Snomicron for the Holidays
November 23, 2021 - January 4, 2022
After two years away from our friends and family in the United States, it seemed like things had finally settled down enough for us to brave long-distance flights and come home for the holidays in 2021. We were happy to learn that extending our German health care coverage to the US only cost €12 for the entire year; there is no reality in which we would go back to the United States during a pandemic without health insurance. Strangely, the covid situation was actually worse in Germany than it was in America when we took off. That said, there was only a brief window after we landed where seeing friends and family seemed somewhat safe and sustainable, and then of course everything spiraled down the drain. But before all that mess: Thanksgiving.
A Return to Luxiland for Turkey Time
We weren’t sure if our annual November trip to Luxembourg was going to be canceled for a second straight year, but in the twilight hour it was decided that the Thanksgiving tradition must endure. We were both in the midst of a flurry of work - Mazz had to spend her days in Luxiland using the guest room as an office to attend an online conference - and timing made it so that we were only able to take a short, mid-week jaunt, but we made it happen nonetheless. Knowing us and our loves and desires, Spritzboi and Jess had set everything up for an all-you-can-eat pizza party on our arrival.
Nemo presents her bottom for a pet
We don’t mess with success, and our Thanksgiving meal is properly dialed in, so it’s the same every year. The menu from our first Thanksgiving is still up on the chalkboard on the kitchen wall (which Spritzboi acquired from the bar where we first met him, after the place closed down). Once again, the meal was a complete success - the only downside was having to take off the next morning and not getting to stick around and eat leftovers for the next few days. Regardless of the short stay, it is always a treat to come to Luxembourg and spend time with such lovely friends.
First and Most Important: The New Dogs of America
Indy
Kirb’s beloved pupper Keela passed away in early 2020, and it only took a couple of months without a dog in the house before his parents decided that this was not a way anyone should have to live. They got Indy the following summer, and the two of us eagerly awaited the time when we could properly meet the dour little man. Indy loves Kirb’s mom Lauren and only Kirb’s mom Lauren. If you walk near Indy, he will look to her for approval, or perhaps in silent horror, before promptly walking away from you and towards her. He is a princess, through and through. We spent a lot of time with Indy over the holidays and I think it is safe to say that at best he tolerated our presence. Sometimes he let us pet him, but when he did, he was staring at Lauren the entire time to make sure it was okay.
Desi Slava
Named after a Bulgarian pop star that Kirb’s brother Scott became infatuated with during his stint in the Peace Corps, Desi is the newest addition to the family. She’s a snuggler and a biter at the same time, which means there always needs to be a chew toy nearby when she hops up on your lap on the couch, or within moments she will start chewing on you. She already looks like a stern old lady, and she’ll probably be a good dog in a year or two, but she is not a good dog now. Shortly after our stay at Scott and Kristine’s house, Desi chewed up and destroyed the entire enormous living room rug.
Ruby Jim
Ruby was just a puppy when we last came home in 2019, and in that time her body has grown but her intellect has not. She has true dinosaur brain. She will stare at you dead in the eyes and cry at nothing; what she wants or needs is anyone’s guess. Like Desi, she is a large dog that wants to live on your lap. Thankfully she’s done constantly biting, but she does want to lick every exposed bit of skin on your body.
Alma Sue and Adeline
Colloquially known as “Monster One” and “Monster Two,” Alma Sue and Adeline are the only holdovers from our initial “Dogs of America” post in 2017. They’re not the only ones who are alive, mind you, they’re just the only living members of that illustrious list that we got to visit this time around (sorry, Edison). They are the spoiled fur babies of D and Steve Neal, who have relocated from dank, dark Portland, OR to sunny Palm Springs. It’s hard to tell whether the dogs know they’re in a different place, or if they understand anything at all. For such small creatures, they pack some truly apartment-wrecking farts.
Wild Desert Dogs
We came across these inquisitive buddies on the highway between California and Arizona. They’re large dogs, not entirely intelligent for just hanging out in the road like that, but surprisingly docile. They’re probably some kind of coyote. Anyway, they’re the only dogs we met in America that didn’t bite us, fart all over the place, or ignore us outright.
Finally Home
Kirb flew in a week before Mazz to give his mom plenty of time to do clingy mom stuff without the wife endlessly rolling her eyes in the background. Once owners of a charming home in the woods of Anderson Island, Kirb’s parents now live in a 55+ community in the city of Lacey, about an hour south of Seattle. Kirb had no problem adjusting his semi-retired Berlin lifestyle to fit with his parents’ fully-retired Lacey lifestyle, though Lauren and Dennis were a bit baffled with how much time Kirb spent sitting at the kitchen table working on his podcast. Since we moved abroad, many of our good friends were priced out of Seattle and moved to Tacoma instead, only a 30 minute drive from Lacey, so it was easy to use Kirb’s folks’ house as a base to visit buddies in the South Sound.
It is remarkably easy to get tested for covid in Berlin. There are free testing stations every few blocks in our neighborhood and at-home rapid tests cost €1-4 and are plentiful in every store that should carry them. In the first weeks of our visit, it wasn’t particularly hard to buy at-home tests from the drugstores in Washington, but they cost $10 or more each, which seemed exorbitant but worth it for peace of mind when visiting with friends. We got burner SIM cards from T-Mobile in Lacey and in the process watched as some sketchy guy tried and failed to scam the store for an expensive iPhone. Upon leaving the strip mall, the car in front of us peeled out and ran a red light like it was drag racing. As soon as our SIM cards were activated, Mazz began receiving a multitude of scam calls and text spams (we receive ZERO garbage calls/texts in Germany). Kirb apparently got a fresh number, but whoever had Mazz’s before her had signed up for every garbage mailing list imaginable. Ah yes. America.
Our favorite caller ID tag
Even with testing, people had plenty of reason to be wary of us and our foreign germs coming through their area. We were the first people our friends Brandon and June let inside their home since the pandemic began, which is a fun and bizarre badge of honor. Kirb’s been playing Dungeons and Dragons online with Brandon and his 8-year-old daughter for the last year, and coming home meant he had a chance to finally play with them in person. Still hesitant of any indoor activities with outsiders, Brandon set up a fire pit in the driveway with an extension cord and we played an in-person/online hybrid with the rest of our crew. We had all tested before meeting up, so after the game we ate Sichuan food inside and the kiddos kept their masks on and ate in the other room. They didn’t want to risk their kids getting the virus from us and spreading it at school, and kids are asymptomatic carriers who could just as easily give it to us. It felt like a reasonable compromise, though still a deeply weird and unfortunate reality that we all must live in and share.
While we’ve been off galavanting across Europe, our friends have become bonafide adults, buying homes and reproducing. Naomi was just a babe the last time we hung out, but now she’s a full-on child tornado, ripping apart the midcentury party palace that Endless Mike and Anna Banana bought overlooking the water in Tacoma. Similar to Brandon and June, we were on a very short list of people who had been invited inside the Bananaberg’s home since the pandemic began, and Naomi quickly glommed onto Kirb as a new possible plaything, demanding that he be present while she ate, bathed, and prepared for bed. We had made a joke with Endless Mike about sleeping in Naomi’s bed if there wasn’t enough space, and he said that was fine; she slept on the floor anyway. Were were only slightly surprised to find when we went to retire for the evening that she had migrated out into the hallway and was fast asleep splayed out on her face and knees on a giraffe pillow in the middle of the carpet.
Cream and Peebs also bought a house in Tacoma, a charming little place that looks almost exactly like the one they were renting before. Uncle Sean moved to a new apartment overlooking downtown Tacoma, and Kirb and Cream helped him move approximately 10,000 totes up a four story walk-up (which thankfully had a back-door entryway two stories up that a tenant informed us of early on in the process). We very much enjoyed having sleepovers at our friends’ places and spending time with their rugrats.
CABIN PARTY (Mostly Sparkling Water and Board Games)
Snowater, located near Mount Baker in northern Washington, is Kirb’s favorite place in the world. Upon arriving there the last time he visited in the summer of 2019, he immediately developed a red, bumpy rash over his entire body and spent the rest of the trip being wildly uncomfortable and trying desperately not to go to the hospital/die. (If only we had known then that we could have extended our German health coverage for €12.) Kirb was determined not to repeat history: he did not bring or eat any of the Trader Joe’s soyrizo that was likely the culprit. All he wanted was to do was drink an unfathomable amount of La Croix, dose himself comfortably with legal edibles, and play Catan with his best friends in a log cabin. This time around, he got his wish.
The Bananabergs decided to pull the trigger on a fancy second cabin to house the families with children, giving us ample space to hang out together once they were put to bed, while all the childfree adults slept over at our place. It was a magical weekend filled with hiking, swimming, saunas, games, and non-stop laughter. If we could have kept doing this for an entire month, we would have.
Off to the Southwest
Mazz’s mom decided to be a snowbird a few years back and bought a house in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. When her partner Ron was forced to deal with some serious medical issues over the last year, they decided to stay in that part of the country long-term instead of taking their usual breaks back up in Oregon. The closest airports to Havasu are either Las Vegas or Palm Springs, but each are still a few hours drive away. We chose to come into Palm Springs, as Mazz’s best friend D and her husband Steve Neal had recently relocated there. We’ve stayed at D’s place in Portland at least once a year for the last decade, so it wouldn’t be a trip to America if we didn’t see her new spot in California. This time around though, there was no couch crashing: Steve Neal works at the fancy Villa Royale hotel across the street from where they live and got us the swankiest room in the place for a fraction of the price. The room was bigger than our apartment. It ruled.
Thankfully the storm didn’t last long, and though the following morning was surprisingly cold, it was still beautifully blue and sunny weather. The hotel had bikes we could borrow, so we spent the morning riding through swanky neighborhoods after bailing on the Tahquitz Canyon hike we had originally planned on taking, which had a $15-per-person trail fee to walk through the desert to a waterfall that currently had no water. It wasn’t dreadfully cold to Northerners like us in the direct sunshine, so we swam in the heated pool and laid out in the loungers while the Californians in their long pants and sweatshirts looked at us like we were lizard people. At some point that afternoon, Steve Neal accidentally drilled into a fuse box in the room next to ours and nearly electrocuted himself, and it made all the lights in our suite (and only our suite) go on the fritz. We had to be moved to a less-fancy room, but we didn’t really care, because anything at that hotel was way nicer than what we would have otherwise bought for ourselves.
Kirb and D do a sage burning dance to ward off the evil dog fart spirits
After a few days of pretending we were fancy in Palm Springs, we hopped into Becky and Brian’s car and drove to Arizona to pretend we weren’t afraid all the people walking menacingly through the grocery store in full camouflage. No one wore masks anywhere, and the neighborhoods were rife with Trump 2024 flags, even some that just straight-up said, “Fuck Biden.” We did not feel at home in this place. We did not feel comfortable here at all. But we weren’t visiting Lake Havasu to immerse ourselves in their rich and tolerant culture; we were coming to spend time with Momzzio and Ron. And that part, thankfully, was pleasant and enjoyable.
Having two strapping young men at her disposal, Momzzio quickly put Kirb and Brian to work, though she was severely misguided if she thought Kirb could actually do any handiwork around the house. He played to his strengths and made German pancakes for breakfast instead, and when Brian needed him to simply be another set of hands and usable muscles, Kirb obliged.
On the final evening in Arizona with all six of us, Ron decided that the exact moment we were passing out Christmas presents to one another was the perfect time to hand Brian a loaded antique gun to examine. Brian looked it over and gave Ron an approving nod that said, “Yes, this is a loaded gun you have handed me during the family gift exchange, and it is indeed a fine gun,” because what else can you really do in that situation, and then he carefully handed the gun back to him. Kirb could not believe that this was a real thing happening in front of his eyes, and struggled to imagine what he would have said if Ron would have tried to hand him a loaded gun along with/instead of a present. But Kirb didn’t have to say anything; Ron knows better than to hand a gun to Kirb. That’s why he handed it to Brian. Mazz stuck around for a few more days to spend time with her mom, but the rest of us headed back to California early the following morning. We love Momzzio dearly, but we couldn’t get out of Lake Havasu, Arizona fast enough.
Four States in Four Days
After Mazz flew back to Seattle, it was right back in the car to drive to Portland, completing our tour of four west coast states in as many days. We always split apart for Christmas to spend time with our individual families, but Kirb comes down to Oregon to spend some time with the Mazz clan and to eat that good good Portland food. As always, we tried our best to see as many loved ones as possible in a small amount of time, preferably together in the great outdoors of the PNW. But as always, there was never enough time to do everything and see everyone we wanted to. Also, fear of a rapidly-spreading virus variant and no infrastructure in place for people to responsibly test themselves to safeguard against it didn’t really help.
Best of Luck Not Giving Your Family Covid for Christmas
As Christmas drew nearer, the threat of the omicron variant became more and more real, and virtually every store was sold out of covid tests with no ability to restock until January. For families trying to be as safe as possible for their first get-together in two years, testing before meeting up seemed like the bare minimum requirement, and even that proved exceedingly difficult. We were only able to test everyone for family gatherings in Portland because Becky found some tests in right-wing zones of northern California and southern Oregon on her drive up. Kirb came home from his whirlwind trip to CA, AZ, and OR with a sore throat, but even with a negative test result he was wary of being around his high-risk parents. For the big family get-together with his cousins, pre-testing everyone was the only logical way to deal with the one family member who refused to get vaccinated. Luckily, no one got covid in either of our families as far as we know, and once the pandemic worry was out of the way, Christmas with our loved ones felt especially nice after such a long time apart.
Snomacron Descends
It started snowing on Christmas and then didn’t stop for several more days, with constant sub-freezing temperatures turning the roads into sheets of ice. Kirb developed a nasty cold, and though the tests said it wasn’t covid, it still wasn’t something he wanted to share freely with those around him. If the hyper-spreading pandemic variant and general lack of testing opportunities weren’t making it hard enough to see friends, the snowstorm really drove home the fact that we weren’t going to get to see a lot of people we had planned on spending time with. Portland wasn’t hit by the storm as hard as western Washington, but it was still an icy mess, and so Mazz only stuck around there for a few days after Christmas, as it was generally impossible to see anyone in town other than the family with whom she was already staying. She braved the highways up to Lacey to join up with a miserably sick Kirb, which in hindsight maybe wasn’t the best idea.
Kirb started to feel better after a few days snowed in with the parents, so we slowly made our way through the treacherous roads to Bellevue to stay with his brother’s family. With the icy hills and raging virus, it was clear that we weren’t going to be heading into Seattle anymore, but at least we could have some quality family time. Playing in the snow is arguably one of the funnest things you can do with children, and Kirb really enjoyed letting his niece and nephew pelt him with snowballs, ride on his back down steep hills, and watch him crash a sled painfully into a big shrub like an idiot. Mazz was stuck inside working during all of this, because Mazz is usually working even when she wishes she was out having fun, because Mazz works too much.
Everything was still all frozen over by New Year’s Eve, but most of the crew still braved the elements and made it to the Bananaberg Midcentury Party Palace for some wild, snowy hot tub action. We all had hangovers the next day, and it was hard to tell if it was just because we drank too much, or because we drank too much in a hot tub, or because we kept jumping out of the hot tub and flopping into the snow until we couldn’t stand the cold anymore and then got back in and drank more. Either way, it was worth it.
The Aftermath
That hangover didn’t end for Mazz after January 1st. She had caught Kirb’s bug, and it would end up knocking her on her ass for three whole weeks, long after she had already returned to Berlin. For Kirb to fly home, he needed a “professional” negative rapid test taken within two days of when he was going to transfer through London. Mazz did not, as Iceland didn’t require such a thing, so she flew out on Monday and reckons that at least half of the people on her flight probably had covid. Kirb flew out on Tuesday, and after dropping Mazz off at the airport, tried to get tested at multiple places, but each one was already “sold out” of free tests for the day. The only option was to pay $70 at a private drive-through clinic, and though he got a reservation for a specific time, there were at least 25 cars waiting in an area that had been roped off, with another gaggle of cars already waiting in the street on the other side. Kirb got out on foot, which turned out to be the right choice, and filled out the myriad digital forms required before paying out the nose to have a cotton swab inserted inside of his. Getting this test to fly home was incredibly difficult. IT IS SO EASY AND FREE AND FAST TO GET TESTED IN BERLIN.
International travel during a pandemic is an absolute nightmare. Keeping a mask on for 17 hours straight is awful. Not even wanting to remove it to eat - because everyone else also has their mask off during meals - is a kind of torture. Still, we were lucky that our flights even left at all, as thousands of others had been canceled in our area because of the snow and staffing shortages. There was bad turbulence on Kirb’s flight, so all of the meal trays were scattered and messy, which isn’t really a problem. But then he watched a flight attendant touch literally every item on every passenger’s tray with bare hands to tidy them up, only to put gloves on to pick up everyone’s trash. UGH. We loved seeing our friends and family in the states, but this trip really reinforced a lot of stuff we can’t stand about the place.
One of the things we can’t stand about Berlin is how filthy it is, and Mazz passed some fun trash on her way home from the airport and decided to snap a picture of it. It turns out that trash leg was portentous of Kirb’s new, extremely shitty reality. The day after he landed back in Berlin, Kirb’s foot hurt like it was sprained, and he wondered how he could have possibly injured it in his sleep. A few days later (after receiving his covid booster, likely messing with his immune response), the pain intensified to the point that he had nightmares the foot was being amputated; the pain level was on par with breaking a bone, which he’s done a few times. Luckily, Kirb already had a doctor’s appointment the following day for a different inquiry, and within about 10 seconds of hearing about his problem they diagnosed him with gout. For the next few weeks, Mazz was sick on the couch while Kirb was essentially immobile, his foot completely swollen and unable to fit inside of a shoe without hurting so bad it made him cry. Neither of us could sleep more than a few hours at a time. Kirb mostly lived with his foot inside a styrofoam container of water, otherwise the pain was unbearable, even with medication. Gout is largely caused by diet, and this year his diet in America of eating bacon with breakfast every morning, drinking alcohol most evenings, and regularly snacking on Christmas candy did more than just make him fat. This time, it made his foot joints fill with pain crystals. 2022 is off to a great start, y’all! If the last two years have taught us anything: It can always be worse.