We're Movin' On Up

... to the East Side.

etc.

We have been incommunicado for a week, blog readers, because the Food Lady has been packing, cleaning, moving and unpacking again. Last week, 3WAAW, Nutz and the Food Lady too, moved to a bigger, better apartment. I wasn't kidding about moving to the East Side!

Our new home is more than double the size of the old one. We lost our magical private deck, but gained floor to ceiling windows, and a gas fireplace, and in-suite laundry! We are no longer quite so close to ocean, but as the Food Lady's car (right now parked in one of the *ahem* two underground spots that come with the condo) can always drive us there.

Another view of the place from the other side of the suite.

Such a lot of hard work, moving is! And the dogs don't know what to make of the new place. It's so different from the old place, but it has all our furniture in it. They are a little weirded out. Mr. Woo snapped at a friendly neighbor dog in the parking garage, which is something Mr. Woo never does, unless he is feeling extremely stressed out.

Mr. Woo is not the only one who is stressed out. As if moving is not bad enough in and of itself, I had the additional fun-and-good-times experience of losing Donut in the move. I realized on moving day that her carrier was on loan to my sister and I foolishly thought that I could just carry her to my car in my arms. The punctures on my thighs and my scratched up hands and wrists will remind me for some time that I was WRONG! My 5lb kitten morphed into something like a oversized Smilodon and clawed her way out of my grasp just as I reached my car, then she vanished in an instant. Seconds after it began to rain. Argh!

I found her about 5 hours later, wet, oily and very scared under a garbage bin in an alley. This was after I had run all around my old neighborhood crying, calling all my friends and recruiting people to help me look for her, finally having to leave to escort the movers to my new place and convinced I would never see her again. Poor Nutz - a nice guy (with 5 cats!) working on the leaky condo next door helped me get her out from under the bin, and she went into a crate in the car with Mr. Woo, who cleaned her up for me.

Gah.

And Donut was not all I lost. I also, sadly, said "farewell" to our friend Sporty.

Sometimes I forget that my job as a foster home is prepare the doggies for a new and better life somewhere else. It's especially hard to remember that when they were almost dead when you got 'em, and made a miraculous recovery, and stayed for 3 months ... and thought the sun rose and set wherever you were standing too :(

If I had not been in a position where I had to move, I would have put exactly 0% of my efforts into finding Sport a new home and he would have lived out his life with me. But it didn't work out that way - in a city that is experiencing a housing shortage for renters, there was just no room for Sport in my apartment hunt. Finding a home for my own dogs was my priority, and Sport just was not my dog. No potential landlord wants to hear the sentence "I have 4 dogs."

Fortunately, the foster home who sprung Sporty from the shelter for me a few months ago had told me at the time that if they had not been leaving for Australia within days, they would have just kept Sport. And so they were delighted to have him back - fatter, cleaner and way less stinky - as a permanent guest who will spend the remainder of his retirement with them.

Bye bye, old buddy.

To make up for the endless days of packing and cleaning and moving, during which the only words directed at my poor dogs were "OMG Would you please get the f*ck out of my way!?!" I loaded them in the van and hauled them to Bridgeman Park for a good two hours of play time today. It's beautiful in the Fall.


Mr. Woo has still not forgiven me for upsetting his life, and in every photo of him that I take, he looks extremely pissed off:

Or else he just won't look at the camera.

Tweed, bless his heart, tried to make up for Woo's bad manners, but all he managed was

Portrait Fail:
(I've enlarged the expression on his face so you can't miss it)

I also caught him in his favourite "I think I'm about to sneeze" pose:

As well as snapping a private moment between him and his licker!


And Piper's 24/7 thought bubble, as usual, simply reads

Ball?

Ummm .... Ball?


Oops. Another private licker moment, caught on (digital) film!

This is what Mad Teeth (tm) look like without a ball in Piper's mouth!

More Wootie cold shoulder:

But finally I got a family portrait!

So now you know why I have been neglecting our fans this week. In fact, I had to (steal) internetz to post this week's entry as my internet is not hooked up yet and won't be for several more days! But now that we are mostly settled in, I should be back to more regular updates.

If the bike ride home from work doesn't kill me, that is ... more than 30 continuous uphill blocks. Oh dear. If I don't make it, I bequeath Tweed to you!

Love,

The Food Lady.