Dog Hunt

This was supposed to be Sunday's post. Wrote it last night in a Word document since I couldn't log into our silly account here (the web browser was overloaded). So, now I'm cutting and pasting it here. Enjoy.


Like I said in a previous post, we are in a temporary living facility. We are so happy to have a place to stay. But, in the same breath, I don’t think we’ll spend too many sleepless nights missing this place. The rooms are situated in such a way that two rooms can be made into one for larger families by opening a door in our living room. I think this was a stroke of brilliance on the hotel’s part. But, they forgot one important detail…they didn’t insulate the door. And then, to ensure that neighbors became great friends…they put the dog kennels in each room right by the doors. We set our kennel on the porch and, wouldn’t you know it, that was the only practical place for the pack-n-play for Weslee.

Our neighbor has two Jack Russell Terriers that sound like the meanest dogs alive outside, and do nothing but howl the rest of the day. I guess you could say that when it comes to dogs, I’m like the Grinch. My heart is three times too small. Personally, I’d like to duct tape their little yappers shut!

This sentiment mostly springs from the fact that Weslee has had the hardest time adjusting to the new time change of all of us. For the last week, no matter how long we keep him up without a nap, he has fallen asleep at 7 or 8pm only to wake up exhausted, cranky, but WIDE AWAKE at midnight. He doesn’t fall asleep again until 3 am! Trying to get him to nap in the middle of the day is usually a challenge because he’s right next to the thin door with Crazy dog 1 and Crazy dog 2 howling an earsplitting tune. Ok…it’s not a challenge. It’s next to impossible!!! There have been several times over the last week that I’ve had “less than nice” thoughts about those dogs.

But, today has been better. Kevin cleverly discovered the fan over the “cooker”. It’s loud enough to kind of drown out the chorus of howls. Plus, we got a little smarter with our schedule today. We woke up early and woke Weslee up too…after only 6 hours of sleep. We got out and about. We got him out in the cool air and took him to the play zone at the community center to burn energy and watch the other kids. We took him, mainly, to help him forget that he was tired…and it WORKED! He stayed awake until after a late lunch and crashed for nearly 2 hours, even though the dogs must have been singing Handel’s Messiah during that time, it was so noisy! (Though, to be completely fair to the dogs, they ARE quiet at night. Thank goodness!)

After he woke up, we all got ready again and headed outdoors. We went to the community center again to have fun at the play zone. It really is such an awesome place for the kids. It’s a huge room of padded jungle gym…slides, climbing toys, all with 0-8 year olds in mind. Today it was a mad-house with over 50 kids packed into the room! I’ll post some pics when I have a better, and less frustrating connection.

(As an aside: Our internet goes off and on without warning here, as if some maniac is sitting someplace with a wireless router, turning it off and on, and chuckling to himself at the havoc he must be creating in the hotel rooms. The connection is so unpredictable that we wonder why there’s internet at all. Sometimes we’ll type in a web address and leave for a while. Sometimes, after 30 minutes of reading a book or cooking, we’ll hear the tell-tale “bing” sound that means our request has finally been processed. A little typing, and 15 minutes later, we can move on again. And, this process continues during the “slow” moments until our internet decides to be faster. Sometimes we have to hit the Refresh button a million times to get anything to show up at all. Kevin jokes that our internet has two speeds…slow and really slow. I would argue that there are 3. Slow, really slow, and non existent.)

We ended the evening walking around the entire base. We had meant to leave base, but found that all of the close gates were closed. There are some that are a mile or two away…but it’s still a little chilly out, though it feels so much more pleasant today than it has the previous week. So, now we know where everything is, and how to get there. Tomorrow, we will venture outside of our little military “cage” and see the British world.

Oh, and for those of you wondering why we didn’t attend church today, I can promise you it wasn’t from lack of trying. We have contacted the bishop of the Thetford ward (25 minutes away) quite a few times, left messages, the works. I’m guessing he’s out of town and his counselors don’t check the messages on his line. No one ever called us. We checked on bus schedules to get us from Mildenhall to Thetford. There are virtually no buses that run on Sundays. Sundays are still taken pretty seriously out here in the English countryside. EVERYONE goes to their parish to worship. We knew when church was, the address…everything. We just couldn’t find a way to get there. So, wish us luck for next week. Until we get a car and an English driver’s permit, we’re pretty much at the mercy of the public transport system and the few people we know.