Whole Towel Living

August 24, 2014 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

Ok. So it turns out that maybe I spoke too soon. The packout itself, both day 1 and day 2, were pretty painless and easy. It was the post packout panic that was problematic.

If you have ever moved you’ll understand (and remember with no fond feelings) the packing of all the leftovers after the furniture is gone. And the cleaning. The never ending cleaning.

I, in typical fashion, bit off more than I could chew and opted to go back to work on Wednesday and Thursday leaving B to clean and pack, and sending C back to school. Only sending C back to school was the right decision.

Since I’m staying with the firm I actually had work to do when I arrived back in the office, so I didn’t really get a chance to properly say goodbye to anyone, and I was frantically trying to fit in calls to Duke Energy and AT&T to cancel utilities in between discussing discovery responses with my clients. Luckily I’ll be back in the office in a few weeks for depositions, so maybe I’ll have time to wander around and say farewell then, but somehow I doubt it.

When I arrived back at the house on Wednesday evening there were two huge piles of STUFF in the middle of the dining room. B informed me that one was going to get packed in the cars and the other pile was going over to a friend’s house to be stored until I drive down for those depositions in mid-September. What was that about spending quality time saying goodbye to folks? Looks like I’ll be packing the car instead…

What is doubly unfortunate about this is that, as noted previously, we ended up with about 230 lbs of additional UAB space that we didn’t use. I’m pretty sure a good amount of the STUFF would have fit in the left over UAB space. We’ll be remembering that for next time and doing our best to get our UAB weight up to 599.9 lbs before we start loading the cars.

For all our worries about how C would react to the empty house, the teary goodbyes and the random moving men driving away with our furniture, she never stopped being our hilarious, laughing, dancing, singing little girl. She sang while we packed, she danced in the empty rooms, and she laughed at all the hugs she was getting from everyone we know.

Protecting our home – in NC and in VA

She insisted that we were staying in a “whole towel,” despite our equally insistent response that it was, in fact, a hotel.

She pressed every elevator button, and told every random stranger we met that she was moving to Washington. We could have learned a lot from the laid back way she accepted every change without question or complaint. The only times she wasn’t happy was when she was hungry or tired. Totally understandable.

So tonight we have made it to our new home. There are boxes everywhere, and we need to figure out how to fit all that STUFF into a much smaller space. Tomorrow afternoon is the first “meet and greet” for the 179th A-100. We’ve been checking out the bios from B’s classmates – they look like an impressive bunch. I’m looking forward to meeting them, and their families, though I’m also, frankly, petrified about how it will feel to be the “spouse” and nothing more. I’m hoping I can take a lesson from C and accept each change that comes without complaint or question. Change is what we signed up for. And change is good…

These are the boxes of our lives…

August 19, 2014 / cdncarolina / Leave a comment

It’s PACK OUT DAY! Well, actually, it’s the end of Pack Out Day 1, and B, C and I are sitting in our living room (furniture has not yet been packed) relaxing among the boxes.

Today was surprisingly ok. Last night was not so ok. I was teary, sad and overall unhappy. We had a fabulous dinner with our friends T & A (yeah, yeah…) and their littles (their son W is about 3 months older than C and they love each other), we cooked steak, drank wine and enjoyed a lovely, lovely evening. Leaving their house was hard. Really hard. Harder than I expected given that I keep reminding myself that I’ll see them again in about 3 weeks when I’m back in town for depositions.

But then today dawned bright and early (particularly after the wine) and our movers arrived, and things since then have been pretty good.

They’re heeeeere…

The movers started with our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage). We had an allowance of 600 lbs. Anyone out there know what 600 lbs looks like? Nope? Well, me neither, because despite our worries our UAB ended up coming way under our limit at 366 lbs. Here is what 366 lbs looks like.

UAB for BCD.

There weren’t a lot of surprises today, but one of them was that the “tri-fold” box that is used for UAB turns out not to be triangular as I was expecting. I suppose if I had looked at the dimensions in our papers I might have realized a “tri-fold” box had 4 sides, but in my head I was imagining a tri-fold box that had three sides. It seemed like it would be pretty inefficient, but since we are talking about the government I wasn’t about to put it past anyone. So the mysterious “tri-fold” is a decent sized very sturdy box, three of which are now full of clothes and other things that will be delivered to our apartment next week.

A tri-fold box! With 4 sides!

Security sealed for your protection.

Rooms full of stuff became rooms full of boxes and here we are with our lives in boxes ready to ship them off and head to DC in a couple of days. B and I mostly stood around feeling useless and making ridiculously detailed lists of everything going into each box. I’m glad we knew to keep such a detailed list since the descriptions of the packers leaves a bit to be desired. Watching them pack the kitchen I watched them load vases, roasting pans, muffin pans, salad spinner and half a dozen other things into a box and then write “pots n’ pans” on the box. That would not have been very helpful in a few months when we are trying to figure out what boxes to call for when we go overseas.

We also knew (from reading other posts – thanks FS bloggers!) to have a “Safe Room” (or 3) where we could put things that we didn’t want them to pack. We shoved a LOT of stuff into those rooms and kept throwing things in as we went along. Once the movers leave we’ll have to pack all of that into our cars to take with us to DC.

We’re having a picnic in the living room tonight then going to stay with good friends. Then we’ll be back tomorrow to watch them load and drive away. Let’s hope Pack Out Day 2 goes as smoothly as Day 1 went!

Living room with stuff.

Living room with boxes.

Spare bedroom with stuff.

Spare room with boxes.

B with notebook…packout is hard work!

Off limits!

Do not enter!

Waste not…

August 17, 2014August 18, 2014 / cdncarolina / Leave a comment

Looks like we’ve been having a going away party, right?

Nope – found a case of beer with a “drink by” date in 2012. This is, sadly, not the only food/drink item I found from 2012 and had to toss. Given the reason for our move this aspect of packing has been eye opening.

I stood over the sink pouring out the beer so I could recycle the cans and I was struck, as I have been again and again in this move, by how incredibly lucky we are in North America.

I’m contemplating moving to Africa, Asia, or South America, places where the things I’ve discarded in the last several weeks would have been, for many people, welcome, and even life sustaining additions to their lives. I packed C’s clothes today: they filled an entire adult sized suitcase, and that is just her summer 3 year old clothes. She could, quite literally, wear a different outfit every day for months on end.

I’m trying to give myself some slack. I did pour out the beer to recycle the cans rather than throwing them away. I have made trips to the Humane Society, the Homeless Shelter, ReStore, the Salvation Army, and Beds for Kids to donate things to the most appropriate charity. We’ve tried hard to eat everything in our freezer. But when it comes right down to it I have discarded food, clothing, toiletries, toys and just about any thing else you can think of that couldn’t be donated, eaten or used without much more than a pang of guilt.

I’m falling asleep on the couch now, so I must go to bed and slip into my lovely soft high end sheets, and drift off to sleep without any fear for my safety or that of my child and family. I hope in a few months, if my bed is surrounded by a mosquito net to keep off the malaria carrying mosquitos, and my house is surrounded by security guards supplied by the Marines, I can remember this feeling of abundance and luck that I’ve felt while I’ve packed and know that even then I will be one of the lucky ones.

Pack out is Monday, so more to come when I am awake and sitting on the couch. For now, I’m going to take my lucky, lucky self to bed.

Time is inexorable

August 14, 2014December 26, 2014 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Twenty (or so) years ago, my journalism professor Wiley Hilburn wrote “TIME IS INEXORABLE” in the margin of a piece I wrote for my weekly column as the editor of our college newspaper. The column was my last before graduation. In it I talked about my attempts to freeze moments of my last days on campus in my memory. Now, Mr. Hilburn’s words keep floating to the surface of my brain. I thought I had TONS of time to pack, purge, go to lunch, go to dinner and generally be ready to move. Suddenly all the time I thought I had seems to have caught up with me.

I no longer have open days for lunches, evenings for dinners, or afternoons for playdates. The days and nights are filled. All the food in my freezer will not get eaten and I have to resign myself to that fact. I have five more outfits I need for work in Charlotte. I have five more nights in my dear house.

What happened to all the TIME I thought I had!?

Does this look like the desk of a girl who has 5 days left in this office?

Mr. Hilburn was right about time. It is inexorable. It moves without stopping. No amount of wishing or hoping or ignoring (I’m quite expert at that) will stop it. I’m just running trying to catch up with it. Like the quintessential movie character running, hand outstretched, to catch the last handle on the train caboose before it chugs off into the distance without me.

And yet…what am I doing now. Writing, certainly, but more importantly, watching the Property Brothers. See what I said about ignoring…

They moved our Packout date to Aug. 18 (yes, that is Monday) so we have one less day for packing, sorting, purging. Kindly the USG will pay for us to stay for up to 10 days in a hotel, so we had a hotel in Charlotte booked for the 19th-22nd – somewhere within walking distance to both my office and C’s daycare. But now we need a room on the 18th too and, wouldn’t you know it, the hotel hasn’t got a single room open for Monday night (bizarre, right?). So we can either move hotels which, needless to say is not my first choice, or spend the night in C’s room using the blow up bed and her trundle (it is built-in, so it is staying).

I’m leaning toward “camping” in C’s room. After all, we’re going on an adventure – why shouldn’t it start in our own home?

Rolling toward move day…

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014 / cdncarolina / Leave a comment

Who knew there were so many calories in joining the Foreign Service?

I certainly didn’t, but seriously, the number of dinners, lunches and drinks that I’m consuming as I make my way toward our move date is getting to be a little obscene. I really may be “rolling” out of Charlotte on August 22 in a very literal sense.

When we found out B had an offer to join the August 25 A-100 class, I started a “Charlotte Bucket List” thinking we’d list – and visit – all the places we loved in the city before we left.

Turns out all those places serve food.

So far we’ve managed to cross off Fig Tree (once for our anniversary, and once more for good measure for me with my amazing book club friends), Vivace, Soul, Bistro La Bon, Mert’s, Nikko…and the list goes on. And that doesn’t count any of the lunches that I’ve been making my way through every day (B also admitted sheepishly that he has been doing a “farewell tour” of his lunch haunts). Today I finally had to barricade myself in my office and eat a Lean Cuisine, lest I explode…

Beignets at Fig Tree…Yum…

From the Vivace balcony looking at Charlotte

We have managed to also visit a couple of non-food related places, including the Lazy-5 Ranch where we got to feed giraffes (or “G-giraffes” as C calls them), Bank of America Stadium (though to see UK football not US football), and Discovery Place, but the primary focus has clearly been food.

Liverpool v. A.C. Milan!

Lazy-5 g-giraffe

The thing about all these visits is that the food, and the places, have been entirely secondary to the people we’ve been with. The real “bucket list” it turns out, is about people. The people we love and will miss in this lovely Southern city we have called home for so long.

Where in the world? Discovery Place!

Only two more weekends remain in Charlotte – so we’ve got a bunch of places – and people – left to visit. By the end of the next two weeks I may have to eat plain broth for a month to fit back into my clothes, but new wardrobe be damned, I’m going to keep eating…and visiting…and sharing a last few precious hours with the people and places we love.

Someone else’s party…

August 1, 2014August 1, 2014 / cdncarolina / 4 Comments

Today is Flag Day for the A-100 class before B’s. Today those new FSO’s will find out where in the world they will be posted. I don’t know a soul in that class (the 178th A-100), other than through a couple of their blogs, but I am nervous and excited for them just the same. The main folks I’ve been following (and who I’m now anxiously waiting to hear their news) are here and here and here.

Flag Day is the day in every FS orientation where family and friends gather to watch the new FSO’s find out – and accept – their assignments. Most people will be going overseas, though there are, from what I understand, usually a few DC posts.

This is a big deal. So much about our lives (and theirs) has been up in the air since B started the application process to get into the FS, and this is where the rubber meets the road and our path, at least for the next couple of years, becomes clearer.

The 178th Flag Day starts at 3:30 p.m. today and I’ll be checking my email to see the blog updates to find out where the bloggers from that class are going. And I’ll be thinking about what I’m going to be feeling in about 9 weeks on September 26, 2014, when I’m standing in that room with our family and friends waiting to hear B’s name called and learning where we’re going to go.

Want to see what this crazy Flag Day is really all about – check out this blog post from another FSO blogger who pulled together 71 Flag Day stories from other bloggers. I go back to this blog post a lot and read other people’s Flag Day stories. I can’t wait to add our own story to that list…

A logistical daymare…

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Doc McStuffins made me cry this morning.

If you don’t know Doc McStuffins she is a small, maybe 5 year old, cartoon character who is a doctor to her stuffed animals. C loves her some Doc McStuffins and she earned enough “points” this weekend from being good to get to watch an episode this morning (no, this has nothing to do with keeping C preoccupied while I try and get ready for work, I swear…).

This morning the episode she was watching was all about Doc getting homesick at her first sleepover. To make her feel better, her stuffed animals sing her this song:

“When the one that you love feels so far away

Just close your eyes try to picture their face

‘Neath the night sky you can see the same stars…”

Anyone see where this is leading? Yup, to me, standing in the bathroom trying to put on makeup while crying. Sigh. I’m guessing this is not going to be the first time.

Now, back to the logistics at hand. Do they have to do with packing? Nope. We’re surprisingly on top of that so far. Transitioning C to a new home, new daycare, new world? Nah. So far she’s all good. These are purely D related logistics related to moving my career without rocking too many boats.

D in 1997: Career Day 1

I’ve been a lawyer at the same law firm for 17 years. I started here as a summer clerk in 1996 and they have been kind enough to let me stay here ever since. And, while I’m excited about our new life in the FS, I’m not ready to jettison my career quite yet, so I’m going remote. The firm has been extremely flexible in helping me figure out how I can transition and it has all felt very easy…so far.

Until I started having to schedule things in September. Now, all of a sudden, I’m filling up my September calendar with depositions, mediations and hearings and none of them, not surprisingly, are happening in Washington, D.C. These sort of logistics have never been terribly difficult before because B’s job was such that he could typically leave by 5 p.m. and could always pick up C (and drop her off). He’s been a de facto single parent on more than one occasion while I’ve been in trial or out of town in depositions.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I went back to work B stayed home and took 12 weeks of FMLA. It was (in a word) AWESOME. I’d get up, feed C, leave, stop and get a coffee, work all day, return home and find a clean, happy baby and a fully cooked (often relatively gourmet) meal waiting for me. Seriously folks, it did not suck. About two weeks after I went back to work I had to go to New Jersey for 5 days for depositions. It was a grueling trip, but other than pumping and shipping milk back to C via FedEx (yes, you really can do that), I could concentrate on my work knowing C was well cared for and loved back home.

But as of August 25 we are not in a world where B has a 8-5 job any more, Dorothy (not what D stands for, but good try). So, besides worrying about the actual depositions/mediations/hearings, I’m also worrying about how logistically I’m going to manage.

At least a few days of B’s A-100 training will be “offsite,” meaning he will not be able to drop off, or pick up, C. Do we know when this offsite week will be? Of course we don’t! We *think* it will be the third week of A-100, but, as with all things FS, “it depends” on a number of other factors. So right now I’m scheduling my work commitments and hoping B will be available to put his Super Daddy mantle back on for a few days. Add to that trying to decide if it is better to fly (more expensive), or drive (longer, but WAY more convenient in terms of having autonomy when I get back to CLT), and whether to stay in a hotel (sleep guarantee) or bunk with friends (fun guarantee), and I feel a bit like I’m living in this parallel universe where part of me is pretending things aren’t really going to change.

I really want to make this flexible, portable job work for me, but I suspect this will be another aspect of my life where I will have to let some control go until I can get my bearings in DC.

Oh, and speaking of getting bearings, we have an address! And a phone number! I haven’t had a landline in so long I feel like I’m stepping back to the dark ages a bit, but I think I can remember how to work a regular phone (of course we’ll probably have to unplug it most of the time to stop C from calling either the fire department or Australia…).

As for Doc McStuffins, tomorrow we’ll be watching an episode where she fixes some toy cars; toy cars never make me cry.

Well…How did I get here?

July 24, 2014August 20, 2014 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

As I’ve told people our news a number of them have asked me what made B want to pursue a career in the Foreign Service, so I thought I’d share that story here as well.

If I had to guess, when B and I met at a little pub on 5th Street in 2006, he could never have imagined that 8 years later the two of us (and C; oh, and Miller the dog) would be packing up, leaving Charlotte and heading to an as yet unknown foreign city to serve our country. He had just bought a house, and a puppy (which he used shamelessly to entice me into accepting a first date), and, I’m pretty sure, imagined his life proceeding in the typical dating, marriage, kids fashion.

And, I’ll admit that, while I’ve always had some wanderlust – and had no dog and a house I’d been in for 6 years – I also saw my life proceeding forward in Charlotte – even if not in the typical fashion.

Then, for Labor Day 2006 I invited B to come with me to Mexico City to visit my friend J, her husband N, and their new baby, B. With us were two of my best girlfriends from law school, who, along with J, formed a multi-sided place where I, to this day, go to get the very power that often sustains me = Girl Power. J was an FSO, in the middle of her second tour at the embassy in Mexico City.

So we went to Mexico City and visited J & N in their fabulous condo supplied by the USG, we ate wonderful food (and drank wonderful drink), we toured the Mexican Embassy, we visited the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico’s home (at the time he was married to the heiress of Modelo, so their home was, uh, quite nice) and actually met him and shook his hand. To say that this was pretty cool is an understatement.

Then we managed to top even that and the seven of us (four women and three men, we left Baby B at home) drove to Acapulco and rented a house for 4 days. It was, as they say, the bombdiggity. We had a wonderful chef at the house and a young man who brought us drinks by the pool as we lounged. Let’s just say this, too, did not suck

During this trip B talked a lot to J & N; he asked them a lot of questions about their lives, how they had gotten interested in the FS, and what had led them to Mexico. And, while no one was under any illusion that the way we lived in Acapulco was in any way the way an FSO typically lives, the prospect of visiting and living in these amazing places got under B’s skin.

I didn’t have enough interest in the overall workings of the State Department and foreign policy (especially given that I was, at that time, not even a U.S. Citizen) for it to peak my interest the way it peaked B’s, but I’ve always had an interest in adventure, so I have been, and still am, B’s biggest supporter in making the dream that was born in Mexico a reality.

J and N have amazing careers in the FS – and I can only hope we get as lucky as they have been in that respect. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m so grateful that we have them (and our friend P) to help us along the way.

And we may find ourselves in another part of the world…

Controlling the uncontrollable

July 23, 2014 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

I’m beginning to feel that my life as the mother of a three year old is going to be good preparation for my new life as a “trailing spouse.”

Before C, at least before my adventures in pregnancy, I prided myself on my control of most situations. I could plan for almost every eventuality, every possible outcome – whether of a case, a relationship, or a day. I could make lists, make plans, direct the other attorneys and staff I worked with, and generally maintain physical, emotional and organizational control over my work and my life.

Then came pregnancy and, later, C. And my control disappeared along with my waistline. I’d like to think the waistline is generally back, but somehow the control seems to have been permanently displaced.

This morning C refused to get out of bed until I agreed that she could wear a tutu and crocs to have breakfast.

I tried to reason with her.

“We need to get dressed in clothes we can wear to school,” I cajoled.

“No.”

“You won’t be able to play in the playground if you wear this,” I told her.

“I don’t want to play in the playground,” was her answer.

I’m sure a better Mummy than me could have sweetly convinced her to put on her (appropriate for school) clothes, eat her breakfast, wear her socks, and leave the house without a doll, three princesses, a light up ball, her umbrella and a purse, but not me. Because I cannot “control” or “manage” or “organize” her; she is three.

And it turns out, while I can do a lot of planning, I cannot control much about what my life will look like in the next few months – and maybe even for the foreseeable future.

It seems crazy to me that I have no idea where I might be living next year. What happened to the “me” that needed to know what was happening, where I’d be, and what I’d be doing every day? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and to find myself totally freaking out, but so far that has not happened.

I have started to lose a bit of emotional control – it started in earnest tonight. I went to workout and when I arrived home some of our best friends in Charlotte were just leaving our house, a leather chair we put on our “sell/give” list in the back of their car. C and their son, W, were kicking a soccer ball back and forth, their baby E was playing on C’s little push car. It was such a scene of contentment and friendship. My stomach gave a little twist as I got out of my car and walked toward them all, thinking how much I wanted to preserve the little scene, but knowing I couldn’t.

W & C – Friends from the beginning…

Then, later, as I was putting C to bed she went to her basket of stuffed animals and said “Where is my monkey with the tail on it? And the daddy monkey?” The twist intensified. I donated those monkeys last weekend. I know she doesn’t need three stuffed monkeys (I kept Curious George), but her question just left an ache in my chest thinking of those lost monkeys and how much she loved making them a “Mommy” monkey, a “Daddy” monkey and a Baby George monkey.

And finally, as she was falling asleep, giving me a hug and playing with my hair, she said “I didn’t want W to take my big chair.”

“But W will look after the chair and we can come back and visit it, won’t that be fun?”

“Is W coming to Washington, Mummy?”

“No, sweetie,” I told her. “W is staying here in Charlotte to look after our chair. But we’ll visit him, and maybe he can visit us.”

She said “Ok” but I know she doesn’t understand.

I understand though. I know that how often we might, or might not, visit is out of our control and there is nothing I can do about that.

There are no stupid questions, right?

July 18, 2014July 18, 2014 / cdncarolina / 5 Comments

An associate once walked in my office and said, “I know there are no stupid questions, but….”

And before he could get started with his actual question, I stopped him.

“Actually,” I said. “There are stupid questions, but you should feel free to proceed if you feel like you still need to have your question answered by me.”

It was clear he was not amused, and I admit it was harsh, but come on, we ALL know that there are stupid questions and it tends to be the same people who are always asking them, right?

I’m not saying all basic questions are stupid by any means. But what drives me nuts are the people who ask me questions rather than look in the very obvious places where they are likely to find the answer (for the associate: the rules of civil procedure where many answers asked by young litigation associates can be found).

question mark So here I sit, mind a-whirl with, you guess it, stupid questions. Or at least I perceive them to be stupid because I’m quite sure that out there in the hundreds of pages of information that has been sent to us in the last few weeks the answer is waiting. No doubt it is lying around happily in some government document wearing a neat little red and white striped hat just waiting for me to find it and be enlightened.

The problem is that I’m running out of time to ferret out each of these hidden answers. All the information becomes blurry when I stare at it for too long so I’m left with two choices: (1) either ask someone my, no doubt, stupid question, and hope they are nicer to me than I was to my young friend above, or (2) don’t ask and end up with a SNAFU (hey, another acronym!) that takes way more effort than I want to impart to fixing it.

Here is the type of stupid question I’m debating: “do I need to remove dishes, silverware etc… from my kitchen cabinets or will the movers really do ALL the work and pack them straight out of the drawers?” I just cannot fathom that someone will actually come into my kitchen/den/dining room and do all the difficult and miserable work of wrapping and packing the dishes, books etc… for me. Even when the answer appears clear, as in this question, I just can’t believe it.

My parents moved a lot – forget about moving from England to Canada, once we got to Canada they have, to date, moved at least 12 times. Mostly within the same city. And I’ve moved probably 10 times since I left home (not counting when I moved back home), and not once did I use an actually “moving company.” So not only did I do all the packing, but we rented the U-Haul and dragged our furniture from one apartment, city, house to another, usually roping friends in with the promise of beer and pizza. Now you’re telling me that, except for the boxes we’re taking with us, someone will hire and pay other people to pack every last stick of furniture, every knife, fork and spoon, and all our many books, and will then take it somewhere and store it for us before we get sent to our first post and we get to demand either 7,200 lbs or 18,000 lbs of the stuff back again!? Crazy talk.

Our “packout” is now scheduled for August 19. Sometime before then the movers designated by the USG will show up at our house and “assess” the length of time it will take them to pack, how many boxes and crates, as well as paper and tape, they will need, and what special care they will have to take with certain items. And then, from what I can gather, our job will be to stand back, maintain an inventory of what is going in each box, and supervise while they do the hard work. For a girl who has been moving herself for almost 30 years this sounds like a dream come true.

Hmmm…what to pack?

And so, when they arrive for their assessment, my words to that young associate are going to come back to bite me, because I know, without a doubt, that I’m going to be asking them many, many stupid questions.

What is it they say about karma again?