to Irkutsk, where we’ll land about six hours later.Arriving, finally, at our destination, about two days after we leave. The university has been kind enough to rent us an apartment, where we’ll be for two weeks while we search for a more permanent situation.  

Up to this point travel has been pretty smooth. We’ve been lucky to have place to stand by, up in the mountains at the cabin. Good for the dog too, especially after his adventures in Seattle,   where we saw friends and Kiera-Lee bathed in the public baths.

Followed by Wyoming, where we rode horses and saw moose and ate many marshmallows. What a sweet state, truly a mini-Alaska, with even less people. No major metropolis. Rachel and I rented a Harley, got a babysitter and had the great pleasure of cruising around for a bit, up the Teton Pass. We were out there meeting friends for a collaborative celebration of turning 40, and, well, getting older. All of us in various states of disrepair. The girls meanwhile embracing the horse-heavy lifestyle, wanting to embrace the moose we saw eating leaves outside the house where we were staying. Kiera-Lee I will say in particular strikes me as a thoroughly Western creature. The wide open spaces matching her boundless smile and spirit.Haley a bit more measured, judgmental, reserved. Watchful. An Alaska girl with an East Coast edge is how I’d put it. There she is below at the Shore as a kid, in Eagles regalia.

Another big question – the Eagles. Most games are going to be starting around 1 in the morning Irkutsk time. Which means I’ll essentially be up the whole night. I’m too old for that shit. Haley will have to stay up with me.

Friends think we’re going to have another kid over the long Siberian winter. In fact we’ve promised our friend Xander that if such a thing happens (it won’t) we’ll name the kid Baikal. It’s fascinating to me, dudes coming up to me being like, “You gonna try for a third, get your boy?” In the same tone as hunters talk about “getting their deer” for the season. Yeah, just gonna take a 300-yard shot and get my boy. It’s not going to happen. I am very proud of my  daughters, and have no need for a son. To be honest I think it would be a helluva lot of work explaining to a boy the world these days. And I have a book to write.

That’s been on my mind, the girls and how they evolve, the world today, and also the ethics of scaring the hiccups out of a kid. Is it right? I still get nervous whenever I get the hiccups because I’m sure the Irish babysitter who used to leap at me whenever I got them is going to appear around some corner screaming. Thing is, you scare someone when they have the hiccups, and it always makes them disappear. Flat out. So do you scare your kid when they’re desperate to be rid of the hiccups?

I’ll leave you with that. Because we have a plane to catch, and because, if I’m any judge of how long it takes to clean out a dog’s anal glands, Colorado is about ready.

Also Haley wants, for the life of her, to see the Statue of Liberty. It’s foggy out, which is unfortunate. We’ll get her a pencil sharpenter.

(Why, reviewing these photos, does it seem like we’re on a tear to do the most red-necky American things before departure for a year overseas?)

Russia, here come the Joneses.