I think I am an overachiever.  This should not come as news to me, really.  I have probably known this all along. But this past weekend, at the Atlanta Pet Fair, I came face-to-face with just how serious I am with this whole overachievement thing.

A busy booth, 4 back-to-back lectures two of which included live cat grooms, Runway Creative Competition, Creative Challenge Competition, 5 cats and one poodle.  WHAT WAS I THINKING????????

Okay, so it all worked out in the end, though I do need a vacation to recuperate.

Apparently the “Before He Cheats” rewrite entitled “Before She Speaks” was a huge hit.  For those that want it on video, we are actually making a real music video of it that I promise will be worth your $.  Just wait!

01 Before She Speaks

I was at the Atlanta Pet Fair this past weekend.  I love this show!  But in usual fashion, I had too much on my plate.

On Thursday, Lindsay and I loaded up a friend’s van, the really big kind, with all manner of grooming tools, equipment, cats, props, booth stuff, and lots of clothes.  I counted my shoes before I left. I took 8 pairs of shoes all for a 4 day weekend. There was good reason for this.  I am, after all, not one of those women who normally packs too much when going out of town.  But this particular weekend called for 8 pairs of shoes.

We arrived in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon and proceeded to unload the van.  This meant several trips to the booth and then a couple more trips to the room.  This called for my slightly comfortable, but also stylish brown slip-ons.  They look good with jeans and I can walk at a decent pace even with the heel.

Later that evening, I showered and changed into a short dress and leggings for my performance of “My Lifelong Dream” at the Groomers’ Spring Break party. The perfect shoes for this occasion were my brown lace-up boots.  These are not ordinary boots.  They are butt-kickin’ combat style boots with a twist.  They cost me $3 at a clearance sale many years back and many would say they look to be exactly like a $3 pair of boots.  But I love my brown combats and they looked great with the mini-dress.  Besides, if I ran into trouble on the long walk from room 1332 to the ballroom, I could hold my own against any would-be predators.

Friday morning the show began.  This meant a busy day in the booth where Lindz and I had all 3 of our creatively-styled cats on display. We had crowds of people around the booth all day, non-stop.  By about mid-afternoon, we realized we should have been charging for photo ops with the cats.  This would have been our biggest money maker for sure. Shoes of choice:  my high-heeled black zip-up boots.  These are serious feet-killers. But they are my favs because they just look good with so many things.  They are the kind of boots that cripple me by day’s end. But hey, sometimes fashion takes precedence over comfort.

Friday night, business dinner at Malone’s.  The black high-heeled boots HAD to come off by this time.  They were replaced with low-heeled, low-cut black boots.  ”Aaahhhh,” my feet said.

Saturday morning started with my first of 4 lectures beginning at 8:30 am. Who starts a lecture at 8:30 am?????  This I want to know.  When you are the speaker-for-hire, you just speak when they tell you to speak.  Doesn’t matter if it fits your personal schedule. I guess I should be thankful that it was not at 3am like the one in Moscow.  Shoes of choice: low-heeled black boots.  Low partly for comfort since I’d be standing for several hours straight. But mainly the low ones because they looked good with my black capri pants.  Again fashion over function, but this time function was a nice perk.

Mid-way through Saturday, I had to change into grooming clothes to perform live-grooms at my last two lectures. I have learned from past experience not to attempt these live grooms in clothes that are not made of nylon unless I want to look and feel like a cat for the rest of the day and have to invest in a large pack of lint rollers just to restore my clothing to a normal hair-less state once again.  Because grooming clothes don’t look so hot with boots, I opted for my favorite black flip-flops.  My feet were feeling good!

No sooner had my last seminar ended that I had to run back up and change into jeans before running back down to the ballroom for a mandatory competitors’ meeting and then dash off to dinner again at Malone’s.  Second business dinner of the weekend and second time wearing the low-heeled, low cut black boots.

Before dinner was completely over with, we headed back to the hotel for a quick change and up-do in preparation for the Runway Creative competition.  This particular event called for some gemstone-adorned spikey sandals.  My feet were tired but no time to think on that.  I  would have to stick it out standing in the back with the other runway models and their dogs  while we waited for Jerry to quit talking and start the music.

I had sculpted Monica, my red tabby and white Persian, into a really cool paisley design to match my dress.  She was decked out in some glitter to accentuate her design and topped off with a ribbon “leash” in colors that matched perfectly. She was an angel as we waited and waited and waited backstage.  Monica the cat sitting beside a variety of canines, some who were big enough to eat her for a snack without anyone noticing.  She did a great job on the runway!  I am so proud of her.

It seemed like the show went on forever, but once it was done, back to the room to remove the spikey sandals and regain feeling in my sore feet.

Sunday morning, back to the booth, busier than ever from all the lectures the day before.  I actually left for awhile and took my dog, Truman for a walk just because I was so completely exhausted and needed some fresh air.  Fortunately, Lindsay, Mike, and Olivia were doing a fine job of managing the booth and selling off the rest of our products. I felt bad for not helping, but then I remembered that I was the boss and could take a break if I so decided.  Enough with the guilt!

While the day started out with me wearing the brown shoes of day 1, by 1:30 I was up in the room changing yet again.  This time into jeans, tank, cowboy hat and cowboy boots (pair of shoes #8!) in preparation for my Creative Challenge presentation.  We contestants waited back stage for a very long time before we were given the go-ahead to set up our props and backdrops.  I had pretty much everything together by this time, including my dog Truman, and cat C2.

For some reason it was decided to do the model dog contest and other stuff BEFORE the Creative Challenge which meant all contestants and dogs (and 1 lone cat) had to stand up front for 1 1/2 hours waiting for our turn.  At last the Challenge began and one by one the contestants presented the creations.  We were near the end.  I was thankful I was wearing cowboy boots and not the high-heeled black boots otherwise I might have died up there on that stage.

Yep, 8 pairs of shoes in less than 4 days.  This is what happens when you decide to do too much.  I am tired enough now to hope and pray I don’t have an 8-shoe show again anytime soon!

Sunday, February 21, 2010            Somewhere over the Atlantic, heading home.

I am glad to be heading home to warmth and family and my own bed and the time zone that my body knows and loves so well.  The trip to Moscow was amazing in so many ways. I am truly grateful for this opportunity.

I will be back next year!  There is much to look forward to.

In the meantime, I have to learn to speak Russian. And both Mike and I will miss our new friends.  Thank you all for your kindness and hospitality and for being our voices when we needed to communicate.  We will miss you all!

Thank you to Natalia V. – for getting us to Moscow and putting on a great show!
Thank you to Elena and the fella that did the translating for the lecture. (I wish I remembered his name!)
Thank you Vladimir and Natasha for your hospitality and for making sure I had what I needed for the lecture. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and learning more about the Russian grooming industry.
Thank you Kitty for loaning me your Mac charger.  You were a life-saver!  And we loved spending time with you and your hubby. Next time you and I are spending a day at the shopping mall!
Thank you to the other Natalia for being my tour guide at the cat show and treating me with such kindness.
Thank you to Alec and Nadejda for the shopping trip, the excitement about cat grooming, and for arranging the grooming contest.  And for the cognac.  We look forward to seeing you both here in the states in the near future!
Thank you to Simon and Rinat.  It was wonderful to meet you both. I look forward to seeing Rinat’s photos. And maybe one day we will visit you in Tel Aviv.
And to Dr. Mike, we enjoyed meeting you.  It was good to have another native English-speaker around to make us feel more at home (even if you do have a British accent!).

Sunday, February 21, 2010      In the middle of the night- Moscow time

I can’t sleep again.  Of course, back home it is early evening. Folks are on their way home or getting ready for supper.  I wonder what my kids are doing right now.  If it wasn’t so expensive to call them, I would probably see what they are up to.

Mike is sound asleep.  Snoring rather loudly.  I an envious of him. Not that he’s snoring, but that he’s deep in dreamland.  He’ll be awake soon though, I am sure, as we’ve both been waking up around 3:00 AM Moscow time and remain wide awake for hours.  We usually drift back off to sleep just around the time we get a wake up call.  I am too old for this.

As we were saying our “goodbye’s” yesterday to all the folks at Zoo Russia, Nadejda and Natalia presented us with a gift of Russian cognac.  I am looking at the bottle on the table beside the bed.  Mike tried some earlier and was out cold within minutes.  Maybe the cognac had something to do with this.  It’s worth a try……..

Tomorrow we travel home.  A very long trip and I am not feeling well.  I wonder how much I should drink?

ummmm……not too bad.  Warm and tingly going down.  Earlier Mike had said something about it being a very smooth cognac.  But then I asked him how he knew this since he’d never actually had cognac before.  What was he comparing it to?  The other not-so-smooth cognacs he has never indulged in before?

Now that I’ve had some I might call it smooth, too.  I am sleepy. My eyes are heavy…………my………..

Saturday, February 20, 2010       Late Evening – Moscow time

I was promised a day trip on Saturday afternoon so we could revisit the Kremlin, Red Square, Victory Park and a few other places. I really wanted to get those photos!

But it wasn’t Mike’s fault we didn’t go. It was mine. Saturday was the coldest and windiest day of all while we were there. I knew I wouldn’t last 5 minutes outside and each of those stops would require at least a 20 minute trek before we could get ourselves back into a heated environment to thaw out.

On top of things, I was now feeling all of the aches and pains of that nasty cold. Thus the photos would have to wait until the next time we were in Moscow – preferably during a summer month.

The kind woman who allowed me to use her Scottish Fold the day before had come back on Saturday and was very excited about the info I had brought to Russia. She bought my book and DVDs that I had with me and was eager to share this info with exhibitors at the International Cat Show. Nadejda breeds LH Folds and exhibits in both TICA and CFA. She is also an international judge and really knows her cat stuff. She and her husband, Alec, offered to drive Mike and I to a shopping mall to hunt for souvenirs and such.

They took us to a mall in Moscow that was 5 stories high and long enough that we never made it from one end to the other. They helped us find the souvenirs we sought, all for a great price, and in the process gave us some history and other great facts about their homeland. We had a great time with Alec and Nadejda!

Earlier that day, Nadejda’s friend and fellow exhibitor (of Maine Coons), Natalia, gave me a grand tour of the TICA International Cat Show that boasted some 1200 cats in attendance! Through an interpreter, I was able to speak with several breeders and get my hands on a beautiful sepia Bengali with the most striking aquamarine eye color. I was also introduced to the new Toiger breed. I had never even heard of the Toiger before so this was a real treat. While exquisite in appearance, the Toigers tend to have a too much wildness about them, in my opinion. In the grooming salon, we call these cats “aggressive” or “demon possessed” depending upon the mood we are in.

Somehow Nadejda and Natalia hand arranged a cat grooming contest of sorts, whereby the exhibitors would allow me to critique and judge their grooming presentation and then pick from the participants a Best, 2nd Best, and 3rd Best. Fortunately I’ve been to enough cat shows in my day to know how to look the part of a real cat show judge. This was a good thing, too, because several Russian media persons were in attendance to do interviews with me and report on the whole affair.

I will admit I had a lot of fun. The most amazing thing to me was that the exhibitors were so excited about my cat grooming program being brought to them. They truly want to learn how to perfect their grooming, even those that have no intention of operating a grooming salon. I quickly found out that information on cat grooming has been nearly non-existent for them up until now.

I am honored to be a part of this cat grooming “revolution” in Russia. May it be only the beginning of revolutions the world over. Changing the world one cat at a time. I know some laugh at that. But what do they know?

Saturday, February 20, 2010              Late evening – Moscow time

I’ve never been one of those women who packs everything but the kitchen sink when going on a trip. You know, the kind that are prepared for everything. But I am rethinking this tendency now that I’ve been to a country where their alphabet is so different than ours that it is impossible to pick out familiar words here and there and thereby get the gist of things.

Mike started out the trip with a slight cold that quickly turned into a full-fledged cold by the 2nd day of our stay in Moscow. Since I don’t pack in preparation for things such as bad colds in the middle of a Moscow “global warming” winter, Mike had to venture out in search of some meds to help him get by.

The “super market” was “right next door” which, of course, meant it was a 10-15 minute trek through the snow. This was no ordinary supermarket. It was huge. Think Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Rooms to Go, and Toys R Us all under one roof.

After searching the mother of all supermarkets from end to end, Mike finally found the pharmacy section. It was a separate little store within the big store where all drugs, both over-the-counter and prescription were sold. There were no meds to browse through and select from. A shopper had to step up to the window and tell the pharmacist what they wanted.

This would not be a problem under normal circumstances. But when the pharmacist only speaks Russian and the shopper only speaks English, it becomes something of a challenge.

How do you pantomime that your head is stuffy and your nose runny and that you have a sore throat and a bit of a fever? And how do you act out that you would simply like some Nyquil and Dayquil please?

After some failed attempts at communicating to the pharmacist, Mike ended up with a sample of some medication in a blue packet. We had no idea what it was or what it did. He was left with no choice but to take the medicine and wait and see.

I will admit I was anticipating some sort of major change in my husband within 30 minutes of his ingesting the unknown med. I watched closely to see if he would start having hot flashes or his hair would thicken before my eyes.

Nothing happened save for the fact that he did fall asleep and awoke hours later with fewer aches and pains. I don’t know what he took, but now I have the nasty cold so I am suspicious that whatever it was just transferred the sickness to someone else, namely me.

I think next time I will be one of those women who packs everything but the kitchen sink for those just-in-case situations.

Put a stick in it and you’ve got a really big mop.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Early Evening – Moscow time

The morning started out with me delivering a 20 minute talk/demo on various cat handling techniques at the PractiVet conference. The vets in attendance were from Russia, Israel, and several nearby countries. The translating was done simultaneously by 2 or 3 interpreters seated at the back of the conference room. All attendees wore headsets to allow them to hear the translation in their own language.

The cat I was supposed to use for the demonstration got caught in traffic (a regular occurrence in Moscow), so Natalia somehow talked an exhibitor from the International Cat Exhibition show going on next door to allow me the use of her cat.

I was provided with a lovely Oriental SH with a wonderful disposition. I was tempted for a moment to hide the cat in pocket and take him home with me. But I considered that there might be undercover KGB present at the veterinary symposium and a stunt like that might land me in jail. This was Russia after all. In the movies those sorts of things happen all the time.

I demonstrated the Air Muzzle, and from what I could tell, this was an item they had not seen before. One lady in the audience asked a question afterward. She sounded very angry when she did so, which left me wondering if maybe she thought I was hurting the cat by putting the Air Muzzle on it.

But Simon explained to me later that she was saying she did not think it would fit over a Maine Coon’s head. I don’t know what Simon told her, but unless they have 80 lb Maine Coon’s in Russia, the Air Muzzle should work out just fine.

Saturday, February 20, 2010       middle of the night – Moscow time

There have been snowflakes falling pretty much since we got to Moscow.  And obviously for sometime well before that since the whole city is covered in snow and there are places with drifts higher than I am tall.  All of these snowflakes make me think of a big flake we have in America.  You know, that politician that made a movie about global warming.

Well, maybe our big American flake needs to check out the weather channel. Or take a trip across the globe. Because from what I can tell, a good portion of the planet is covered in snow.  When I left South Carolina a few days ago there was snow on the ground.  This rarely happens in our state.  During the flight to JFK, pretty much all of the ground we flew over was covered in snow.

All land that we flew over as we crossed the Atlantic and then over parts of Greenland and northern Europe were COVERED in snow.  The in-flight thermometer informed us that the air temp was -90 degrees F.  I do realize that was at 35,000 feet in the air, but still.

It was so cold in Moscow that it sucked my breath right out of me whenever I tried to carry on a conversation outdoors. Global warming?  Whatever.

Friday, February 19, 2010        Late evening – Moscow time

A few days before we left for Moscow, Mike was at the hair salon getting his hair cut.  The dude that does his hair told Mike that Russian women are particularly  beautiful.  In fact, he said they are the most beautiful in the world.  He suggested that Mike needed to go to Moscow WITHOUT his wife.  I surely hope that Mike did not leave this guy a tip!

Fast forward 5 days.  We are in Moscow and I ask Mike to photograph the lecture.  Imagine my surprise when I am scrolling through pictures that he took and find this one.  I reminded him that he was SUPPOSED to be photographing my lecture so how did this pretty blond woman end up in the mix? Hmmmmm?

He tells me she stepped in front of the camera just as he snapped the shot.  I am suspect of this.

While Mike’s hair stylist guy is not on my “favorites” list at the moment, I have to admit that he was right about the Russian women.  I might forgive him.

caught!