Reese Can "Scream"??

Oops! Had some problems today when cleaning the apartment while Kristy was at morning practice. As part of that cleaning I mopped, so I opened our 6th floor balcony door a crack to try and let it air out a bit. When I say balcony, I mean this door basically opens to nothing but a free fall to the pavement in front of the building below.  The only thing to keep you from doing that are some bars that keep most things from falling out...most things except the bandy stick that Kristy had sitting by the door for when she wants to practice her stick handling. Yeah, it fell out, and as I grasped for it it slid completely out, and fell to the pavement below. Fortunately nobody was around, so nobody got hurt. But in a panic to run down and get the stick, I ran out the door, and locked myself out of the apartment. Reese was inside, but she still doesn't understand these complicated Swedish locks, so she was no good to me. I knew Kristy would be home soon, so I just wandered downstairs to wait for her in the lobby. Just as I was approaching the lobby, I saw her coming towards the front door. Crisis over.

And speaking of leaving Reese Bonkers alone, we got in trouble with the neighbor yesterday. We got up in the morning to go to the Stockholm Outlet, and ate at a Pizza Hut there too! Lunch buffet! Sooo good! And I don't really even like Pizza Hut. It was weird to see Pizza Hut, because really the only familiar American fast food type outlets you see anywhere are quite a few McDonald's, and a couple of Subway's here and there. There was a long line to get in, but it was so worth it in the end. Anyway, we headed home from there, and arrived to find a note had been dropped through our mail slot. It was from a neighbor telling us that Reese was "screaming" for a long time while we were gone, and it was hard for her to work, which she does from home. First thing Kristy did was figure out which neighbor it was, and then knock on their door. Turns out it was the neighbor right next door, who Kristy had met once before. 

 came out to talk to us, and was actually very nice about it. She loved Reese, and has a cat of her own. She even offered to come over and take care of Reese if we ever needed her to. We told her that we'd work on some solutions, and keep checking back with her to see how it worked. After trying a number of solutions, including putting our bed mattress in the doorway, we finally took the door off of the bedroom and put it on the kitchen, put her "house" (crate) in the kitchen, and closed the door. That seems to be our best alternative, and so far we have not heard back from the neighbor. Keeping our fingers crossed. Man, that Pizza Hut was good!

Fast forward a couple of days, and we're on a road trip to Sandviken for a pivotal game for A.I.K. It's a couple of hours by bus to get there, but not too bad. Sandviken has really nice facilities. There is a hockey rink attached to the outdoor Bandy field, and on the other side a soccer field. It should be mentioned that from what I'm able to tell, soccer is the big sport in Sweden. And most soccer (futbol) teams also have other sports teams associated them as a club. Men's and Women's Bandy is one of those associated sports. So A.I.K. is actually a professional soccer club in Solna that has a huge stadium, and then they also have the Bandy teams. There you go. And back to our blog. So, it's freezing, I don't think I mentioned that. It was around 17 degrees below zero at game time. I waited inside until the game was starting, like everyone else, and then went down and found a spot on the rail near the center of the stands. I tried to take pictures, but I was shaking so badly, and my hands were freezing when I took off my mittens. Other than freezing, it was a great game to watch, with A.I.K. winning handily 6-3. Great coaching, and great team play. Kristy scored another goal on a nice tip in front of the goal, and she also took a penalty, naughty Kristy! But A.I.K. played well against a very good Sandviken team. Their goalie, Linda Oden, was especially good, stopping two penalty shots. This is a VERY hard thing to do. Imagine someone teeing up a ball 10 or so feet in front of you, as you stand in a 12' wide by 8' high net. You're supposed to keep that ball out of the net as this person winds up and blasts a shot as hard as they possibly can. Anyway, a good win, and a happy bus trip back to Stockholm. We got back to find Reese had been given a LOT of treats by a friend who was kind enough to come let her out a couple of times while we were gone. We left the bag of treats, but no instructions on how many she was allowed to have. But half her bag was gone! I'm sure she didn't mind...until she started getting sick in the middle of the night. So sick in fact, that Kristy and I considered taking her to the Vet. She got sick at least 7 or 8 times, and was shooting soft serve out the stern. But, after she got rid of a lot, slept a little, and then had some rice, she seems to be doing much better. Poor little Bonkie!

OK, enough. Later.