The Tick and Lisbon

Well I think I will abridge my versions of dogsitting and trip to Lisbon, because it was like 2 weeks ago now and the trips with Aimee and Chris were much much cooler and more exciting things happened.

I went out to Dardagny to dogsit for Dave and Lisa for 5 days while they were in Greece. They have an adorable chocolate lab named Java. Dardagny is only about 25 minutes drive from Geneva but is literally in the middle of nowhere. You might recognize it as "The Shire" because its all valleys and vales and probably hobbits somewhere. There are also a ton of winemakers and vineyards there which is super cool. The week got off to a great start - we went for a long walk outside and explored some trails and streams, played with his ball, and made a nice dinner and watched Shrek 2 (I LOVE this movie!). Monday I walked him before work and came home around 6, at which time we went for a long walk in the vineyards. Tuesday I was a little late coming home and took him for a walk before even entering the house. After a 45 minute walk, wherein we were caught in a massive downpour, we came home and I noticed the house smelled kind of bad. I peeked around the corner up the staircase and saw at first what I thought was pee. But I realized, it was not pee. It was dia. And it was all over the tile staircase. My face scrunched up with each stair I ascended as I realized that the damage was not limited to one area of the house. There were two other large dia piles and then, as a crescendo, a pile of vomit. Not having a dog, I had no clue what this was, if this was revenge because I came home a little late, or he missed mom and dad, or what. But for the next hour, I cleaned and tried not to vomit. Dave and Lisa happened to call around 9 and said that he was probably just extremely stressed because it had thunderstormed that day.

So I went to bed around 1 and at 2:30 woke up to Java sitting up very alert. I sensed something was off and asked him if he needed to go outside. He answered me by vomiting. Ugh. But I felt really really bad, because I may have been tired, but I wasn't the one who was sick. We went out like 5 more times that evening/morning and I decided to stay home from work rather than risk coming home to a house that looked like a set from Double Dare. Around our lunchtime walk, Java didn't follow me upstairs like he usually did. I called him, but nothing. So I went downstairs where he was laying on the floor, looking sullen. "What's wrong?" I asked. Java kind of rolled over on his side and lifted up his arm, where I saw something that looked like a skin tag. I knelt down for a closer look and realized that skin tags don't have legs. It was a tick. Dave had warned me, with a cautionary "you need to pull the suckers out by the head, but don't worry, you won't have to deal with that."

I looked around for some kind of special tick removal apparatus and found nothing. So I grabbed my eyebrow tweezers and asked Java to lay still. I absolutely hate bugs. HATE. Cringing, I squeezed as close as I could to Java's skin and pulled slowly. After about 5 seconds, the little bugger let go and I dropped him into a plastic bag (per mom and dad's instructions, if I found any ticks I needed to keep them so they could check with the vet if they were diseased). Java and I looked at each other, then the bag, then each other again. Suddenly, Java's tail began to wag like crazy, and he jumped up and put his paws on me like a hug and started licking me like crazy. We did it!! After I cleaned him up and put the tick in 2 more plastic bags and a jar, I did some research and found out that the tick I grabbed was like 5 times a normal sized one. Not sure what that means, but I found another one later just on the fur which I easily removed, and he was tiny. Let me just say that had I found the big one later, knowing how SICKASS those things were at that point, I'm not sure if I would have been able to pull it out without puking or crying. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I am definitely ready to have a dog of my own or be a parent after that, although not for a while.

After Javapalooza, I headed to Lisbon for the weekend with my friend Ingvill, her twin sister and 4 of their friends, all from Norway. I learned quite a bit about Norway and the different dialects over the weekend! Lisbon is a cool city, very old but pretty clean, and not too busy. We did not do that much sightseeing because we spent most of the weekend shopping. We did go to one castle and on Sunday while waiting for our flight, Ingvill and I took one of those cheesy bus tours. Actually it was pretty good. Unfortunately it was REALLY windy and we were freezing on the roof driving at like 60 kph with the wind whipping us. Lisbon is super cheap which was also nice - dinner each night including a drink and a coffee, was usually around 20 euro a person (that would be like 50 francs or more in Geneva, 20 Euros is probably around 38 CHF). My favorite thing was that all of the old buildings had tiles on the facades instead of paint. The tiles are all patterned in blues and yellows and greens and really pretty.