Placement Officer

The good news: We are medically and legally cleared! We have been poked, prodded, processed and deemed fit for service.

We have a placement officer! This is the person who tells us where and when we will leave. (His name is Patrick. He works in the big D.C. office. He seems nice.)

The bad news: Patrick told us last week (the Friday before Christmas) that he would review our files this week and let us know where we're going. When I emailed today (I'm trying not to pester him too much), I got an autoreply saying he's out today.

Horrors!

The good thing: I won't spend the entire day obsessively clicking refresh on my email. It's over until Monday. (I also left a voice mail. Good thing I don't know his cell number.)

The bad thing: Three parties this weekend at which we will have to continue to deflect The Question. We'll probably revert back to our standard, "Maybe Albania."

Sigh.

Holidays

It's likely that next year, Trevor & I will be somewhere far, far away for the holidays.

This was making me sad until Christmas Eve afternoon, as we drove around the slushy and cindery streets of suburban St. Louis looking for somewhere to take a walk in the 4pm dusk before attending a gathering of cousins and eating hashbrown casserole in an overheated, overcrowded house while getting smoke blown in my face by a fantastically kind aunt who also votes Republican because of abortion.

We will miss lots of people. But I hope that this time next year, I will be able to look back on the succession of overwhelming parties, gift-wrapped junk, white-knuckle drives in the snow, and post-meal bloats and push away the sentimentality enough to remember the reality.