Meet Mittens

Look at that face.   She’s clearly torn between being a Basement Cat and a Ceiling Cat.  But they eyes say it all… pure basement cat.  She’s refusing to eat, probably because it’s not from Burger King.

Hell On Four Paws

I was unable to announce my big news yesterday because we were just so busy with it!  We adopted a kitten who we have renamed Mittens.  She was brought into the shelter by someone from a local school who found her abandoned on November 4th.  We think she’s about twelve weeks old now.

When we brought her home she started cuddling up to Chris right away.  In that sense, she is definitely his cat.  New kittens like to hide though, especially Mittens because she’s extra shy, and she unfortunately found the spot under the bed.  The bed here is strange, it has two chunky supports that run the length of the bed on either side, leaving a narrow space running from front to back about a foot wide.  I meant to block it off before we brought her home, but I forgot.  She crawled in there and would not come out.  We thought we would leave her there until she decided to come out on her own, but it was very dusty underneath and she was having multiple sneezing fits.  It came to the point where we had to disassemble the bed, pull her out, put her in her carrier, reassemble the bed, and block off the opening.

She tore up both our necks, shoulders, and backs with her claws.  Chris trimmed them, but it didn’t seem to help.

We watched a movie with her and she was very cuddly and sweet.  But when we wanted to turn the lights out and go to bed, that’s when our hell on four paws showed up.  She screamed, sneezed, whined, wheezed, and screamed some more.  She crawled all over us and finally she curled up and slept for about an hour or two.  She then started fits again.  Around five-thirty she was at the foot of the bed again and she was clawing at it like it was her litter box.  I told her it wasn’t her litter box and she left the bed.  I moved my foot and BANG, huge wet spot.  This after the shelter assured us that she knew how to use the litter box.

We were less than thrilled to have to change the sheets and dry the mattress at 6 a.m.  Having had no sleep for myself at all, I put her in her carrier and put it in the hall for the rest of the night.  I got about three hours of sleep.

We’re letting her explore the rest of the apartment today, so far she’s just been wandering around.  We’ll see how it goes.  I would hate to have to take her back to the shelter, but if we can’t get her to learn before the end of the semester we might have to.

Prescriptions outside of the U.S..

Before I left the United States (oh how I miss thee) it seemed fairly obvious to get my prescriptions in order so I wouldn’t have to deal with the local pharmacies.  It is not that I thought (suspected or knew) that local pharmacies were terrible, I just thought it would be easier to have it all together before I left.  But with only one whole day between the wedding and us leaving the states, and hectic state of the weeks before the wedding, it didn’t really happen.  All I managed to get together was three sample packs of Yaz from my gynecologist and a prescription one of the Ross professors can rewrite that I can get filled here.

So this morning my lack of preparedness blew up in my face.  I developed an unfortunate UTI while on the Honeymoon and rather than it going away on its own like I had futilely hoped, it got worse.  So off we went to the doctor recommended by the school.  In the U.S. when I get a UTI the run a urine test and in twenty minutes I’m out of there with a prescription for an antibiotic.  Not so much here.  We spent well over an hour at the doctor waiting for them to get the results and figure out what to do with them.  I got my prescription for Cipro and in a week I should be better “down there.”

But that is not the part that blew up in the face.  I have terrible eczema so I use a 2.5% hydrocortisone mixed in with Cetaphil.  In the U.S. they mix it all together in a compound for me so all I have to do is put the lotion on.  The doctor copied the prescription directly from the bottle I brought from home, but when we took it to the pharmacy they couldn’t understand that they should mix it together for me.  I guess they don’t issue compounds in the Bahamas.  I ended up leaving with a small bottle of 2.5% hydrocortisone straight up and a $23 dollar bottle of Cetaphil.  Lord knows what I’m going to do with it.  I didn’t go to pharmacy school and I don’t know how to make a compound.  I don’t even know what they put in the lotion back home; it could be a powder for all I know!

I’m very frustrated and will be googling “How to make a compound” later.  I’m sure I won’t unearth anything helpful.  I honestly don’t understand why the pharmacy here didn’t know what to do.

The moral of the story is this:  if you’re on any prescriptions other than something very simple, fight with your doctors and local pharmacy before you leave and make sure that you have all you need for your trip before you leave.  What they gave me won’t last me the next three months and I’m dreading having to go try to get another refill before I leave.

In an unrelated story: stay tuned tomorrow for some exciting news!

Menu Planning

A huge part of my quest to be a domestic goddess is food.  I made Chris roast beef a couple days ago using my Grandmother’s recipe.  It was my first attempt at making such a big meal and I’m proud of myself for accomplishing it.  It turned out delicious and Chris said he was glad he married me.  It warmed me to the core.

I’ve now decided that roast beef was just the beginning.  We’re going grocery shopping when Chris gets out of his last meeting late this afternoon, so I sat down with the cookbook I got at my bridal shower and I came up with meals through Sunday.  I then wrote out a grocery list of what we would need for these meals that we didn’t already have in stock – wow!  I’m hoping this isn’t going turn out as expensive as it looks.  Food here on the Island is much more expensive than food in the U.S..

So here is our menu:

Tuesday: Burgers from a local joint because we won’t be getting home until late

Wednesday: Corn Chowder and fresh salad.  The soup also has potatoes in it and sounds very hearty, so I decided to pair with just a fresh lettuce salad.

Thursday: Cheesy Chicken Strips and a fresh vegetable.  I found this in the “20 minutes and under” section of the cookbook.  It’s made similar to the onion chicken I used to make in college, which I’ll probably make next week if we can find French’s Onions on the island.  I think green beans will go nicely with this.

Friday: Fettuccine Alfredo and French Bread.  I’m a sucker for Alfredo, even though I’m lactose intolerant.  I had a recipe I used to make with my father about five years ago, but it was too rich even for the strongest of stomachs.  This recipe is a little different so I’m going to give it a try.  I also found a recipe for French Bread.  Making bread used to seem daunting to me, but the recipe in the book is so straightforward that I thought I would give it a try.  It’s  lot of starch and carb in one meal, which is not ideal, but the combination sounds delicious.  Sometimes you have to choose delicious over healthy.  But only sometimes.

Saturday: DATE NIGHT!  I want to go to Pollo Tropical, but we’ll see where the tropical breezes blow us.

Sunday: Fajitas and Rice Pilaf.  I love fajitas and they’re not bad for you if you grill them.  I’m also a sucker for a good rice pilaf, so I was happy to find a recipe in the book.  With some fresh guacamole and sour cream, this meal is going to be great.

Officially a Ross wife!

I haven’t updated in a while.  I was a little busy getting married and moving out of the country, but now here I am on Grand Bahama Island where it is illegal for me to work.  I find myself with a lot of free time on my hands and figured it’s about time I get back to this blogging thing!

The whole wedding weekend was fantastic!  Now I’m a big proponent of the theory that “you only get one day, not a week, a month, or year” but we had wedding events all weekend and it turned out fantastic.  Being that we got married on January 2nd, about half of our wedding party was in town on New Year’s Eve.  We all went to Dave & Buster’s for dinner and games and I’ve never had such a good time that late at night or sitting at a bar.  The next day we spontaneously met the same people for a very casual lunch at Taco Bell, which was also great.  That evening was the Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner.  The wedding party and their dates sat at one long table, while the rest of the guests at the dinner sat at another.  We were commenting that it felt like we were at the kids table.  We ate, drank, and joked all evening.  Another fantastic day!

The next day was wedding day and it was surprisingly not filled with drama.  Something always has to go wrong on a wedding day though, and for me it was the makeup artist.  She had pneumonia and came into work anyway.  I was praying that none of us would come down with pneumonia from here!  So far we’re all still healthy, though I have developed a bit of a cough.  Aside from the fact that she was sick, she did the makeup terribly.   I understand that it should be a bit heavier for the photographs, but she really caked on the foundation.  She gave all the bridesmaid’s bright violet eyeshadow (haphazardly smeared on I might add) with army green eyeshadow!  And she knew their dresses were navy blue.  They all washed their eyes when we got back to my house and redid their eye makeup.

I had the hairdresser do my makeup because she was the one who had done it on my trial.  I should have looked at myself more closely before I left because when I got home I noticed that I had five eyelashes on each eye… that’s now much she had clumped the mascara!  It was waterproof and she had applied so many layers it was not going to budge.  I went back to the salon and asked her to remove it so I could redo it myself and she refused.  I ended up walking into Rite Aid all done up to buy eye makeup remover.  I removed all my eye makeup and redid it myself.  It came out 100% better!

After that little drama everything went smoothly, though if a bit of a blur to me now.  The profession pictures came out gorgeous and I’m just so happy.  Everyone was commenting that I was the calmest bride and nothing bothered me.  I would have to thank all the ladies on The Knot (especially those on (&)E) for telling it like it is.  I didn’t post much before the wedding, just lurked a lot, but I learned so much from other people’s posts.

So now we’re living on Grand Bahama Island while Chris is in his fourth semester.  He was here for the previous semester while I was still in Buffalo.  We will be moving to Miami for the fifth semester.

We live in an apartment complex called Sunset Lodge, which is only student housing.  The apartment is nice enough.  Chris creates such clutter though, I find it difficult to keep it as clean as I would like.  I am one of three wives at this campus and there is also once fiancée.  We all met the other day and chatted about Ross life.  It was enlightening a little bit.  I had to skip out early though because we were dropping some people off at the airport and then doing some grocery shopping.

The weather here has been suitable, though Chris says this is cold to him.  Today the high was 79 though the air was quite sticky.  It’s winter, though, and I’m sure by the time we get closer to leaving the island (at the end of April) the weather will be unbearable to me.  I absolutely hate hot weather.  It turns me into such a grouch!

That’s all for now!  I have to go start dinner for my new husband.