End of tour: The state of the pantry

With less than four months to go until we head home, I've been taking stock of what remains of our consumables and trying to use up what's left.  As always, there are things that we didn't bring enough of, and things of which we brought way too much.  So I find myself having conversations like this with our kids:

Sorry, no more hot fudge sauce.  Why don't you top your ice cream with some yummy homemade sweet chili sauce instead?

We're out of ketchup, but this Trader Joe's Yellow Curry Sauce will be delicious on your fries!

As our whole wheat rotini stash dwindles, I find myself thinking of creative ways to use up rice vermicelli (a little of that stuff goes a long way and I have LOTS).  I also have, like, a case of rice vinegar and about three cases of light coconut milk.  We could eat curried rice noodles every day for the next two months.  We've been making smoothies just about every day using frozen fruit and coconut milk so I think we will be able to use that up.  But five bags of shredded coconut?  I guess I should start making macaroons (not to be confused with macarons, which I should also get cracking on,  to use up all the almond meal in my freezer).

62 cans of coconut milk
18 cans of refried black beans
13 bottles of rice vinegar
12 boxes of quinoa

11 packages of rice noodles

10 jars of almond butter

7 bottles each of TJ red and yellow curry sauces

6 jars of coconut oil
6 pounds of sushi rice
5 packages of shredded coconut

5 pounds of brown rice rotini

5 bottles of vanilla extract

4 bottles of Trader Joe's goddess dressing
4 bottles of maple syrup

4 pounds of almond meal

3 bottles of tamari

3 pounds of whole wheat rotini

2 pounds of red lentils
2 liters of fish sauce (why I thought I needed to buy that stuff in liters escapes me at the moment).
2 5-lb sacks of whole wheat flour

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Quinoa burgers, anyone?

What's left on your pantry shelves at the end of a consumables tour?

Where to Next?

That's the question, right?

Here's the answer.

Yep, we're going home this summer.  Jeremy got a very good job at the State Department and we anticipate we will be in Washington for two or three years.

And I am scared.  We've only been out of the U.S. for four years - but all of a sudden it feels like a lot longer.  When we moved to Moscow, my first child was just eight months old.  I have spent almost my entire parenting life overseas and suddenly, that seems significant.

I should be clear.  I am very happy that we are going to be able to spend time with family, that our girls and boy will get to know their relatives, get to play with their cousins.  But my priorities have shifted during the last four years, and moving home brings with it challenges I wouldn't have thought about five years ago.

I think the things I am most apprehensive about are:

1) The relentless availability of stuff, and

2) GMOs and the general quality of our food.

On the first point, we have too much stuff.  OK, so pretty much every American I know has too much stuff.  But just how much, too much, stuff we have, is made clear to us in stark relief every day.  Every day when I drive past the scrap-metal shacks near our house, I remember how much un-needed stuff is in my garage.  Every time I slip a coin to the gypsy children begging on our route to school and look at their ragged scarves and dirty fingers, I think about all the toys that lie, un-played with, in our playroom.  I send bags of stuff out of the house every few weeks, to shelters, to my housekeeper and to her neighbors.  But it feels like we are still suffocated with stuff.

I know that, theoretically, this should be under my control.  That I will just have to keep our trips to stores brief and infrequent.  Here, we never go shopping for recreational purposes, and I have even cut down significantly on online ordering lately.  It feels great, honestly.  While in the States, though, I have definitely found myself going to Target just because I was bored.  Maybe I won't have time to be bored.  One can hope.

On the second point, I am not naive enough to think that we are not eating genetically modified stuff in Georgia.  After all, they do import produce (even sweet potatoes from the U.S., for which I am very thankful).  But I do think hormones, antibiotics and GMOs are fewer in our food supply here.  I already told Jeremy we'd be spending a lot more on food when we go back to the States, as I will try to buy hormone-free and organic as much as possible.  Our checking account is already quaking in fear.

So anyway, yeah.  Back to DC in summer 2014.  Ready or not.

Move over, Emeril!

Way back in 2005, on a first date that neither of us thought would actually lead anywhere, Jeremy cooked me dinner.  He lived in a typical apartment in downtown Yerevan; his kitchen was equipped with a two-burner travel stove and a toaster oven. Somehow he managed an impressive dinner of chicken in Roquefort sauce, roasted fingerling potatoes, a cucumber and tomato salad and bread pudding for dessert.  Though I generally only like potatoes with a suitably high fat-to-starch ratio, those fingerlings were good and I ate them all.

Although I wouldn't say we are foodies in the annoying sense of the word, we do enjoy a good meal.  Our favorite date is a tasting menu at a new restaurant, and we are big fans of Top Chef (we even own all the cook books).

So Jeremy was pretty excited to be offered the opportunity to appear on a Georgian cooking show as part of his job.  His task was to present some typically American food to a Georgian audience.  He had to consider local tastes, and the availability of ingredients.  After polling both American and Georgian friends, he settled on a menu of pork chops with fried apples and twice-baked potatoes.

The segment aired on New Year's Day on Georgian TV.  The video is below - it is dubbed in Georgian but if you listen hard you can still hear Jeremy talking.

We're thinking of sending the clip to the Food Network and are taking name suggestions.  "Foreign Service Foodie?"  "The Diplomat's Kitchen?"

Enjoy!

Another goodbye

We are always saying goodbye.  This week it was to dear friends who lived across the street.  We hadn't known them very long, but it was one of those rare friendships that flourishes quickly.  Natasha burst into tears when we parted and refused to give goodbye hugs.  I guess she is starting to understand what "going to America and not coming back means."

As for me, the loss of a kindred mom friend is definitely a blow.  I try to focus on the positives - first, of course, the friend isn't really lost as we will stay in touch; second, we are so lucky are we to have had this friendship; and third, in this lifestyle the going is always accompanied by coming, and perhaps there are more fantastic friendships on the horizon.

See you somewhere around the world, guys!

163

Is how many boxes the movers hauled out of here this afternoon.

Transition

When I was 12 years old, my family moved to Tel Aviv from northern Virginia.  My friends and I wrote each other long letters in balloony handwriting where the "i"s were dotted with hearts or stars or bubbles, analyzing for pages whether that it meant anything that the crush of the week had dropped his pencil in front of our lockers.  Though the letters took at least a month to arrive, at first I had so many pen-pals that I was getting at least one per week.  I kept them in a cardboard box under the sink in my bathroom until the day the pipes burst.  My second box did not fill up as quickly.  By the end of the three-year tour, I only had one pen-pal left.

*************************

Today on the playground, when talking about the transfer season and my impending pack-out, someone commented "well, you're a professional."  She was referring to the fact that I've been doing this - moving - since I was a year old.  And she was assuming that I was "good" at it by now. 


This is my 18th move.  If I were going to get "good" at it, I would have done it by now.  And in some ways, maybe I have.  I know that I want the house to be somewhat organized when the movers arrive.  I know that I don't want them carefully wrapping empty CD cases in endless layers of packing paper - so I prepack the house, as much as I can, before packing day.  And I know that I am not the type of person who can just blow through the house in 24 hours and take care of everything.  So I start a month in advance, an hour or so a day.  It's manageable.

When it comes to maintaining friendships, though, I have learned that it is not entirely under my control.  I email.  I call.  I start out with five pen-pals.  I end up, if I'm lucky, with one.  I know that, in most cases, it is nothing personal.  It's just how things are.

But it never gets easier.  The week or two before a move, I find myself withdrawing.  Even right now, on this gorgeous 75-degree day, I am holed up in my sewing room which, as you saw in the last post, is piled high with boxes.  I think that's because it's easier to be here, among the things that I will have with me in the future, than outside with the things I am leaving behind.  I know, it's really weird.

I've enjoyed my time here so much that it almost feels easier to say goodbye to Moscow and my friends now, before I've even left, so that the actual leaving is less difficult.  Our nanny, who has become family, told me that she would come the morning of our flight to see us off.  I am not going to tell her no, but I am honestly dreading this.  Those types of goodbye are too stark, too final, too real.  I prefer to just see you one day, and not see you the next.  I don't want to cry on the plane.  I want to look forward, not backward.

So, no, I'm not good at it.  But I have built a coping mechanism.

What's yours?

12:33 a.m.

And I am awake.  Tossing and turning in bed because, well, we are moving our entire lives in days that you can count on less than two hands.

And because I fully recognize how ridiculous it is that I spent three hours today sewing a blouse, when I should have been packing a suitcase.

And because I've started thinking about making plans with Stateside friends and have realized that the months of time that I thought I had, isn't, on second thought, exactly long enough to see everybody and do everything and buy everything that I need/want to see and do and buy.

And because I nursed a caffeinated frappe (thanks, Magic Bullet that also needs to go back into its box) until nearly 3 p.m.  Someday this caffeine hypersensitivity has to go away, right?

Anyway, I ended up getting out of bed with the intent of boxing up the sewing machine, seductive mechanical temptress that she is.

And I did.  She cried a little on the way in, but I held firm.  And kept going.  And now the sewing room/guest room/office/crap room looks like this:

And it occurs to me that my moves always seem to start and end like this: in a desperately-trying-to-be-organized-and-yet-still-vaguely-messy-and-pathetic stack of way more bins than I thought we needed full of the many things that we want/need to be happy.  And the lighting is always terrible.  And it's always the middle of the night.

Things that follow us around or, the Detritus of Life

Tonight Jeremy and I were organizing our CD and DVD collection in preparation for the move.  We don't have much time left here in Moscow and the giant stress-clock in my head is tick, tick, ticking away.  My stress dreams, which usually involve a college class I'm about to fail, now revolve around closets full of heirlooms that the movers forgot to pack and which can't be mailed or taken on the plane.

We got rid of a few items - movies that we will never watch and kids' CDs received as gifts that I can't stand to listen to. Most of the rest, even the 90 percent that we never watched or listened to during this tour, were carefully packed in a bin to ship to Georgia.

Among those are a number of CD-RWs with no labels on them.  Are they blank?  Did I record something on them and neglect to label them?  I don't have a clue.  It was just going to be too much work to figure out and I had other things to do.  But I couldn't throw them away, lest they have something important on them. So into the pack-out bin they went. 

And I'm pretty sure that is exactly what happened in the last pack-out.

Maybe in Georgia I'll finally figure out what's on them.

It's transition time

My anxiety for spring to come is even greater this year, than last, because we are leaving at the end of May and hoping for some nice weather before then.  Moscow summers are short, but spectacular.  The city becomes a huge green park interspersed with buildings and river walks. Sidewalk cafes sprout up all along the pedestrian streets.  The sky is blue and the sun shines, and even though it only lasts about eight weeks, it's pretty awesome.  Fall's not bad either, but it is over in the blink of an eye.

And with post transitions, too, come regrets.  Things we didn't see.  Things we didn't do.  Why didn't we take walks along the river more often? (Because it's really hard to get down there with the stroller).  Why didn't we go to the opera or ballet more often? (Oh, right, because we had a new baby and I was terrified to leave the kids with anyone for the longest time).  Why didn't we do the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  (Self-explanatory).  I think I will need to get used to these sorts of nagging questions, at least as long as we still have small children. 

But I will also remember the Russia that we got to see BECAUSE we have small children.  How people would actually smile and do us favors while walking around the city (not a common occurrence if you are walking around sans children).  How Zoia charmed the candle stand lady at church. How people would nag me to dress my children better for cold weather.  OK, that I won't miss, but it's certainly an experience you don't get without kids.

So I can live with all the things we didn't do.  My greatest regrets are the people we didn't get to know well enough. The folks I kept meaning to invite over for dinner, but colds or flus or just plain exhaustion intervened.  The people with whom I know I could have struck up great friendships, if only there had been more time.  I hope that, at our next post, I'll take those opportunities as they come, and not push them aside.  And in the meantime, I guess we still have a few weekends left to throw a party.

Panic buying and some crafting

Just two hours before we had to leave the house for Dulles Airport to catch our flight home, I was racing up and down the aisles of AC Moore, frantically trying to determine what items I needed to round out my holiday crafting supplies.  The girls were home napping, but needed to be roused, fed and changed.  Clothing needed to make its way out of the dryer and into our suitcases.  Beds had to be looked under and couches moved to locate missing hair barrettes and toys.  First things first, though - I had to take care of the pressing matter of whether gold or silver wired ribbon would look better on my Christmas wreath.  (And as it turns out, I didn't even use the ribbon).

Panic buying.

I think most of us who live the expat life have experienced this at one time or another.  I imagine it was worse when I was a kid and we didn't have Amazon.com (also, I'd hazard a guess that the term "snail mail" was coined by a user of the APO back then). Here in Moscow, I'm told, you can find just about anything for a price.  I'm sure that is true, however, I don't have the time or inclination to hunt down things like pipe cleaners if it is going to involve two hours in road traffic or a 45-minute journey on the metro.  Also problematic: I hate paying for shipping.  And my Amazon Prime membership is pretty much worthless now that they have stopped free two-day shipping to APO and DPO addresses (if anyone from Amazon is reading this, take note that you now get a big thumbs-down from me and probably from a lot of other people in my shoes).

So during our R&R back to the States, I bought.  And bought.  And bought.  We filled up two new suitcases with my purchases, and I still had to mail a couple boxes back to the States.  Trader Joe got a lot of our money.  So did Target, and AC Moore, and Michael's.  I had decided the girls and I needed to do more crafty activities together, so we're now all stocked up on googly eyes, pom poms, craft foam and of course, pipe cleaners, to name a few items.

I also decided I needed to make a Christmas yarn wreath for our door.  When my first attempt turned out looking more like a lifesaver than yuletide decor, I panicked.

Would I be able to find the items I needed to turn my craft dream into reality in Moscow?  Better hedge my bets.  And that is how I ended up back at AC Moore four hours before our flight back to Russia.  I bought stuff to make the finished wreath, and a few things that didn't get used.  Sorry for the lighting.  I'm not a great photographer and the natural light here is kind of lacking when I think to take these photos.

A journey across the sea, by the numbers

We arrived in the U.S. six days ago, but I've only now summoned the energy to blog about it. 

Miles traveled: 5,200
Hours in flight: 13.
Hours in airports: 7.
Hours in transit to and from airports: 1.5
Hours slept by Z: 3
Minutes slept by N: 45
Minutes slept by M: 8
Minutes slept by J: 15
Diapers changed: 14
Cups of coffee drunk by M: 6
Toys packed in the carry-on: roughly 78
Varieties of snacks packed in the carry-on: 12
Future vacations canceled once we realized what the flights entail: 1
Last-minute decisions to carry-on a car seat: 1

Checking in at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow.

Somewhere between Moscow and Frankfurt.

Frankfurt Airport.

Contemplating the next 13 hours of travel.

Somewhere over the Atlantic.

We spent a large portion of our trans-Atlantic flight trying to get the girls to sleep.  That was largely a failure.  Predictably, the girls fell asleep once we hit the security line at Chicago O'Hare.  At that point, it was about 11 p.m. Moscow time - they had gotten up at 5 a.m.  And then we had to take them out 15 minutes later to go through the TSA check.  Which was fun for exactly nobody.

We learned that, no matter what you do to make a flight better, traveling that many miles with two toddlers is just never going to be easy.  Also, N's eczema flared up like I haven't seen in 18 months, whlie on the plane.  I don't know whether it was stress from lack of sleep, something in the air, or something gross on the seats and blankets, but it took three days of OTC cortisone cream (which we usually don't use) to ease her pain.  As a result, we decided to give up on the idea of going someplace warm for a week in February.  You have to fly at least 10 hours to get anywhere beachy from Moscow at that time of year, and it's just not worth the stress on her body.  Sob.  Goodbye, Sharm el Sheikh :(

Best Disguised Foreign Service Couch Contest

One complaint you often hear from those new to Foreign Service life is how awful the furniture is.  To keep things simple (and, I imagine, cheaper, though I could be wrong; this is the government we're talking about), USG-provided furniture at posts worldwide is all exactly the same.  There are a few varieties to choose from, but it's not at all unlikely that the same blue-and-gold floral print couch you hated in Kyiv will be waiting to greet you in Nairobi.

Having grown up in the service, I can attest that a lot of the models are the same now as they were 20 years ago.  Our bedroom set is the exact same one I remember seeing in my parents' room in Tel Aviv in 1990.  Heck, it might even BE the very same set that was in use in their room when we lived here in Moscow in 1986.  I am so used to this furniture that it doesn't even bug me anymore, and it honestly had never occurred to me to try to make Embassy housing my own until I started to see how nice these apartments can look if you put a little effort into them.  Friends of ours here on the compound have even painted their walls.

Crazy.

Anyway, the folks over at Something Edited This Way Comes have announced a contest for the best disguised Foreign Service Couch.  Since, as I mentioned, I tend to just accept our housing pool furniture, our couch isn't really customized so much as covered in crap.  I also take lots of pictures of my sewing and knitting projects on it - and I shouldn't, because it's really a horrible mustardy olive-drabby pukey kind of a color.

Anyway, just because I like entering contests, here's a photo of the couch covered in most of our cloth diaper stash.  I call this style Fluffy Bum Couture.



For the record, I think another great contest would be something to do with the horrible drapes we seem to run into at every location around the world.

In answer to the question at the top of the page

It's official

I am no longer a Foreign Service officer.

It's strange to see those words in black and white (or eggplant and cream, as the case may be).  Throughout my school years, though I had other ambitions  -- you know, rock star, astronaut, music teacher -- the Foreign Service was always my second, constant, choice.  I took the written test while still in college.  I didn't pass that time and ended up going into journalism.  But I decided to take it again a couple years later, and prepared by studying up on economics, since I was pretty sure that had been my weak point the first time.  The oral came along while I was living in Alaska and during a time when I was perfectly content with my life, but I decided to fly to Seattle and take the test anyway.  As it turned out, I passed.  Nine months later, "the call" with an offer to join an A-100 class was perfectly timed, as I had recently decided that reporting was not for me and was looking into other options.

I have truly loved being an FSO.  There are few other jobs in this life that give you the opportunity to serve your country, do interesting work, and live in far-flung places all at the same time.  Armenia was a terrific first tour.  It was a fascinating place, and the embassy was small enough that I was handed some great assignments during my two years there.  I probably shouldn't admit that, had I not joined the Foreign Service, I would probably only have a vague idea where Armenia is.  I certainly never would have met its foreign and defense ministers.  I never would have seen Kabul International Airport (nor been a witness to then-Sen. Joe Lieberman making his dinner at the embassy cafeteria salad bar).  I wouldn't have met my husband. 

So resigning was not an easy choice.  I have debated it for the last few months.  As I have always truly believed in staying at home with my children at least until they are school-aged, I was surprised at how hard it was to let go of my working identity.  The news that we are expecting a second child this fall, and the knowledge that, as a trailing spouse, I would still live the life I love, made the choice a bit easier.  Ultimately, it was the best decision for our family.

And now I get to complete the FS-family trifecta: minor dependent, employee, and finally, trailing spouse.  Right now, my focus is going to be on the babies.  But when we get this parenting thing down (we will get it down, right?) and the kids are a bit older, I might go back.  Or maybe start career #3.  Novelist?  Pastry chef?  Music teacher?  The world is, once again, my oyster.  It's exhilarating.  I'm a lucky girl.

The movers are coming, the movers are coming!

Our stuff is here and will be delivered tomorrow at noon.  I can't wait to be reunited with:

1) My dishes.
2) My dutch oven.
3) My crock pot.
4) My sewing machine.
5) My yarn.
6) My guitar.

The flip side, of course, is that we have to find places to put the dozens of boxes (and piano!) that are en route.  Not sure how that is going to work, but we'll keep you posted ...

The scoop

Moscow, baby! Not clear exactly when, but not until February 2010 at the earliest. We're very excited!

T-minus eight hours ...

... until we find out where we are going to be posted next. Jeremy's A-100 class has its "Flag Day" today. I just want to note, for posterity's sake, that I had a dream last week that we were going to Honduras. Just in case it turns out that I have psychic powers. We'll know this afternoon! Stay tuned ...

Big news x 2

Seems we've got two bits of major news to share.

News the first ...

God willing, the traveling Richarts will be blessed with a new addition come late September! I'm about 16 weeks pregnant and finally over much of the morning sickness (all of which Jeremy conveniently missed). The little one currently bears the name "Figlet," though we are pretty sure that will change once he/she becomes an outside baby. At the moment, we believe it's a boy, though we don't plan to find out the gender ahead of time.

News the second ...

Jeremy has accepted an offer to join the Foreign Service. He'll start his training in mid-May and we should be overseas again within about a year. We can't wait to see his bid list; if things haven't changed in the five years since I did my orientation training, he should get it on the first day of class.

Now I just have to wait, somewhat impatiently, for two and a half more weeks until Jeremy comes home.