Tram Police and the Darcy Miracle

Many of you have been asking me what on earth we did with our darling dog while we went romping off into the wild unknowns just a month after we got her out of quarantine. Well, due to that exact reason, a kennel was out of the picture, because that probably would have constituted as some kind of cruel and unusual punishment (haha, Darcy, just kidding that you're free! You've been a little too rambunctious and you're starting to smell so you're going back into a kennel for a little longer!). Poor thing. So we did some research (as in ask the old women at the park who I hang out with if they know anyone. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I spend a good amount of my days hanging out with 60-year-old women and their dogs at the park. They love us there.) and found a woman who keeps dogs in her house, kind of like a part of the family... but of course it comes with a price. A hefty price tag of AUD$300 for the whole week. But we were willing to suck it up, because it had to be done, right?

Now, in order to truly appreciate the extent of this miracle, I need to pause the Darcy saga to relate another little episode. The Tuesday night before our trip on Thursday, Will and I met some friends downtown for dinner (another conquest of Kim Fest! they probably didn't know that, though :-)). We had a good time, said goodbye, and caught the tram to go home. Now I should explain how trams work here. You have a ticket that you are supposed to validate every time you ride the tram, but it's on the honor system so people don't always validate it every time. Unfortunately Will and I chose that exact night to be deviants because, honestly, we weren't going that far and we didn't really want to think about it. Big mistake. Enter tram police who gruffly come up to you and ask to see your validated ticket. Ummm... cue groveling and claiming to be tourists (didn't even melt their hearts of stone), so we got dragged off the tram and dealt a hefty fine. And I do mean hefty. AUD $167... a person. So for a married couple that's a whopping $334 whereas it would normally be half that (no one even talk to me about DINK. It's a myth).

So you can imagine how we may have felt a little defeated at the end of that. We're about to embark on an elaborate vacation to Indonesia, plus shell out a significant amount of money for Darcy, plus I have a dinky job with no paid leave, plus yadda yadda yadda. That was kind of just the last unexpected straw, but what are you going to do about it?

So the next morning I put on the best face I could and left to take Darcy to visit the lady she would be staying with. As I was walking out of the apartment building a woman stops me and asks, "Did you bring her through quarantine?" Uhhh... a) I didn't know who this woman was, b) I hadn't even opened my mouth so how did she know I was foreign, and c) what business of it was hers? But I played nice (I'm pretty good at that) and said yes and politely asked her how she knew. Well, turns out she's my neighbor (I felt sheepish), and she and her husband had heard us talking and recognized that we're Americans, and they are Americans as well who just moved here from Seattle! I told her that we would love to get together sometime but we were leaving tomorrow for Indonesia. And the next words out of her mouth were probably the most beautiful words I had heard in a long time:

Do you have anyone to watch your dog for you???

Uhhh... no, would you be interested? [insert what I like to think was nonchalance, although my voice was probably squeaking too much to really pull that off]

So another American couple who lives right across the hall from us approached me on the street and ended up offering to keep our dog for us. It really was a miracle. Will and I are taking them out to dinner tomorrow night as a thank you... and as an excuse to make new friends :-).

Tune in tomorrow for the first part of the Indonesia recap!