s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

We have apparently been awarded the import certificate for the cats. (Chris called the local MAF office in Wellington and found that the form had been sent last Thursday.) This means it is time for me to get going! Tomorrow they go to the vet for their second blood draw for the final rabies titer test. I have to also find some kittie poop to bring along for parasite checks. (Yum!)

If all goes according to plan the cats should be getting on a plane by June 15th or so. It will be nice to be past that last major expense/complication/hurdle to the moving process!

Meanwhile we continue to have a wonderful New Englad Spring. Over the last month we have had about 3 sunny days. All the rest have been 55 F (12C), cloudy, and often raining. I fully expect that we will have no spring, shifting directly into punishing summer weather- 95 F (35C) with high humidity. After the terrible winter I fully expect an equally terrible summer. I am glad I have not sold my air conditioners yet!

Dancing.
Monday was my second class with Beverley, who I am really coming to adore. We did a quick review of the stuff they learned in the previous classes this term, and something like 70% was brand spanking new to me. I wished I could have somehow instantly recorded it all for playback to the Dancing Ladies back in Boston. Then we did a whirlwind tour of Trance in Africa and the Middle East that left my head spinning quite literally.

My head is still spinning tonight, but that’s largely an after-effect of the other dance I’m doing, which is getting our stuff cleared through MAF and Customs and, it turns out, the Police. I was preparing for a Police interview in any case, since some of the pieces in my knife collection are technically prohibited for import. If you are curious, they are: two knives with double-edged blades under 10 cm in length (“suitable for throwing or stabbing” — as opposed to spreading peanut butter with, one supposes), two bayonets, and a gloriously gaudy Moroccan cane which just happens to have a pig-sticker inside, qualifying it as a “sword-stick”. Me and my damned acquisitiveness.

So I set those aside, and have been moseying my way toward getting a permit for Stephen to ship them to me. The hitch is that Customs wants me to get a permit *now*, for the rest of them that are due in probably tomorrow. So I have hurriedly written up an “application” — which is to say, a letter saying “Please, I’m a folklorist and a hopelass pack rat, please don’t take my pretty shinies away!” — scraped up what photos I happened to have on disk documenting both the knives and the fact that I’m a hopeless pack rat (they suggested that if I sent more photos of the other junk I collect, it would help establish that I’m a bona fide collector. If they only knew). And I hope that the Police will call me in soon for my I’m-not-a-dangerous-criminal-no-really interview, after which they will hopefully tell Customs to let me have my stuff, so that Customs can then tell MAF to let me have my stuff, so that MAF can tell the shipper to give my stuff to the movers who will bring my stuff up to C&N’s place, where MAF will inspect all the potentially bio-hazardous stuff (the bicycles might have black widows living in them), and finally let me have my STUFF, so that I am no longer surviving on what I managed to cram into two suitcases.

Gawd, I am such a materialist. Stephen, meanwhile, is apparently becoming quite adjusted and comfortable living the Zen Spartan lifestyle, and is busily dreaming up ways to convince me to part with MY HARD-WON STUFF. (Insert crazed, “My Prrrrrecious” cooing here.)

And since I am (with luck) supposed to be doing the unpack-and-display-for-MAF dance on Friday, I’ve been working late the rest of this week to make up the time, since I haven’t accumulated any vacation yet.

Sooo tiiiired.