Four Years...

...and still counting.

Time...keeps flowing like a river...to the seaaaaaaaa.

That song kills me, I think I'll download it.

It's been four years, people! That's right. We moved into this apartment four years ago today. It seems like just yesterday that I was looking at our lease agreement and asking Mrs. TBF:

This is a two-year lease. Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE that we're going to live in Switzerland for at least two more years?!?!?!?!

We signed the lease, and FOUR YEARS LATER we're still here. Hmmmm... How did she know?

The people in our building must be thinking that we're due to move because a couple who lives two floors below us saw me walking out of the building last week as they were walking in and told me:

Please let us know in advance when you're going to move because we would like your apartment.

I told them that it wouldn't happen for at least another year, but that I'd let them know as soon as I knew. Our apartment has always been rented to expats who have never lived here for more than five or six years, so I guess the neighbors think it's only a matter of time before we're gone.

We'll see.

I wrote about our move, and posted some pictures, two years ago. But here are a couple of new photos, never before seen on this blog, from that cold time in January, 2005. We had a lot of boxes to unpack, but Dominique absolutely refused to help. King was in hiding because he didn't want to help either. And judging by my size, Mrs. TBF was probably in the kitchen cooking the copious amounts of food I required back then.

It's hard to believe that this May we'll have lived in this apartment for longer than we lived in our first apartment in Reinach.

Who woulda thunk it?

Between A Rock And A Fire Hydrant...

Our baby - Dominique - floated on up to doggy heaven three years ago today.

Man, there have GOT to be A LOT of dogs up there. Who's picking up all that poop?

Here's a picture of her from January, 2003 doing one of the things she did best: reading her "peemail". Mrs. TBF came up with that one, dammit! That was soooo good...it should have been mine!

Little things constantly remind us about her and all the happy times we had with her.

There'll never be another Dominique...EVER!

But...will there ever be another dog in the house???



...maybe sooner than you think!

Friday Flashback: May 14, 1991 - March 14, 2005

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brother and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

- Rudyard Kipling

Our dog, Dominique, went to doggy heaven two years ago this past Wednesday. I still think about that time from two years ago with much emotion. The last month before we put her down was probably the saddest time of my life.

I try not to dwell on that last month. Instead, I try to focus on the nearly fourteen happy years we spent together.

Yup, we did everything wrong with our "baby-baby". She: slept in our bed (often under the covers), begged for (and got) table scraps, used the furniture as her own, turned into a "junkyard dog" whenever she had to go to the vet, and...pretty much just lived her life with us wrapped around her little dewclaws (which we had to trim - one at a time - when she was asleep, by the way, lest we have our hands chomped off!). Even with her nasty smelling breath...and farts (probably from all those table scraps), the fur all over the place, the stubbornness, and the defiance...

Even with all that...

...the unconditional love she gave us was worth every little flaw she had, and I would live those (almost) fourteen years again.

No, Mrs. TBF, I'm not ready to get another dog...at least not yet.

You see...King has earned his place as the king of the house, and he has proclaimed that it shall remain so until his final breath.