Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Settling in to SoCal....

Ruth and I moved to Loma Linda, California, on June 28th, 2013. In the months leading up to the move we had so much going on that I just relied on my Facebook page for updates to friends and family. Now that we're more settled, I thought I'd post a blog update to let everyone know what's going on.

Most of you may already know that the main motivator for our move was to be closer to Ruth's parents so we can help her sister take care of them. They're both getting up there and they have a lovely large house and garden that require a good amount of labor to keep up with. They have strawberries, lemons, limes, tomatoes, etc. Since moving out we have tried to spend at least a couple of days with them—one of those days centered around a master "to do" list to take care of things around the house and yard.  Ruth's sister (and mother!) is a great cook so we get spoiled by the wonderful food she prepares when we come out. We are certainly enjoying our time with family.

The move was not a decision that we took lightly. I spent most of last year trying to secure funding so that I wouldn't be fired from my position in Cleveland and, if she so desired, Ruth could quit her job, come out to SoCal and help her folks while giving her sister a break. That didn't work out. With Federal funding for science in the gutter these days, I haven't been able to secure any substantial funding that would provide us with the security to allow Ruth to quit her job. Luckily, I was offered a position here in Loma Linda and that made the decision to move easier. Still, we had built a lovely life in Cleveland so it was difficult to leave our adopted home town.

The move did NOT go as smoothly as we would have liked. The movers were delayed so that created an insurmountable time crunch domino train for our contractors that delayed plaster repair, painting, floor refinishing, etc. so that the house didn't even get on the market until a couple of weeks ago—very late in the real estate season for Cleveland. Compounding that issue, our solar panels confuse mid-westerners. One realtor toured the place with a family that didn't understand the "solar gadget" in the backyard.  Naturally this is frustrating to Ruth and me. We did the best we could to modify the house to make it more self-sustaining (minimizing water and power bills) and resilient to the power fluctuations that occur in that part of the country. The general ignorance of alternative energy in Cleveland was frustrating from the beginning but it's even more troubling when you consider the media attention given to global warming now. Catch up people.

Originally our intention was to have a leisurely trip west so that we could stop and visit family/friends whom we haven't seen in quite some time. With the delay from the movers we ended up trapped in an incredibly constricted time window that had us leaving Cleveland at 6pm, Wed the 26th of June and arriving in Loma Linda at midnight on Fri the 28th. Ruth and I are really good at long-distance driving (we've driven all up and down the east coast and from Maryland to St. Louis in heroic trips). My brother and I even drove from St. Louis, MO to Sacramento, CA in 36 hours (southern route people!). So I have experienced crazy drives throughout my life. This time we bit off a bit much.

The impetus for the crazy road trip was my overwhelming desire to fulfill my word to my new employer. I said that I would be on-site on July 1st and that was what I was going to do. In retrospect, I should have just said, "Look, we've been delayed due to mover screw-ups and I'm going to be a week later than I expected." Now, I know, that probably would have been fine. At the time I didn't realize that. Compounding this issue, Ruth had put in for a week of leave for our trip and, by the time the movers had arrived and packed us up, that week was almost over. So both Ruth and I were motivated to get back on the clock.

An added "bonus" feature for the trip was our desire to take Mauve-the-dog and Crazy-cat with us in the Subaru. We have only had Mauve since we adopted her in Dec, 2012 and Crazy is not a happy car traveler. We had taken Mauve on a few short-distance trips and they seemed to really stress her out. Not so good. Adding to the fun, the cat hates the dog and the dog cannot resist the chance to come stare closely at the cat (enraging the cat of course!). Naturally, hilarity ensues (oh SO untrue). We tried to mitigate some of the madness. In the last few hours before leaving Cleveland, we were cleaning like mad, doing some spot painting, sweeping up the detritus to make way for the professionals AND we decided to drug the cat in preparation for a late road-trip.

Acepromazine was once used as an anti-psychotic in humans but it didn't work so well. Now, veterinarians use it to sedate nervous animals. We decided to try sedating Crazy-cat with Ace. Unfortunately, I don't think we got enough into her system. Ruth has far less experience handling animals than I do so her first attempt made for an angry kitty with ACE smeared all over her lips and fur. I got into the narrow closet that the cat had hidden in and dosed her with what (we thought!) should be enough to relax the big girl. We put a little mylar-covered insulation panel in front of the door to keep Mauve-the-dog from bothering Crazy while she mellowed out and went about our business. About 30 minutes later, Mauve and I were happily sweeping up the room that the cat-containing-closet opened on when we heard the most horrendous yowls coming from said closet. Mauve, brave girl that she is, decided to go investigate. Oh bad idea. The cat, with pink-frothed mouth, crawled over the insulation panel and, bobbing like a drunk, went after Mauve. Mauve, wisely now, decided to retreat while barking (I presume she was shouting the canine equivalent of "Help, a mad cat is attacking me!"). I went after Mauve too, to pick her up and get her clear of the very angry Crazy-cat. We beat a hasty retreat and closed the door to the room with a slam like a couple of poor, frightened living in the Walking Dead!

Ruth, meanwhile, heard the commotion and came to see what we had gotten into. Wide-eyed Mauve and equally wide-eyed Chris tried to explain the situation. Ruth decided to herd the cat back into the closet—successfully—but  she too concluded that the cat was a hazardous element now. Rather than sedating the cat, we had turned her into a psychotic-aggressive-shred-biomachine. Ugh. At this point, we finished up cleaning and started to load the car for the trip. We decided to put Mauve up in the front seat on her bed and Crazy would be in the back of the car inside Mauve's crate (which is rarely used by Mauve). This meant that one-half of the back seat was folded down with the cat-containing crate next to the remaining passenger seat. I was in the seat covered with backpacks, laptop bags, pillows, and all sort of other things that made me immobile. We had put a blanket and some plastic bags between the crate and my arm. Ruth was driving the first leg.

We started heading west at 6pm and very shortly the chorus of howls from the cat began. Mauve-the-dog was trying to lunge over the front seat while barking, the cat looked like an angry, incoherent stoner, and Ruth and I were just trying to keep them from attacking each other! Eventually, they both calmed down. Crazy-cat would transition from stupor to mania and, during these manic periods, she'd shred the bags and pull aside the blanket that was separating me from the cage and start shredding my arm. Usually this would happen about the time that I was dozing off. This went on through the night.

By the time we stopped to switch over, the cat had (mostly) mellowed out. We had breakfast in Iowa and then drove through to Golden, CO to spend the evening at Ruth's sister's place, catch up with our nephew, and enjoy dinner with our good friend Nathan, who had left Cleveland just two months before us. Nathan is a talented engineer who is now working for a wonderful software company in Colorado Springs. He kindly drove up and met us for dinner at Sherpa House but had to drive back home to work the next day. I went to see World War Z (meh—I'm not a big zombie fan like my brother) with our nephew while Ruth crashed out at her sister's house. We got up early the next day, packed up the animals, and boogied.

We only had a 14 hour drive to Loma Linda and we both love the landscape of the west so we took a few breaks for pictures (check the Facebook page folks!). The only remaining hitch in the giddy up was that we needed to stop at Ruth's folks' house to pick up an AeroBed since our furniture was on the moving truck (left far behind us). By the time we got to their house, it was around 11:30pm and we had to double back to our new rental place. Not our easiest drive but certainly not the worst long-distance drive I've ever been on. Remind me some time and I'll tell you the story of the hail-ridden trip from St. Louis to Sacramento that Bran and I did in 36 hours! Phew, that was a crazy one....

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