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"How
can they say my life is not a success?
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2007 Annual ReportDecember 31, 2007, 23:17 I guess it's time to wrap it up, I mean this year and all the madness it brought. I'm about ready to have a normal one, so that's my wish for 2008. Or maybe not, maybe I want 2008 to be spectacular, wonderful, rich and adventurous. But right now, it doesn't feel like it. It would do if things just worked, if health provided, if there was enough work, if the bills got paid at the end of each month, if banks didn't fail and cars didn't break down, if kittens weren't nearly dying and if life just got a little easier. I can deal with it all, just not all at the same time please. Still, I can't say that 2007 was not successful, it was, but somehow I was not able to enjoy the success when it came. It was always more like: "Oh, good, at least that worked out," and off to the next thing. Today I finally finished all the editing of documents for J & E. Suddenly, about 4 p.m., my work was DONE. I uploaded the last documents and breathed out. It was about 4 p.m. on new year's eve and at the moment, everyone was out of the house and I finally looked across my living room and SAW our Christmas tree - shining and sparkling, beautiful. I knew it was there, of course, I told the boys they did a good job decorating it a week ago, all that, but somehow, for the whole week, between cooking, talking to friends and working on those documents, I didn't have the 5 minutes to admire it. That's perhaps exactly how this year went - no time to reflect and that's not at all like me, so here are some cliffnotes.
July/August
I promised myself that I will not miss my opportunity and take a lot of photos when they're still little. Then three days after being home and happy, the stripy one started to have health problems. We spent the next week going back and forth to the vet, with the kitten looking as if she's going to die. It was the darkest time. I was sitting in my chair working on my laptop and the kitten was sleeping wrapped in my sweater, getting thinner every day, literally disappearing in front of our eyes. Then the doctor said that if she doesn't get OK over the weekend, we'd have to put her down. Sunday night, I broke down thinking it's over, it didn't seem to be better. But somehow, by the time we got to the vet, she was looking better and he thought she overcame the crisis. As he predicted, we came home and found a glob of dead worms that came out of her. This was clogging her system and she couldn't eat and not even drink. Once the crisis was over, we went into two weeks of nurturing her back to normal. She's still smaller than her sister, but healthy and happy. If you havent's seen the kitten photo album, check it out here: kittens. Later on, they finally got their names. The black one with white socks is Yahoo and our stripy/white survivor is Google. She does have kind of googly eyes and this was especially apparent when she was little. Now they're wonderful. Active and very very sweet. This came as a total surprise to us, because our previous cat, Ciciolina was semi-wild and often wouldn't want to be picked up or handled. These two are very affectionate. They are also less problem to Barkley, because they have each other to play with. But they're still rascals and challenge him quite often … and he's sooo kind, as usual. What an incredible dog to have! And what a shame I don't spend more time with him … walking, playing … he's so patient and undemanding, so it's easy to overlook his needs. My goal is to pay more attention to him now, that the kittens have grown up. I tried to enjoy the summer, but somehow it slipped away. I wasn't taking care of my garden as needed and definitely not as I would have liked. No flower scanning at all this year. But I did manage to take some photos of whatever bloomed in the garden in June. When not nursing our kitten, I was working on the www.canisterapie.cz website. That is besides my normal work or, more precisely, in all the times I didn't have any other work. In any case, it's about 50.000 CZK I didn't get paid for as of now. One of our therapists pulled together 5.000 CZK and that was the first time I got paid for working on canine therapy. Then now, just before Christmas, a new sponsor materialized, for 40.000 total out of which some would go toward the web work, so there is a hope. There is always hope, that's why don't dare not doing crazy things like this.
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In
July we got two beautiful kittens from a pound. They were a delayed
Birthday gift from me to Jim. I had to let him in on this one, because
most kittens are born in May and are old enough to be taken by the
end of June or beginning of July. It was not the best time for us
to get kittens, but we finally decided to just go ahead and do it.
There was no
such thing as a "good day to get kittens" and this way
we were living without a cat for 4 years since Ciciolina disappeared.
So one weekend we
picked up Ken in the Liberec bus station, drove the
animal
shelter,
very
quickly selected two kittens and
off we went.
September
We finally saw the results from our feedback forms 2 months later and it turned out people LOVED our course and were really excited about it. I sensed it at the time but had no energy to enjoy it. At the end of it, we prepared a little celebration for the new website. I had baked some gingerbread for the event and also edible gingerbread medals for all the teams that passed the tests. It was fun and we finally had a moment to just chat with the participants. There was a wonderful girl there who came for the course all the way from Moravia and had something like 10 hours of travel to get home. She appologized that she must leave early, said goodbye to us and left shortly after the ceremony, as we were all headed for the snacks. 15 minutes later I noticed she was at the door, all dressed and just stood there gazing into the room. I asked her if there is anything she forgot and she said: "No, I just had to come back, somehow I didn't want to leave." Moments like this make me realize there is something very special happening in our group and I'm not quite sure what it is, but we need to keep the momentum going and not loose it. We now have in total over 70 teams working all over the Czech Republic. |
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On
mid October we ran the fall canine therapy course in Helping
Paws and this time,
after the whole summer of preparations, it
was finally done the way we wanted. The only problem was that
we sort of forgot we have so much to teach and so many people
who
want to share their expertise. What used to be 2 days of
teaching is simply no longer enough. We ended up going from 7
a.m. (see picture of the dog training session in a field ...very
cold mornings) 'till midnight. All the things we wanted came
together, but
I came
home totally exhausted and … surprise surprise … with
a cold. 
November
To "simplify matters", in November, Jim's bank went under. For years, he happily had an account at NetBank, which turned out to be the biggest banking failure in recent history of the U.S.A. As luck may have it, just at the time NetBank's customer's accounts were about to be transfered to ING Bank, which bought them "for a kiss" as we say in Czech, Jim's debit card had to be renewed and he messed up the authorization.
He spent something like 4 hours in total mostly on hold, trying to call NetBank to solve it. All along, he was told by a machine "How important he is" to NetBank-soon-to-become-ING-Bank and how smooth this transition will be, while he's on his own dime at an international rate (800 numbers are only valid within US). So this joke itself cost us about USD 450, plus a serious depression on Jim's side. Later Jeremy told us he could have used Skype to call for free ... oops. Well, that made the later calls less frustrating, but not more successful. This B-movie-like saga continued with being lied to on and on. The "for sure" new pin number was going to be FedExed immediately, except it was sent regular mail and arrived only after the transition, when Jim's NetBank card was no longer valid.
Just checking in one day, Jim realized his account was cancelled altogether and had a zero balance, despite being assured several times, that it will not be cancelled, just transferred to the new ING Bank. It turned out it was cancelled because he dared to have both his Montana address and his Czech address associated with the account and ING Bank (get this - forced by the Patriot Act!) will no longer hold "foreign" accounts. Quite "logically", they sent a check with the balance to his US address (oh how "foreign" he is!). That is they said they processed the check, but it took another 2 and a half weeks for the check to actually leave the bank and be sent.
In the meantime, we had two payments that bounced, including Jim's December social security payment. He spent time tracking it down with the folks from the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, who turned out to be very helpful, but it may still take a while and we're not sure about the January payment. The Prague Embassy no longer deals in helping American citizens living in the Czech Republic, who need help with social security issues - downsizing perhaps? Just like a B-movie, I'm telling you.
To help us survive, our friends stepped in and lent us money and helped us during the Christmas season by bringing goodies and groceries. Jim's ex-wife Susan, with whom we're good friends, opened a new account in the US for Jim and managed to send us a debit card. She and his daughter, who lives at the Montana address and finally received the check, made sure the check was put into the new account. So I'd like to take the moment to thank all these wonderful people who helped us in time where there was no hope at all. We're still not at the end of the saga, but things are under control and thanks to the support we received, we're not going out of our minds. When Jim nearly was losing his mind, I got an order from Ken: "Feed him cookies 'till I get there." It worked :-)
December
After much negotiating, my friends and I are on our way to start a brand new organization devoted solely to animal therapies that will absorb the entire canine therapy section of Helping Paws. This is a dream come true … except it's really demanding work and I really need to be doing other things. Not the time to celebrate. Right now my biggest job and obligation in canine therapy is to make sure I don't stand in the flow of things and to finally realize all the things I was talking about for six years.
This finally feels like my own project, one where I have something to say about, where I'll be having control and several great partners I really like to work with. It also meant that there's finally a chance to get paid for all the work I do, or some of it at least. It's so positive that I don't dare to let the fears step in. It all feels right and it's not a bright-eyed beginning of something … this is a necessary transition of something that already works for 6 years, so there is a reason to believe in it.
As usual and despite the lack of finances, we've had a wonderful season of celebrations. Starting with a small turkey at Thanksgiving as a training session and straight into the Christmas season. This year, we've had the bigger crowd for Christmas and we had a big turkey. Actually it was the only turkey I could get on Friday night and it was so big we were affraid it wouldn't fit the oven. And NO, it wasn't one of those ostriches from the farmer below our house!
We've had a lot of fun with Jeremy, Karl, Ken and Liam too :-) Then Jason and Lucy came up for a couple of days and then Theo and Sylvie for the New Year's. For a New Year's Eve celebration we've had a ham "piggie" that was given to us by Iva (who has secret connections with butchers) ... it was waiting in the freezer until the right moment to be glazed and baked with pineapple and look glorious.
For Christmas I got new magenta and orange scarf from Jim's ex-wife Susan who's a designer and knits using wonderfuly textured yarns. This addition to my collection of Susan's scarfs surprised me with the daring colors. It's really beautiful, but I never owned anything in pink or magenta. It always felt too feminine for a tomboy like me. Theo and Sylvie also gave me an umbrella and very nice blue-green colored tights ... because they know I love blue. I think it's time for me to become daring, colorful and elegant. Maybe I'll even get my long black coat dry cleaned and get out of my same-down-jacket-for-every-occassion mode.
Susan's package of gifts also included a big cookbook "65 years of Gourmet magazine". I'm enjoying both! With Jim, we don't give each other gifts, but I "broke the rule" and gave Jim 4 cans of corned beef I finally found in Marks & Spencer in Prague. Susan and I are not sure whether our love for gourmet cooking isn't wasted on a man who gets his kick from corned beef :-)
 Christmas dinner with me the cook, Liam, Ken, Jimbo, Karl and Jeremy behind the camera |
 New Year's Piggie in its first stage |
Happy 2008
One evening this Christmas we all took a walk in our neighborhood and I slowed down to allow Barkley to sniff around in the woods. All the guys went ahead and laughed as they played a silly innocent word game. Word games are always popular among writers and artists, because they support free associations and are fun, but this one was going on for something like 12 hours. Everyone said they can't believe they're still playing it, but then they went on and on.
I stood there in the crispy pristine white snow, listened to the group laughing, watched beautiful moon as it shone on the very quiet landscape of these mountains, saw Barkley rolling in the snow and sniffing in the bushes. Then I joined them and we walked over to the now mostly frozen waterfall. On the way back, Jeremy took this picture of Jim and I. Note my new wonderful handmade scarf from Jim's ex-wife Susan.
All along, I thought ... now THIS is special. I have been blessed with friends who are having fun without being drunk like most Czechs this evening, they love each other, they support each other and even when shit continues hitting the fan like it was this year, they're there for me. THAT is special. Life seems to be a lot like that silly word game, nobody quite knows why we're still playing except that it's too much fun to stop, so it goes on and on.
Happy, healthy and successful 2008!
Your Michaela
