Schlemiel

noun, Slang.

1.

an awkward and unlucky person for whom things never turn out right.

It has been awhile since my last post because I have been a bit busy (overwhelmed is more like it) and I was beginning to feel like Guam had turned me into a schlemiel. It just seemed like so many thing were going wrong and I couldn't catch a break. 

You have already read about the two pit bulls attacking Bubbles and the wounds she sustained. I also had difficulty getting out of the lease (horrible landlord wouldn't let me out of the lease unless I gave up my security deposit). Then I had to put Bubbles back in the pet lodge because the place I had to move into for a month didn't take dogs over 25 pounds. So for that month I made daily trips  to take both dogs for a walk and also give Bubbles her medicine and change her bandages. I was really enjoying living at Ladera - that part was nice (minus the few cockroaches that made an appearance). Then the air conditioning decided to die in my "new" vehicle. I am still waiting for the part to show up from the mainland so that it can be fixed. It is definitely not fun driving without air conditioning when the temperature is consistently 85ish and the humidity is usually 80%-ish.

When the end of my month at Ladera was approaching, I had to schedule a move in inspection for the house on base and also a move out inspection for my apartment at Ladera. Both were scheduled for Friday and I was planning to move some items to the house on Friday and then have friends help me move the remainder of my things on Saturday. Enter Typhoon Dolphin! 

I witnessed my first typhoon (Typhoon Dolphin) on May 16th from the sliding glass doors of my tenth floor apartment at Ladera Tower. It was ...interesting. I must say Ladera was probably one of the best places on the island to be during the storm. Yes, there were high winds and a ton of rain that I got to see through the glass doors. But I literally lost power for about 30 seconds and then the backup generators kicked on and we didn't lose power again. My friends on the base went about 15-18 hours without power. It doesn't sound bad until you realize how sweltering a place can be without air conditioning and you can't exactly open the windows with a typhoon going on outside. So I survived the storm with no problem at all.

Unfortunately the typhoon's appearance meant that my inspections on Friday were canceled and had to be moved to Monday. I still planned to move out on Saturday though. When we finally got the all clear Saturday morning (roads were mostly okay to drive on and the worst of the storm had passed), I started loading up my car. Turns out Ladera was still on backup generators which meant the elevators were out. (Reminder - I was on the tenth floor!)

I made about four trips bringing things downstairs to my car and then drove over to the base to move the items into the house. I wanted to see how the roads were before seeing if friends were available to help. When I got back to Ladera, I started loading my car again and my friend Amy (who had just moved into Ladera) helped me take things downstairs. At one point we saw workers by the elevators who told us they were planning to have them fixed in thirty minutes. (HA!) We waited a bit and I made a couple more trips down but by 2pm, I gave up waiting for the elevators. A couple friends (Thank you Amy, Emilee, and Alicia) were able to come and help me move the rest of my stuff out of the apartment...thankfully they were willing to do the stairs!! That was a very long and tiring day!! (BTW - the elevators were not fixed until the next day)

Monday morning came and my move in inspection went well. Then I was waiting for my household goods (all our furniture) to be delivered - I was told it would be sometime between 10am and noon. The truck showed up at noon but they were missing part of their crew, so they didn't start unloading the truck until 1pm. Everything was going fine but we had quite a bit and it is an all day job. The men thought they were done around 8:30pm because the truck was unloaded but part of their job is also to put together furniture that was taken apart. My couch wasn't put together, my lazyboy wasn't put together, my TV was still in a box and our desks were in pieces.

The men were good with staying to finish the job but ran into roadblocks. Both of our computer desks were missing pieces that prevented them from being put together. I have no idea what the packers in San Diego did with the pieces but I have yet to find them. I also have a small table I got from my Grandmother that the packers took apart (totally unnecessary)...half the table was packed in the same box as our TV.  Why would you pack part of a table in one box and then pack the rest elsewhere.....or worse toss the rest of it?! I have yet to find the rest of that table. Very frustrating!

So after working on the house for about five days, I had unpacked all the boxes inside the house. There are about five big boxes in the garage that still need to be unpacked, but I have left those for Carlton! I would hate for him to come to his new home with nothing to do!! In addition to these difficulties, Bubbles decided that she was partially housebroken. To date she has had four accidents in the house now. Two of them were about twenty minutes after I had just taken the dogs outside! Not sure what that is all about but I am being more watchful (paranoid) and making sure to take them out as soon as I get home from errands and such.

Needless to say it has been a very eventful and busy couple of weeks!! I am still getting the house organized but I definitely got a lot done in the past week. We should be ready for visitors soon!

So I don't know whether or not Guam has turned me into a schlemiel or not. I will let you decide that. I have definitely had my challenges and I hope to have more fun to report to you soon!

Attack!

This past week has not been a good one. As you know, we had chosen a house in town to move into on April 1st. I had moved our stuff from the hotel in the morning and then went to pick up Bubbles from the kennel so that she had some time to check out the house before the movers came. We had movers bring some temporary furniture (couch, floor lamps, coffee table, dresser, etc.) and another set of movers brought out our unaccompanied baggage. Everything went great and I had started to unpack items that afternoon.

Around 5 I realized that it had been awhile since Bubbles had been out, so I took her to the front yard on her leash. For those of you who do not know Bubbles, she has a tendency to eat things that aren't necessarily food and I hadn't had a chance to inspect the yard, so I wanted to make sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn't. Sure enough there was a chicken egg in the yard that she was very interested in but I pulled her away before she could eat it. The neighbor's dogs were in their yard and at the fence separating our two yards; of course Bubbles wanted to go to the fence to sniff and say hi. We slowly walked to the fence; I didn't want her to lunge at them. As soon as we got to the fence, the dogs (two pit bulls) started barking at Bubbles and pushing at the fence. The crawled under the fence and began attacking Bubbles!!

I fell to the ground trying to protect Bubbles from the dogs and keep them off of her but I couldn't get them off. I was screaming for help and kept trying to protect her from the dogs. After about a minute the owner of the dogs came out but she's about 5 feet tall and there was no way she was going to be able to pull the dogs off, especially since they didn't have collars to grab. I kept prying their jaws off Bubbles but every time I got one off her they just bit her in another spot.

Two other neighbors came, one with a shovel and one with a rake, and they began beating the dogs to get them to stop. I don't know how long this went on but it felt like several minutes...it was probably less than five minutes. They finally got the dogs back to their yard and tied up with rope so they couldn't get loose again.

Poor Bubbles had several bites and puncture wounds, especially on her back. She could have been hurt much worse, they could have easily killed her, but she was definitely injured. The owner came back and was apologizing profusely while the other neighbor gave me directions to a nearby vet where I could take her to get checked out.

So it turns out that Guam does not have any emergency vet facilities on the island. I happened to get lucky and go to a vet that was open until 8pm (at this point it was almost 6pm and most vets are already closed). I did have to wait about an hour because the vet had other appointments that she was scheduled for already but she got in to see us and do a consultation. Bubbles ended up staying at the vet for two nights. She had to go on two types of IV antibiotics because the dogs here have a lot of germs in their mouths and bite wounds can become infected easily. They had to clean her up and clip her hair in a few areas to get a better look at the wounds.

This is the worst of the wounds right after the attack.

After getting Bubbles taken care of, the vet recommended I take myself to the emergency room to get my wounds looked at. Not that my wounds were serious, I had several scratches on my arms and legs and then a couple open wounds on my fingers from prying the dogs' jaws open. Luckily the wounds were all superficial, so I just had to clean them up with some antiseptic soap and put some antibiotic cream on them...no stitches needed.

Needless to say, I was very upset about the whole ordeal and did not want to go back to the house. I contacted my Realtor and told him about the attack. I also contacted Navy Housing so they would know about the attack as well. The landlord came to the house the next evening to apologize for the attack happening and said she would get the fence fixed and everything would be good (She's a Chinese woman and her English is a little broken). I told her that I did not want to stay at the house - I do not feel safe at the house and do not feel that it is safe for my dogs. I still had our other dog Edge coming onto the island and I didn't want a similar incident with him. The landlord didn't seem to want to hear what I was saying, she kept saying that once the fence was fixed, everything would be fine. (The fence is simply a chain link fence with no reinforcement on the bottom, so it was easy for the dogs to push at the bottom and crawl under. I have placed bricks at the base of the fence now to plug up any holes, but it is really just a temporary fix, the fence should be replaced with something much sturdier.)

After she left, I spoke to the owner of the two dogs, the husband, and he was also very apologetic. His dogs had never attacked another dog before, so he had no idea what prompted it. He also mentioned that he and his wife had just moved into their house about 2-3 months ago and before he moved in, he had asked the landlord (same woman, she owns both houses) to fix the fence. So now it's been 2-3 months that she has known the fence was an issue and it still hasn't been fixed or replaced!! That just made me even more convinced that I do not want to stay in the house.

Friday I spoke with Navy Housing again and found out that I have to get the landlord to sign a letter of release stating that she will release me from the lease on the house. My Realtor came to the house and took the letter of release to pass on to the leasing agent who works directly with the landlord. That evening I spoke with the leasing agent and he said he was having a hard time convincing her to let me out of the lease. Apparently she was very concerned about losing the money because she would have to give us back our deposit. Nice, huh? I reiterated my stance and stated that I absolutely did not feel safe in the house with my dog and did not want to stay there. I want to get out of the house as soon as I can. Later that evening he called me to let me know that he had convinced the landlord to sign the letter and he would email it to me once he received it.

The problem is that the landlord was scheduled to leave Guam on Sunday morning to go to Taiwan until April 18th. I was afraid she wouldn't sign it before leaving.....and apparently she didn't because it is now Monday morning here and I still haven't received the letter. I am really worried that she will try to screw me over by not signing the letter at all or by waiting to sign the letter. In the meantime, I found an apartment complex that allows dogs and does month to month leases for military families. The problem is that I cannot sign up for the apartment until I have that signed letter. Also, the apartment won't be available for about 1.5 weeks, so I will have to stay at the house until then....provided I get the letter.

So for the past few days I have been very stressed to say the least. I picked up Bubbles from the vet on Friday and she seems to be doing okay although she did not want to get out of the car when we got to the house. I can back into the carport so that she is completely hidden from the neighbor's yard and we can get into the house without the dogs seeing her. Now every time I take her outside, we have to go on the other side of the house, so she is out of view of the dogs. Poor thing is definitely more skittish now...the chickens in the yard startle her.

Bubbles is on two different antibiotics now and pain medication. The puncture wound in her back is the worst wound and has to be covered with gauze that has antimicrobial medicine on it and that has to be covered by an adhesive bandage which has to be changed every day. The neighbor who owns the dogs did pay the vet bill, so I am glad that I didn't have to fight about that at least. They have been very nice which is good. Here are pics of Bubbles now:

This is on her chest area.

This is on her side where she just had some bruising



Showing her bandage that she has to wear.



The puncture wound without the bandage.



As of now, I am still trying to get the letter of release so that I can make arrangements to get out of the house. In the meantime, Bubbles and I are trying to stay occupied and distracted. Yesterday she pushed the vertical blinds aside to look out the sliding glass door and saw the dogs in the neighbor's yard. She kinda growled and then came to where I was sitting....she was shaking! Poor thing definitely has PTSD. Hopefully the landlord signs the letter very soon and I will not have to worry about it anymore...keep your fingers crossed for us.





Housing

Searching for housing has been interesting. We definitely learned quite a bit about housing here on Guam and there are many things you need to look for that you wouldn't necessarily think about in the states. There are also many things that houses here do not have that many houses in the states do have...for instance, it was difficult to find a house that has a garage.

Most houses here have carports because it is too expensive to build a garage. Also, most of the bathrooms have pedestal sinks instead of having a cabinet underneath or an actual counter top around the sink so there's space to place items (I am not bitter about this by the way). Another item that was commonly missing (that we really wanted) was a fenced yard. We didn't need the whole yard fenced necessarily but at least the back yard or a portion of the yard so the dogs could have access. This is one major reason we looked at housing off the base. None of the houses on the base have fenced yards. Apparently, many houses in town do not have fenced yards either!

On another note, one thing that a house really needs is typhoon shutters on all the windows and any glass doors! So there are two different types...you can either have the ones with flat panels that are a few inches wide. They have to be placed one at a time in a frame around each window and door, so they are time consuming to put up. The other type is an accordion shutter - they fold up on either side of the window or door when open and then you can just pull them closed and lock them to get ready for a typhoon. The accordion type are much easier to work with (provided they haven't rusted shut).

So with all this in mind, not to mention other details like looking for a place that is fairly close to the base and liking the other aspects of the house, these are most of the houses we looked at over the span of four days.

So after looking at many houses, we finally realized what the options for housing were on the island. The first day we went out, I think we both had the mindset of looking at houses in the states. By the time a week had gone by (and we had seen a couple houses on base) we had a better idea of what we could find. Ironically we ended up renting the very first house our Realtor showed us! So this is our house for the first year at least...we signed a year lease and we will see how it goes! It's a three bedroom two and a half bathroom house with a balcony off the master bedroom that looks over the front of the house. Here are some pics of the house: