#Trave With labrador

[carryeryhare]

Traveling with Your Labrador: A Guide for Safe and Fun Journeys

[sarahzipp]

Author’s note: This post was written in the summer of 2017. It’s taken me nearly three years to grow the courage to post it publicly.  Time heals all wounds!  I hope you enjoy.

Waving goodbye to Amsterdam, our home for 3 years.

Did you know – moving a family of four and two pets to a foreign country is hard. In fact, it’s a giant logistical nightmare. I did. I learned that lesson, I learned it so hard 3 years ago moving to the Netherlands and muddling through immigration paperwork and not having a bank account because we don’t have a BSN yet (it’s like a social security number) and we can’t paid and we can’t get a BSNt….and so on and on and on. It’s a doom loop. It’s a doom loop in Dutch. But moving abroad has become like childbirth to me, after a couple of years I forget the pain and do it again. And there’s a lot of crying.  And nobody sleeps.

But this time it would be in English, and therefore much easier, right?  We’re only moving about an hour’s flight away, how bad can it be? Besides, we’re seasoned expats, wiser and more experienced now. Step 1 – book flights. Several times a day flights buzz between Holland and Scotland. They’re cheap and plentiful. No problem! Wait, what?  We can’t fly the dog on EasyJet or any of the quick jumpers into the UK. Hmmmm. Look, a fairy! I mean, look – a ferry! They have a kennel. Perfect for a multi-species move. Yes yes yes! Let’s move by ferry. How cool and adventurous. It’d be uber Zipp-like to move to a foreign country by ferry. We shall invade Scotland by sea! Neat-o.

Our previous experience with boats in Amsterdam gave us undue confidence. What could possibly go wrong?

So, we just book the tickets, 2 cabins for us + my mom (who so graciously/foolishly agreed to come visit/help us not commit acts of homicide while we pack and move). Check. Next we book the dog into the pet hotel. Check. Great. Now just notify them we are bringing Kitty as a carry-on (like we did on the plane when we moved to A’dam). Wait, huh? Why is it not allowing us to add the cat. Try it again. What if we depart from Rotterdam? Ugh. Call them. Sprek je Engels? Huh? We can’t have the cat on board without a car? But we don’t want to keep the car. We want to sell it so we can buy a UK car with a right-side-of-the-car-steering-wheel when we get there. It’s going to be difficult enough unlearning how to drive American-like in the UK. Oh, shut the front door! Are we really going to keep an ailing French mini-van with a passenger-side window that won’t roll down and a steering wheel on the wrong side of the car for a 5lb cat? Yes. Yes, that is exactly what we are going to do. Because life. Because family expatting is a series of maddening choices and ridiculous adaptations. It’s a relentless state of absurdity. Because that’s how Zipps do. No creature left behind. Check.

Ok, transport of humans and pets secured. Now what about our stuff? Step 2 – pack up and go. This time around, in the most adulting moment of my life thus far, we hired actual professional movers to pack up our shit. Why not? My employer is paying relocation expenses. Well done, Dr. Fancy Pants. I thought we were well organised. We laughed at how much we’d accumulated in 3 years. Wasn’t it just yesterday we packed ALL of our belongings into 9 Army duffle bags and boarded the plane to Amsterdam? Yeah, we moved our entire family across the Atlantic packed into 9 bags. Nothing more. And one half of those bags was my Ph.D. fieldwork papers. (Fun tip – we precisely weighed each bag by using the scale at the vet’s office where we went approximately 743 times trying to get the appropriate Pet Passport for the dog). Now, the movers handed me the inventory list – 100 boxes. 100 boxes? WTH? No matter, it was all out of sight, out of mind for now. See you on the flipside, boxes of crap. We’re down to the bare minimum. T-minus 9 days to departure. Just a few more issues to tidy up, then it’s time to kick back, relax and enjoy our final week in the lovely city of Amsterdam (stay tuned for a post, eventually to be written, on my deep, warm and conflicted feelings about life in the ‘dam and saying goodbye to my favourite city in the world).

So, we calmly went about packing up our Dutch lives. Er, rather, we scrambled every last minute, failing to find more than a few fleeting moments of peace in our last days there. We sold stuff on a thousand different marketplaces. We patched holes and fretted over which dishes were ours and which came with the apartment, etc. because our skeevy landlord will try to cheat us (separating expats from their security deposits is a hobby of Dutch landlords). I remember the feeling 3 years ago, whilst scrambling to pack up our American lives. Just get to the airport. Once we get checked in at the airport, we can relax. Breath. Panic. Breath. Repeat. 

Delierious with joy over are good choices, smart planning and simple lifestyle. Also pictured: cat that almost ruined everything, twice.

We tried, desperately, to capture the final bike rides and boat rides on camera. Fleeting moments of exquisite presence. We tried to celebrate, laugh, hug, cry and properly say goodbye to our family of expats. We tried to make space for our girls to spend those final, fleeting days with their buddies. Good god, we have been through some shit with these people over the past 3 years. Expat friendships, for big and little ones, are bonded in a crucible. Never forget this place. This stuff has been magical. Breath. Have presence. Enjoy? Pack, organise, DO SOMETHING. Did you cancel the internet service? Pay the parking ticket? How do we forward the mail? Notify the Belastingdienst? Sprek je Engels? 

And that’s when we noticed the cat was missing. Yes, the cat. The cat that caused us to keep the car. The car that caused us to pay a shit ton more for the ferry. The ferry that will take us to Scotland. The Scotland that will distill the whisky. The whisky that will taste so good when we drink it.  But I digress . . . the next few hours were a furious chaos of packing and loading and searching for the fecking cat. The children are weeping for the cat. My mom is organizing a search party while I cooly ignore this tangent of madness, because I am confident the cat is simply hiding. “The cat is missing, mom. Start acting like it!” my sweet youngest daughter screams at me and slams the door. I ignore her and discreetly throw out bags of forgotten little toy scraps that no one will remember so long as they aren’t seen during the throwing out process. Hours later, the cat is found hiding under a bed. I smugly chastise my panicked family. They fail to thank me for my calm resolve.

In spite all of our diligent #adulting, expensive movers and good intentions, here we are, literally running from the apartment with armloads of shit dumped out from random drawers whilst the landlord arrived from the other side of the building for our final check out.

It was like a scene from a Benny Hill movie, I’m sure. Cut to scene – exterior of building, black and white at 1.5 speed: Zipp parents frantically scrambling and stumbling out the front door, arms laden with useless plastic items, while the Landlord calmly strolls in the back door, clipboard and magnifying glass in hand. Cut to shot of kids, pets and granny in the car screaming, crying and flailing wildly.  Cut to Aaron opening driver door, pointing forward confidently and saying: Onward march – take to the seas! (in the captions). Can you hear the music?

People overuse the term, “stuffed in like a can of sardines.”  This is not one of those times.  We stuffed said crap into every nook and cranny of our van. So, there we were; 4 Zipps, my mom, our old dog with bad gas and a cat.  Everyone but the driver had items crammed under and around her feet as well as on her lap/between her body and the door or other passenger. I am not exaggerating. It felt difficult to breath in there. When we finally pulled up to the ferry door, I yelled at my children – “act natural, pretend like you have plenty of room! And for God’s sake, don’t mention the head lice!” I thought we might be over the weight limit or something. I knew we were technically one centimeter over the height limit, although I was sure the massive weight load was compressing us down at least that much.

We love our pets, Nana is losing her mind!

Jonah (the dog) smells funny

Pipsqueak the Mighty

  Maybe if the kids just smile at the check in guy they’ll let us go without any questions. I really don’t know, the whole thing was so sketchy because we weren’t sure if our car was too tall with the roof carrier on top and we were still recovering from some confusion regarding the pets on board (Fun Fact – Our 70lb geriatric labrador was perched up on a stack of luggage in the back of the van so high he could not get out on his own accord. So while we were waiting in line for the ferry (for hours) I had to unload and load him in “gently” whilst containing the stack of threatening-to-spill-out luggage with one knee. It was a long line. He had to get checked in too. My “gentle” level decreased with each outing). For once the gods smiled upon us and no one asked questions. We rolled in and were literally the last car on our platform. After a brief game of where-the-hell-is-the-cat-that-required-us-to-bring-a-wrong-side-of-the-road-driving-car-to-the-UK?, we deboarded the van and checked into our cabins.

My mom has never in 12 years of grandmothering ever chosen to not spend more time with her grandkids. But that night, with her head bent in (what I think was a bit of shame or guilt) she asked if she could have the key to a cabin and stay alone. Without her grandbabies. Yes mom, save yourself.  We broke the Na-na. My mom has never before or since rejected a moment’s time with her dear little grandchildren. I rejected the urge to jump overboard.

Ferry of Doom or Ferry of Freedom?

But we made it. We were on the ferry. Breathe. Deep sigh of relief. Enjoy the ride. It was fun and adventurous to travel by ferry. I highly recommend it. 15+ hours later, with minimal sleep and a deep sense of relief mixed with sadness, we calmly exited the ferry. Just a wee three hour drive to our new home.  Left, left, left. Remember to drive on the left, honey. We inched forward in an endless procession of vehicles exiting the ferry.  Last in, last out. 

That’s when Aaron turned to me, panicked face – “oh shit, we’re out of gas!”  In the mayhem getting to the ferry, we forgot to fill up. OMG. We cannot run out of gas on a ferry or in the border patrol line.  No exaggeration at all, we were on E. It gets worse.  When we finally got off the ferry, there was a line of cars snaking its way to the border gate. We would never make it. This was a trail of tears, eeking forward a car’s length every 5 minutes. It was a minimum hour wait and we had a maximum 15 minutes of fuel. 

One last time, I un-gently unpacked the dog from the back of the van to walk him.  A border agent passed and I tearfully pleaded our case.  “Well, we don’t need a broken down vehicle holding up this line.” He was so kind, really un-Dutch in his kindness and willingness to help. Within minutes, we were ushered around the line to front.  We pulled up to the border entrance window. Wait, oops. The driver is on the wrong side. Ha ha ha! I was in the passenger seat. Let me just roll down the window to hand you the passports…oh, yeah. The window-roller-downer is broken. Ha ha ha. Aaron, if you just pull up a tad, I can open the door. Oops, sorry everyone in line behind us! Here ya go, border patrol lady.  I stepped out and handed the agent our clutch of passports. “Your Visas haven’t yet been processed, so you’ll need to re-enter another time.”  Wait, what now?  We can’t come in?  We chatted. We worked it out. Kindness and understanding from her and her colleagues that I cannot understate. Sorted, as the Scottish say.  She let us through, although I’m not sure we entered 100% legally. 

Bumbling and fumbling, we crossed the finish line to begin again.  Stay left, keep the rubber side down and journey onward. Love, trust and (Gaelic) pixiedust. 

Welcome to the United Kingdom. Mixed emotions.

  Zipps invade Scotland by sea Author's note: This post was written in the summer of 2017. It's taken me nearly three years to grow the courage to post it publicly. 

[davidshawnsown]

153rd CANADA DAY COMMEMORATIVE MESSAGE - English

(The following message in honor of the 153rd Canada Day is, in compliance with the 1967 Official Languages Act, hereby presented in the two official languages of the Dominion.)

“We, therefore, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council, have thought fit to issue this, Our Royal Proclamation, and we do ordain, declare, and command that on and after the First day of July, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-seven, the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, shall form and be One Dominion, under the name of CANADA”.

Ladies and gentlemen,  to all the people of Canada, to our veterans, active servicemen and women, reservists and families of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the civil uniformed security and civil defense services of the Dominion, to all the immediate families, relatives, children and grandchildren of the deceased veterans, fallen service personnel and wounded personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the civil uniformed security and civil defense services of the Dominion, to all our workers, farmers and intellectuals, to our youth and personnel serving in youth uniformed and cadet organizations and all our athletes, coaches, judges, sports trainers and sports officials within Canada, and to all our sports fans, to all our workers of culture, music, traditional arts and the theatrical arts, radio, television, digital media and social media, cinema, heavy and light industry, agriculture, business, tourism and the press, and to all our people of the free world, especially our overseas Canadians:

In this tough and disasteous time in our history, as the whole of the country continues to fight the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, I greet the millions of people and the government of Canada as it today celebrates 153 years of nation building, which began with the taking effect on this day in 1867 of the first Constitution Act, which defined the new nation, formed from the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, as an independent, self-governing entity of the British Commonwealth of Nations with its own government institutions, laws, armed forces and public security organizations. It was the first great act that after many centuries brought forth the beginning of the great and True North, strong, free and independent, as a nation that has stood up to the challenges of the past and still stands firm in the face of current challenges and hardships. As the nation has changed over these years, having seen witness to many great moments over its long history, as it today pays tribute to the people of the healthcare profession who are currently fighting this global health crisis that has claimed the lives of many and cripped economies, culture and sports, it today celebrates with a firm determination to overcome this current crisis and to be a light of hope for millions not just within the Commonwealth but also all over the world.

Today it also pays its gratitude to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard and the civic uniformed services all over the country who in this tense and troublesome period of its history have helped support the federal and local governments of this country in the long battle against the global crisis while maintaining their commitments in defending the country, in enforcing the Constitution and her laws and protecting public safety and interests. In addition, it also extends it gratitude to the millions of people at home and abroad who have helped their neighbors and those in need during this grave time and who have given their financial, physical and moral support to the medical workers who are at the frontlines of this international health crisis.

Today it also celebrates the legacies of  the many people who through their contributions to business, social services, arts, culture, entertainment and sports  have flown with pride the Maple Leaf Flag all over the world and have introduced the world to this unique and wonderful country and her diverse people.

Built upon the legacy of the millions who lived in this land for generations, Canada today stands as a country with a stronger economy, better responsible governance and a home of the arts and culture as well as one of the best sporting powerhouses of the planet, as well as one of the world’s top tourist destinations. From such a small colonial outpost it has grown through the years as an independent nation in the midst of winds of history, having made significant contributions to the betterment and welfare of the human race. And today, it now shows the world its resolute stand against this worsening global health crisis and hopes for the better times to come for as one united people millions of Canadians, united with their government, stand as one in keeping safe and healthy in the midst of this crisis while maintaining the best that this country offers to the world.

Today, from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, as it traves the long road towards its third century of nation building, Canada celebrates today 153 years of independence and nationhood with a firm hope in her people to  overcome these uncertain times help build up a future worthy of the generations that built this nation and made it one of the best in the world.

On this very important day in Canadian history allow me to send my greetings of a Happy 153rd Canada Day to the millions of people who make Canada home, to the men and women of her military, police, fire and emergency services, to her athletes and to all who have made her name known to the world in every field of endeavor, and therefore wish all Canadians everywhere the best of this very day.

Long  live the 153rd year anniversary of the Canadian Nation! And to all the people of Canada, a very Happy Canada Day!

Vive La Canadienne! Je Me Souviens!

John Ramos

Makati City, PH

1 July 2020