Living Americana

Whoops. Did I manage to go nearly a month without writing anything? Completely unintentional.

Since my last post the following things have happened:

• a gecko has been acquired
• one fish has died
• two more have replaced it
• one of those two died
• I saw Lady Gaga
• a puppy has been acquired
• and other non-animal-related and non-Gaga-related things as well.

Oh yeah, and I ran-ish a half marathon. There was a slow moving virus that kept me out of work far too long (the kids' virus, not mine) and the arrival of our new Ambassador.

Wait, did I write a puppy has been acquired? I most certainly did! Let the fuzzy iPhone pictures attest:

This is not a puppy. This is Girl, who has the makings of a crazy bag lady.

This is a puppy.

This is a cold puppy. It was September 1, after all. Can't expect a small puppy to stay warm all on her own in September.

We can add "puppy" to the list of things these two bond over. Also on the list: Legos and poop jokes.

The cats aren't too sure about this development. Tupelo, the fat orange one, takes a swipe at her once a day for good measure. Klezmer, the fat black one, has never hurt a living thing in his life, so mostly hisses and then runs away, which Dali (the not fat puppy) finds to be great fun.

Nope, not scary at all.

More than one reasonable person has expressed utter horror at the idea that we added to our daily burden so dramatically. Two jobs, two kids, two cats, a dog, a gecko, and a fluctuating number of fish, all in a foreign country? Crazypants. 

Yes, it is crazypants. Everything about us is crazypants. Only crazy people drop life as they know it to take a weird government job with the very real possibility of sending you to Bujumbura. Only crazy people decide to drunkenly adopt a cat when they are just kinda dating and then, very sober, follow up on that decision the next day. Only crazy people get engaged after five months. Only crazy people have a child a little over a year into their marriage. Only crazy people do an unaccompanied tour with one person in a war zone and the other in the developing world. Only crazy people add another child to that mix while trying to learn one of the world's hardest languages.* And only crazy people insert a gecko and a puppy into the chaos in less than a month. 

The gecko, it turns out, is not a lot of work.

Husband and I crave a night of good sleep and some free time, but not so much that we will actually pursue it. All joking aside: the dog is something we'd have in the U.S. It's a simple as that. We've been married for over five years, and in this career for 7 (him) and almost 7 (me). Our kids know their grandparents over Skype and Boy thinks he's Estonian. Seriously: try telling him he's American. He does not agree. There are moments--an increasing number of them--when we are desperate for some normalcy. While a few acres in Colorado with a smallish gaggle of livestock (oh! the menagerie we would have!) is out of our geographic reach at the moment and would require a major lifestyle overhaul, a dog is doable. Come PCS time we'll be out a bunch of money and effort, but that's one move a couple years away. What's one more pet to ship?

So forgive me, dear reader, for not writing. A young pup, unlike the gecko, is a whole lot of work.

*Edited to add: oh, and tattoos. We can't forget tattoos. 

Sugar High

A year ago, when we arrived in Tallinn, Boy turned 3, and we didn't know any other child his age in the embassy community. There was one, it turned out, but we didn't know him yet and once we did he and Boy fought every day in preschool, so a birthday party might have been disastrous.

In the past few months, the embassy has seen a number of comings and goings and while goings are usually sad, I'm happy that the comings have ushered in a whole gaggle of the under-6 set, many of whom joined us for Boy's birthday party, together with their parents and siblings, some friends who didn't bring small children but did bring patience and a great sense of humor, and some of Boy's school friends.

Wouldn't pictures have been nice?

Throwing a kid's birthday party is like throwing a wedding. Not in expense, thank goodness, but in planning and managing, only on a much more condensed schedule. As in all things, when I started I fancied myself a Martha Stewart. I had a Pinterest board dedicated to Boy's chosen theme (bugs) and was ready to make jello worms with straws and other various unnecessarily difficult things. Then I started getting unreasonably mad at the sites people have created for kid parties. Why would you put your own label with the party's motif on water bottles? Cover candy bars with a custom wrapper? Put candy in glass dishes and label it bug food? I'm sorry, that is not a container of beetles, it's a container of M&M's, and the sooner we are all honest about that we can stop this ridiculous charade of out-wedding-ing a preschooler's birthday party.

My anger exists solely to justify the fact that Plan Martha Stewart fell apart pretty quickly. I did make the food (no Wegman's to turn to for party platters) and I did slave over a pretty hideous cake. It was made with love, if not precision, and had proper bug-shaped cakes covered in icing on top. My momentary fantasy of designing cakes for a living came to a brutal and sudden end when I realized I am really terrible at designing and executing cakes. I scrapped any attempt at making the food look like bugs.

At any rate, no pictures. The party itself wasn't super labor intensive. Boy didn't flip out and Girl was off shoving sugar into her mouth and then dancing so they didn't need me. I did top off the food table a few times and help some kids who were sad or frustrated. I ran a few activities. I didn't get to eat, because it is like a wedding in that sense, but I did get to chat with some guests (or their parents) I didn't know well and hopefully will get to know better. As a host, no matter how relaxed I feel, I scan constantly, making sure no little one is crying and no adult is left without a pulled chicken sandwich (or vice versa, I suppose). Inserting a camera between me and my AOR just wouldn't work. I've never figured out how to do both.

So, for Boy imagine a skinny child with a Scott Baio haircut (then, not now) in a Star Wars t-shirt fretting about his presents, and for Girl check out the below. That gray stuff on her face is supposed to be chocolate. In your mind, add toddler squeals and singing and some weird gyrations and you've got it. (That's a butterfly on her forehead.)

Now I'm off the birthday hook until December, and Girl won't know she's turning two, probably, so I might be golden until next summer. Remind me next time to stay off the internet.

Change

I walked the aisles of a large chain grocery store today, pulling a few things from the shelves to stock the house of a new family that arrives tonight.

Või

Piim

Sai

Check, check, check

I remember when we walked into our house for the first time on that sunny evening in August and foods that were basic and familiar in almost every sense were alien in their names. I had spent a year learning the language, and while I knew the meaning of the words, this was the first time I had seen actual Estonian (singular nominative, natch) on something I knew as butter, milk, bread.

Või

Piim 

Sai 

When you PCS, kids or pets or both or nothing in tow, you arrive in a place that is foreign and instantly home and new and familiar and exhausting and comforting all at once. You have known for at least a year--sometimes two or three--that this is your destination, that this isn't a two week package tour or a visit to an old college friend. This is home and it was always going to be, long before you even arrived. 

You've probably seen pictures of your housing, or at least heard about it, and unless it's your first tour you can be damn sure you've already seen the furniture. And while you hate the Great Aunt Gertrude gold brocade, it's familiar. You see it and you think...here we go again.

But it's the food that makes you feel like the alien you are, homesick for familiar packaging and ingredients. Butter is butter is butter in most developed nations. Unless it's või or חמאה or a word you can't read but a picture that inexplicably connotes "butter." Maybe it's the obvious--a cow--or the less obvious--a field of flowers or a windmill--but you just know it's butter. And you know that this is what butter will look like, and this is what you will call it, and that in a few years, after you pull your welcome kit back out to sleep on papery sheets awaiting that final PCS flight out, you will stop looking for või and, in all likelihood, you will never look for it again.