House Hold Effects

Our Household effects, otherwise known as HHE, are scheduled to arrive this morning.  I don't know if I am excited, or if I just want to crawl under a rock and hide.  Either way approximately 7200 pounds of boxes filled with I can't quite remember what will be here shortly and then chaos will ensue. I will be updating as I get a moment throughout the day.

10:30 Three crates unloaded.  You can no longer walk in the kitchen due to the number of boxes.  We will not discuss the number of boxes labeled books.  Dave says I may have a problem, or two.  I disagree.  It is not a problem to like to eat well, or read.  Nope a problem at all.

11:40 Last crate being cracked open.  We have too much stuff.  I have NO IDEA where we are putting all of this. The house reeks of cardboard and I am hungry.  The guys have started coming in the door and telling me where they are putting stuff.  I am not inclined to argue.

11:51 last box in in the house.  We have too much stuff.  Going to go eat lunch and then start unpacking.  Oh the fun.

12:35 Back from Subway (YUM) and ready to begin the unpacking.

4:57 Kitchen unpacked, mostly.  I should say all the boxes I can find so far that are labeled "kitchen" are unpacked.  There are thing missing though, so there is more stuff around here somewhere that will have to be shoved into a cabinet when it does turn up.  Not quite sure how I am going to fit anything else, but I will manage.

Meanwhile Dave has made all the beds, except ours.  Our sheets are missing. I guess they're in a box with the missing kitchen items.

I haven't touched a box of books yet.  I'm afraid to.  I might start reading instead of unpacking and then would be lost.

Kids are home from school and in spite of repeated requests to start on homework they are taking turns making a horrendous amount of noise on the trumpet/coronet/noise-maker-from-hades.  Why couldn't one of them take up trumpet so they could actually learn to play the darn thing?

Back to work.

6:05  Kids fed, decided to call it a night.  Everyone needs to do their homework and then I just want a long hot shower and a cold beer.

We made good progress today.  While I did kitchen Dave tackled the bedrooms.  Clothes are put away in the proper closets, beds are made, the welcome kit burlap sheets are washed and folded ready to be packed away. Bookshelves are put together and ready to be loaded with books for reading.

Tomorrow the kids have early release so we will work hard in the morning then take a bit of a break when they get home then try to put them to work as well.

The Perfect FS Spouse? NOT!

Yesterday a new friend here at post said I seemed like the perfect FS spouse. I had to laugh. I am so far from the perfect spouse it isn't even funny. Don't believe me? Let's look at the evidence.

 I hate change, so we choose to live a life of eternal change. Yes I know, everything changes all the time. Time, after all, refuses to stay still. However I am talking serious change, change of house, change of friends, change of country and everything that goes with it: culture, food, language, people. Did I mention I hate change? I want, really want, to be a creature of habit. I want to go where everybody knows my name, Ok maybe I don't want to go to a bar in Boston but I do want to go someplace where I feel like I belong.  That's one of the reasons why we bought our little house in the 'hood. We had barely pulled up this summer and were just unloading suitcases when I started hearing "Hey Shannon! Welcome home!" "Hi Miss Shannon!  Can Colin and Zo come play?" Totally music to my ears. For me it's comforting to know there is some place that I belong. One of my happy thoughts is knowing that our little house, and the whole 'hood are waiting for me to come back next summer. There will be changes there too, of course, but there will also be a sameness that feeds my need for continuity.

 I hate airplanes, so we fly here there and everywhere with me white knuckling it all the way. Don't even suggest that I have a drink to help me chill out. When I was a kid I got violently motion sick all the time. It happened in cars, on airplanes, merry-go-rounds, boats, anything that moved could potentially make me barf. I can remember many airsick bags when we flew to visit my grandmother. Now I have this overwhelming fear that if I have a glass of wine on a plane I will barf. I know it is illogical, and I haven't been motion sick to the point of barfing in years, but I am still terrified by the thought of it. Lately my new minted teenager (he's 13) has figured out that I don't like flying and has taken to asking me things like "Mom what happens if the plane is stuck by lightening?" and "What if the wings fall off?" and my personal favorite "Mom! Look out the window, do you think that is a crack?"Do you know that is is impossible to not look out the window after that question? This last summer David finally had to make sure that he was sitting between us so that I wouldn't murder the kiddo in midair. Teen boy thinks he is funny, but he is  exactly one episode of Air Disasters away from being used as a barf bag.

 I don't do well with waiting. Waiting at a red light? Torture. Waiting in line at the store? Awful. In the FS it feels like we wait for everything. Wait to find out if you will get in, wait for the bid lists, wait to find out where we are going next, wait to see if the kids were accepted at the new school, wait for HHE*, wait, wait, and wait some more should be the motto of the foreign service.

 I can't seem to learn a foreign language. I have tried, but languages are not my gift. Even English spoken with a heavy accent, any accent, might well be Klingon or high Elvish for all the sense it makes to me. I must drive accented people that come in contact with me absolutely nuts asking them to repeat things over and over until, if we are lucky, something suddenly makes sense. Often they just go through my husband rather than deal with me. I admire those who speak two, three, four or more languages, but I am coming to realize that will never be me, if I can learn enough language at each post to ask "Where's the bathroom?" and understand the answer, plus a few polite phrases like "Good morning", "Please," and "Thank you," I will be pretty happy.

I am not very adventurous. I know what you are thinking: "But you went on Safari!  Slept in a tent with hippos right outside!"  Yes, but you weren't in the car with me as I moaned about how I was sure the lions were going to eat us on that first safari trip. I'm sort of surprised my husband didn't leave me on the side of the road halfway across Zambia.  I resist doing almost anything outside of my comfort zone. Even basic things.  I'm terrified of driving in a foreign country.  I NEVER drove in Jakarta, not even once.  It took me almost a year to drive in Germany, and a little longer than that in Malawi. In case you are wondering no, I haven't driven in Oman yet, but now that we have a car I am not going to be able to avoid it much longer.

 I don't like having staff in the house, I like my privacy. I would rather clean my own toilet than lose my privacy to having someone in the house all day, every day. There are exceptions, I would hire the driver and pembantu that we had in Jakarta if we went back, in a heartbeat. Otherwise, no thanks! I'll clean my own house. I do have to add that in an ideal world someone invisible would show up once a week or so to clean the toilets, sweep, mop and vacuum, and them quietly leave. Sadly we don't live in an ideal world.

I can take forever to make close friends. Years in fact. Although I may make lots of casual friends and acquaintances at every post, I can count on one hand the number of friends that I have made that were the kind of friends that I would feel comfortable calling for a sympathetic ear and cup of coffee on a bad day. It takes time for me to make those kind of connections, and since we move ever few years time isn't exactly on my side.

 So why on earth would anyone think I am the perfect FS spouse? What do I have going for me? Well the main thing in my favor is that I actually like being a housewife. I don't much like the title, but I do like the job. I am not driven to go out and find a job at the embassy, or pursue a career. I am content to stay home and take care of the house and family. I think it's a special skill to take a house and turn it into a comfortable home. It takes talent and a certain amount of creativity to turn out healthy, yummy dinners night after night. Especially if you can't run to the store for a rotisserie chicken, pre-shredded cheese, and frozen veggies. I like the challenges that come with trying to make all my favorite dinners from back home without all the ingredients readily at hand. Want lasagna and can't find ricotta? No problem I can make that. Dying for some potstickers? Gotcha covered. Want tacos but don't have tortillas? I can tell you how to make your own, it's easier than you think.

I know it isn't the popular thing to enjoy being a housewife.  It's sort of the ideal of a bygone era.  In fact my husband has been known to refer to me as "his 1950's wife."  No, I haven't stabbed him in his sleep.  I know, I'm a saint.  The thing is he thinks it's a compliment, and I am willing to take it in that spirit, as long as he doesn't expect me to wear pearls, shirtwaist dresses, and heels everyday. Jeans, t-shirts and bare feel will have to do.

In many ways being content to be a housewife makes me ideally suited to be a FS spouse.  Those who've had to leave behind careers they enjoyed and excelled at to become a "trailing spouse" can have a rough time of it, trying to find meaningful satisfying work at post after post, each time having to reinvent themselves anew.  So maybe I'm not the perfect FS spouse, I actually don't know if there is such a creature, but I'm happy to hang out at the house, trying new recipes, blogging, and quietly chasing my own dreams of someday writing a book, and that makes me a pretty good fit for this life.

*While I was typing this post I received a test from Dave HHE will be here SUNDAY!  Next week is going to be super busy with boxes everywhere!! 

Made it to Muscat

We made it to Oman. My initial impressions are hot, hotter, and even hotter than that; Sky high humidity, like Galveston in the summer time. Lots of dust, very little green, very stark and basically alien to anything we have experienced before. I know with time I will learn to love (at least aspects of) this post, but right now I am overwhelmed and really just want to go home, or at the very least make like an ostrich and hide my head in the sand for a bit… good thing there seems to be lots of sand around.

We had a fun-filled, but very busy, and very short summer in the states. If you missed it we bought a house this summer, and our short time in the states was dedicated to turning it into a home. Mission accomplished! It is beautiful and I love it. I will blog more details and pictures later, but for right now blogger has decided to go Arabic on me, and I can’t find the button that allows me to change it back to English, and I can’t load the login page, so I am typing this in word then my absolutely fabulous husband will post it for me from work, on break of course.

I don’t know if having my little home in the 'hood made the landing in Oman easier or not, but there have been fewer tears this time than any move before. I don’t care what anyone says about moving to a new country, I don’t do a honeymoon period. Never have, and I suspect I never will. By the time the plane lands, I am depressed, fighting tears, missing our family and friends in the states, and completely homesick for our last post. And that period of time when you are in an echoey house full of strange furniture, but nothing that is really yours, is the worst. That more than any other tie is when I feel like we are really in limbo. It is hard to start turning a house into a home when you don't have any or your things. We are living out of our suitcases until our stuff eventually makes it way here from Malawi, then I can start finding where my stuff will go in this new house, and start making it finally feel like home. Hopefully that will be soon.

Eventually we will have working internet at the house and I will get back to updating regularly and then I can share all the fun we had this summer, as well as our settling in process here in Oman.

Home is where your hat is?

The packers have come and packed and the movers have left with almost all of our worldly possessions... though we do still have the clothes that will be packed in the suitcases that will follow us for the next few months until reunited with our belongings.

I find myself sitting in the structure that use to be our home, which is now nothing more than a shell of a house. It makes me ponder what makes a house a home? Is it the artwork and artifacts that have been collected and the memories attached to them? Perhaps it is the artwork the kids have done that we have taped to the walls for all to see.  Or is it just the presence of having our family all in the same place?

I have lived somewhat of a nomadic life and always with the expression that "home is where your hat is". Whether it was a house in Okinawa, a dorm room in Moscow, Russia, the rack in a Navy submarine or any of the many other places I have hung my hat. Well I have my hat and family with me and this shell that once was a home just feels like a house... waiting for someone else to make it a home.

I gaze to the wall looking for the clock that I have so often looked at before to tell me the time, but no clock. I reach for the book that has always been there to show one of the kids a picture of a bird I saw, but no book. It's frustrating at times going from a home to a house, but it is times like this that allow me to reflect and put myself into my own perspective.

When I see the handprints on the walls where the kids have come around the corner hanging on so they don't slip and fall or I hear the echo of them talking in the living room, I feel there might be a little piece of home left after all.  ~Bones

Packing: Glad it's his job!

Those of you who know David, know that he's pretty easy going.  At least until he has a job to do.  Then he is.... intense.  Very intense.  There is one big job left to do. The last job before we leave Malawi.

It's that time again, everything left in the house has to fit into a suitcase.  Understand that not once since we have been married has Dave ever been satisfied with how I've packed a suitcase.  He always rearranges and and repacks it for me.  Fun!  I will give him this, he is the champion of stuffing "just one more thing" into a suitcase.  A talent that has more than once found us rearranging the contents of suitcases at the airline check-in counter so that no one suitcase exceeds the weight limit.  You would think that since it all equals out to the same weight for our family going onto the plane, the airlines could just take the average of all our luggage and move on, but apparently that would be too easy.

This morning he asked me to get started on the packing so we are not scrambling to get it done over the next couple of days.  I just sat there sipping my coffee looking at him until he finally said "WHAT?"

I suggested that this time we skip the whole I pack, he unpacks and repacks everything routine.  So today I went through all the rooms and put everything that needs to be packed into one room.   Tonight he gets to deal with this:

He is going to need every bit of his "I can fit just one more thing"  super power to make it all fit.  Glad it's his job!

The Moments of Our Life

There are moments in life that are etched indelibly on your memory.  Some of these you expect, your graduation day, your wedding day, the day your first child is born.  Others catch you by surprise, but remain vivid and clear even years later.  For me it often seems to include music and foreign countries.  a living room in Jakarta Indonesia, a good friend on guitar and the rest of us in a tight circle arms draped over shoulders singing "Leaving on a jet plane, don't know if I'll be back again" just days before most of the group would indeed be leaving on a jet plane. The Siedlug quick shop restaurant on a Saturday night in Frankfurt Germany, leaning on my husband watching my kids and my husband's colleague and his son enjoying the music of a German guitarist playing American music, laying down the tracks for each song as he goes through his playlist and drinking a dunkels. A Khondi in Lilongwe Malawi, people from several different countries, all together to celebrate our mutual friendship with a very special couple, dancing the Macarena and then singing "We will survive."

Looking back at each of theses moments fills my eyes with tears and my heart with joy.  I treasure those memories and hope that someday, somewhere my path crosses with each of those people again.

Really Murphy? Seriously?

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  So states Murphy's law.  There should be an addendum that states "When all is going smoothly, look out 'cause Murphy is on the way."

For the last several weeks I have been uneasy.  Everything was going along very smoothly with pack out, Alonzo's 13th birthday, sponsoring a new family to post in early summer, and lastly purchasing and furnishing a small house in the states to function as our permanent home base.  Dave smirked and called me WW2 every time I expressed any worry.  WW2 for Worry Wart 2, the original WW being his Grandmother Pearl.

Packout is finished and although we came in ever so slightly over the allotted 7200 pounds, we had planned ahead, and it was easily dealt with.  Hands dusted! All finished with that, at least until it all shows back up in Oman.

The new family touched down earlier this week.  In spite of my using the welcome kit's two-molecule thick cheap pots and pans, I manage to create something edible and leave it in their house for their first meal in Malawi. Their house was mostly ready, stocked with the usual welcome kit supplies, and we even made it to the airport on time to meet the plane.  As a bonus for having us as sponsors, they inherited some of our unused consumables.  I hope they are as thrilled with that as I am.

Earlier this month Alonzo turned 13.  In our house 13 is a big deal.  We try hard to do something extra special.  When Dakota turned 13 he had his first ever airplane ride (pre-FS) in a WW2 Ambulance plane. During an air show. It was hard to top that.  We think we managed.  Dave booked a walking safari to go rhino tracking down in Liwonde National Park. Dave and Alonzo didn't just see one rhino, they saw three.  Totally cool.  I will get a blog post all about it up soon, I promise.

In Early March we closed on a house in close proximity to family and friends.  We now have a place that is our very own.  A place with not one single piece of Drexel Horrible furniture, no blah beige rugs either. I can even pick my own curtains.  Those of you rolling your eyes haven't spent the better part of the last decade living in government furnished housing in various countries. We've been online shopping like mad and have managed to order almost an entire house's worth of furniture all scheduled to be delivered within days of our arrival.

The kids are signed up for summer camp in the states. Alonzo and Colin will be going to sleep away camp in Galveston where they will be learning about marine biology and coastal ecology, while  Gray will attend a local day camp. This gives us one week mostly kid free to get the house set up.

In short everything has been going smoothly.  Too smoothly.  I kept waiting to see what was going to go wrong. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something had to  go wrong eventually.  I thought a delivery was going to be delayed and we would end up sitting on the floor all summer instead of on a nice new sofa.  Or perhaps our UAB heading to the states full of ethno-plunder so our new house reflects our travels would be sent to Ouagadougou or deepest darkest Peru.   I should knock on wood because that could still totally happen, but at this point I am not sure I even care anymore.

Monday morning just as we were getting ready to leave for the rhino encounter Dave decided to check his email one more time, and found this waiting in his inbox.

Yep, that is the floor in our new house.  The floor that was fine just a week ago. The floor in the house we haven't even moved into yet. The house where we are supposed to hosting a big family house warming get together just a week after we arrive.  Granted I didn't like that floor and was already planning to replace it in a few years.  But still.  WHY???  I have cried, and ranted, and raved, then I calmed down and looked at flooring options. I discovered if I like a floor it is guaranteed to to cost 75 gazillion dollars a square foot.  I also discovered we are looking at around $3000 just to get the old floor out before we can even talk about a new floor.  I am trying not to freak out, yeah right, like that's working. In the end there is really there is nothing we can do until we arrive in early July and get a good look at the floor ourselves. We may be having that big family house warming get together in the backyard because our new house may not actually be livable right about then.

What else can we blow up?

This is what I heard my husband say to the kids shortly after the trucks left carrying all our wordily possessions.  Sometime during the last few days of packing we found a stash of fireworks leftover from New Year's Eve.  Can't exactly ship those, so what else is there to do except to run right out into the backyard and set them off immediately.  Apparently just making big bangs is far too boring, it is much more fun to blow things up.  Sadly everything is packed and on the back of a truck going down the road somewhere so there rally isn't much to blow up.  They are down to blowing up empty plastic water bottles.  Yes, we are such good examples for our budding pyromaniacs.

Happy Father's Day

This is Dave's Father's Day Present.

Forgive the mess, we are packing and all our art is all stacked and ready to go.  

We saw this piece during Environment Week. Dave was strangely drawn to it, I was unconvinced. I thought it was a little creepy.  The second day we went back to look at it and there was a performance being presented by a local drama group.  It was presented all in Chichewa, so we enjoyed the action but had a little trouble following the plot.  After it was over a gentleman translated it for those of us who "haven't had enough time to practice our Chichewa."

The gist of the play was that a man fell sick and went to his local traditional healer*, we might  call him a witch doctor, to get medicine.  The healer did his best, but the trees that the medicine come from had all been cut down to be made into charcoal.  There was no medicine.  In the end the man died.

There goes the medicine. 

Right about then I knew that picture was coming home with us.

The title of the painting?  "Plant 10 Trees For Medicine."

*There are only about 2 doctors for about every 100,000 people here in Malawi.  For most people traditional healers are the only medical practitioners they will ever see. 

13! Alonzo is a TEENAGER!!! RUN!!!

I am still alive, I promise

Last you heard I was trying to purge the house of unwanted stuff, while the kids were at camp, and Murphy's law was in over drive. This week I am purging, packing, and organizing like a mad woman because the movers are arriving next week.  I am on a deadline here. Failure is not an option. Actually there is no failure, everything in the house right now is heading to Oman in one big shipment so actually I could quit right now and it would all be OK, at least until I start unpacking boxes.  I am setting things up so that future me doesn't have quite so many problems when the shipment arrives in Muscat, and so that things will go just a little bit smoother when the packers arrive.  I keep telling myself that I will thank me later.

So what else have I been doing other than preparing the house for pack out, swearing I will be more organized in Oman (even I have to say "Yeah right!"), and pre-packing things that are really important to me?  Is that all I do for the last few months at post?  Not hardly.

Earlier this month we celebrated Alonzo's 13th birthday, his actual birthday is tomorrow, but since I knew this week would be crazy, and some of his friends ditched the last week of school and left post slightly early for summer in the states, we celebrated early.  I can't believe he is going to be a teenager.  What the heck happened, and are really going to do this teen thing again?  I barely survived Dakota's teen years.  Dave and I have arranged a special treat for him, but I can't tell you dear readers since he also reads the blog.  You will have to wait, but trust me it is a very cool treat.

Lat month we made one last trip to Zambia for one last fabulous safari.  There is nothing like camping in Africa.  Was that a lion I just heard?  Yep, that was a lion.  Wow, the hippos are loud tonight. Ohh that elephant sounded really close, wonder what upset him?   And yes the animal do move through camp, but usually not until later in the evening after camp has quieted down, sometimes the sounds are right outside the tent.

There was one really scary moment this time, but the boys handled it well.  Shortly after dark, but long before the camp had settled in for the night, Dave and I walked from the tent to the bar to grab a soda (him) and a Mosi beer (me) before it got too late, and the animals started wandering through the camp.  Yes, Wildlife Camp has a bar, and a swimming pool, and hot showers. We really know how to rough it. As we walked by the pool on the way back to the tent we stopped short because there was a hippo standing on the path munching away.  Hippos are seriously dangerous animals and this thing was between us and our kids who we had left sitting outside the tent at our campfire.

We backtracked, alerted the staff who began shooing the hippo towards the river, and then circled waaaay around the hippo.  When we arrived at the camp we found two kids sitting in the car faces pressed against the glass, and the third hiding under a picnic table. Apparently this thing walked right by the kids on it's way from the lagoon to the river. Two of the kids went "Eeek Hippo!" and ran for the car before it got too close, the third went "It's too early, its not a hippo." and stayed his ground until it was really close when he went skittering off to the nearest shelter, the picnic table.  As long as he stayed quiet the picnic table wasn't a bad choice for dealing with a hippo then tend to treat large things like picnic tables and tents as if they were rocks and just walk around them.  Good thing it wasn't a lion or leopard though.

We've made our last trip to the swimming pool at the Tamerind club, it's just too cold now for swimming. We've made our last trip to Mua Mission with some friends where we bought the coolest Guli Wan Kuli carving.  We continue to go out Wednesday nights with friends to eat out.  Tonight is Chinese food.  Yummy!  I'm ordering the spicy tofu and the green beans. We have already said good by to many friends, I hope that someday, somewhere, our paths cross again. There are still more goodbyes to come.  SOB!  We have finished homeschooling this year, although we will continue with a much lighter summer school schedule after pack out is finished.  The boys are not real happy with me. Oh well, suck it up cupcake.

And now...I saved the best for last. In March David and I closed on our own little house in San Antonio.  YAY!  YAY!  YAY!  We are homeowners!!!

We are so excited.  It is little and cute and in the same neighborhood as most of our friends, and some of our family.  We've spent countless hours pouring over websites trying to decide what furniture we want.  We finally, just in the last few weeks, have ordered the beds for the kids, the dining room set, the sofa and coffee table.  We maxed out our airfreight sending mementos and stuff back to make the house feel like home.

San Antonio is our home base where we go every home leave and most R&Rs.  Which means either renting a house $$$$$ or camping at a relative's house. Our family has been very gracious to put us up, but if you have ever hosted someone for an entire month, or been the guest for that long, you know after the first few days it can be tiresome and difficult for everyone. Especially if you are hosting a whole flock of people and not just one person.

Backstory for the those unfamiliar with the foreign service, R&R is a privilege allotted to those of us serving at hardship posts to allow us rest and recuperate, generally once or twice during a 3 year tour. It may be taken overseas, or in the states.  There is no set time limit for R&R.  Home leave is a different beast.  Home leave is mandated by congress for 20 working days, in the states, for the purpose of repatriation.  For both of these we receive airfare, then we are on our own. This seems reasonable until you realize we are mandated by law to take a month long vacation, every 2-3 years.  Could you afford to stay in a hotel for a month?  Would you want to?  How about renting a car so you can get around? Rental cars and hotels are expensive.  If you don't plan carefully it is easy to come out of home leave or R&R with a huge mountain of credit card debt.  Often you end up camping on someone's sofa, and borrowing the family beater,  like a kid home from college, to cut a few costs. No more couch camping for us!  YAY!

We will have one week to turn an empty house into a functioning vacation home.  Why one week?  Because we signed all the kids up for camp that first week back in the states.  While they are at camp we will be unpacking, assembling, and shopping. I am giddy at the prospect.  When we had our house before the FS it was sort of put together haphazardly with hand-me-downs and bargain clearance items.  It was what we could afford back then.  This time we have been able to piece together a look that reflects who we are now, not what we can afford.  Don't get me wrong we have a budget, a really tight budget, but we have managed to cut corners here so we can splurge there, and it all seems to be coming together nicely.  Now all that remains is to see if what I am picturing in my head really works when it is all in the room together.  I will post pictures later.

Purge Update

So far I have no idea how weight much I have gotten rid because the scale is broken.  The generator ran out of fuel and the washing machine broke. The generator has been refueled and the broken washing machine replaced although he broken one is still sitting in my kitchen waiting to be picked up and removed for repairs.  So how is your week going?

Green Camp and the Great Purge of 2013

This week the kids are off at Green Camp.  In many, many ways Green Camp has been the highlight of our time in Malawi.  It is, I am almost certain, one of the things the kids will remember long into the future.  This week they will be celebrating all things nature, as well as preparing for the upcoming Earth Day celebration at Four Seasons. They will have a busy, fun-filled week, and I am happy for them.

In the meantime I am alone in the house, completely alone for the first time in months.  The house is eerily quiet.  For the moment I am enjoying a blessedly quiet cup of tea, but in just a few minutes I will be even busier than the kids.  This summer is pack out.  That means packing everything we own and preparing it to go to our next post in Muscat, Oman.

The movers will show up sometime in June and everything we own will swathed in miles of paper and bubble wrap, sealed in mountains of boxes, and loaded onto trucks.  If everything works the way it is supposed to we will see our stuff again in about 4, maybe 5 months at our new house in Oman.

That does't sound too bad does it?  It sort of sounds like the packers will do all at the hard stuff. Of course there is a catch.  There is always a catch.  The trick is that everything we own must weigh less than 7200 pounds.  Everything including clothes, toys, books, towels, any furniture we own, dust collectors, pots, pans, cutting boards, and everything else  that turns an echoing house into a functioning home must weigh less than 7200 pounds.

This week I will be going through every closet, box, cabinet, and drawer purging our house of all that is needless weight.  FUN!  More fun than you can imagine.  It is both totally necessary and totally incompatible with homeschooling, so it must be accomplished this week.  While the kids are at camp.  So much for my dreams of hours of reading, lazing about enjoying the quiet.

I will be posting the weeded out weight each day.  I know you are thrilled to know how much trash, junk and broken toys I manage throw away each day.  There you have it, the oh so glamorous life of the foreign service spouse.  Jealous?

Things Diplo-Kids say

I was watching an episode of House Hunters International on AFN this afternoon. It featured young newlyweds moving to Spain so the husband could teach English.  The boys were a riot.

First they seemed puzzled as to why the show kept repeating how hard it was to move overseas to a country where they didn't know anyone.

"What's so hard about that? We do it all the time" 

Finally they allowed that it would probably be harder if there wasn't an embassy community waiting at post with CLO events so they could meet other kids. They still thought they were making too much of it.

There several comments about how maybe we should think about bidding on Spain because it looked cool. Don't even talk to me about bidding until we get to Oman and have unpacked our HHE, please.

The kicker was at the very end of the show when they reviewed the 3 apartments featured, in the end the young couple didn't choose the expensive but cute apartment in an area of town where there were lots of expats, not did they choose the cheaper beachfront apartment with no oven and a long commute.  They smartly choose the cheapest apartment, in walking distance from his work.

The apartment came complete with very funky old tile floor that clashed badly with the aging sofa, a giant dining table in the middle of the living room, and seemingly endless halls between rooms.  In short not exactly their dream home but practical, leaving them money to explore the country of Spain.

Alonzo almost jumped up and down as he yelled,

"It's perfect, it looks just like a diplomat's home!!"  

Wordless Wednesday - Happy Anniversary Babe! Fourteen Wonderful Years!