One year ago today

On April 27, 2012 I woke up in my parent's basement in a room without windows (I called it the "dungeon;" truth is, I prefer it over the adjoining room because I like to sleep in total darkness). I was in Colorado because I was finishing my last class for my master's degree; Scott was still in Ohio because we'd moved there in January. It was a Friday morning and the next day was my very last classroom session for my degree. I was headed back to Ohio on Sunday afternoon.

I grabbed my phone, as I do most mornings, and checked my email. And there was an email from the Department of State. I was invited to be in the July A-100 class for the Foreign Service. I was in shock. I had stopped paying attention to the Foreign Service message boards months ago and I knew I was going to expire off the register in July. In the back of my mind, I always thought it would be nice to hear from them, but I had honestly given up hope.

Here I am a year later. I live in Washington, D.C. and I am a few months away from finishing my first assignment (first tour DC positions are only one year tours). I've met former Secretary Clinton (on more than one occasion) and now Secretary Kerry. I've visited Timor-Leste and Indonesia as a representative of the United States, places I never thought I would see. I got to bid farewell the Ambassador from Timor-Leste at a reception at Blair House (its an awesome place - http://blairhouse.org). Soon I may be working on the credentials for a new Ambassador from Timor-Leste as well as preparing our Ambassador to Timor.

If you had asked me on April 26th how the next year was going to look, it would have included a lot of discussion about rural Ohio and looking into how to get a teaching job out there. Now, my coming year includes learning a language I know little about (Cantonese) and preparing to move to Asia.

It all just keeps getting better and better. I can't imagine what two years from now will look like.

Favorite Things

Do you know why you like your favorite things? Like your favorite color, why is it your favorite color?

I don't really have a favorite color but when I was a kid and someone would ask I would usually say "seafoam green, cerulean blue, and daffodil yellow" because I had three crayons and that is what was written on their sides. And those three colors looked the best together. Silly childhood memories.

One memory I've been thinking of a lot lately is why my favorite flower is my favorite. Spring has come to DC (also a little bit of summer, in April...) and my favorite flower is all over the place. I love it. Daffodils in all different colors and styles are everywhere.

Why the daffodil? It's not because of the crayon, although this might be why I liked that crayon. It's because of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I used to watch it all the time when I was young, (the original one with Gene Wilder, not this crazy technicolor one with Johnny Depp) and it was so magical. I wanted wallpaper I could lick. I wanted gum that was a whole meal (I'm still holding out hope on that one). I wanted everything in that factory.

There is a scene when the kids are exploring on their own for the first time and Wonka sings a little song while he strolls around. At one point he picks a daffodil and pops the top off and drinks from it like a teacup with a saucer still in his hand. And then he bites the flower like its a biscuit. For some reason, I loved this. And daffodils have been my favorite flower ever since.

I am not sure I could give reasons as to why all of my favorite things are my favorite, but the idea that a daffodil could also be tasty treats makes it my favorite.

Road to Recovery

It has been a tense couple of days but MeiLi is slowly getting better. Today she brought me a toy but she wouldn't fetch it. Maybe tomorrow.

How fast things can change

Shocking really, how fast things can change. It takes no time at all.

A post or two below this one is a picture of my dog, MeiLi, in the bathtub. She's round and happy and stuck, but she's healthy. That picture is so recent. But if I took a picture of her right now, you would see a completely different dog.

Last night MeiLi was seizing and lolling her head back with a completely vacant look in her eyes. She had no idea who I was, where she was, nothing. It was awful.

On Saturday, MeiLi was pretty ill. She was having tremors and extending her legs all the way out and throwing up all her food. She has been sick before, but it was the stiff legs and shaking that really concerned me. By Sunday she was a little improved, but still not her old self. We kept saying, "If she's not better by tomorrow..." then we would take her to a vet. Each day she seemed a little better and by Wednesday she was back to her old self. When I came home from work we played and she ran around (still didn't want to walk very far outside, but she's always been more of an "indoor" dog). I was relieved. The dogs get sick, but they always get over it; it never lasts very long. Except, she didn't eat. I should have noticed that.

Yesterday, she deteriorated fast. She got sick three times and still hadn't eaten anything. Scott picked me up from work and we took her to the vet. They checked her out and diagnosed her with motion sickness, mentioned other possible problems, and sent us on our way. They noted she only weighed six lbs., a full two lbs. less than she normally weighs. In a tiny dog, thats a big deal. But I figured that was it. Glad we took her in.

Six hours later a different dog, the one I mentioned in the beginning, was the dog I was holding in my arms. I was just trying to keep her head pointed the right way and I clutched her little body to me each time she seized up. At 11:30pm we headed to a 24-hour urgent care, got lost on the way there (a super frustrating extra ten minutes that felt like an eternity) and handed frail MeiLi over to be put into ICU.

Difficult hours and hundreds of dollars later we learn she would have died in mere hours had we not brought her in. Her glucose was 24. I don't know medical things, but that is really bad. Really, really bad. That is what was causing her seizing. They found out she has Addison's disease, which is something we will have to treat for the rest of her life. It also makes her very susceptible to problems in stressful situations, which is not ideal when you belong to a Foreign Service Officer.

I always had a little bit of pride in the way our dogs handle moves. In the last couple years we moved four times and they were troopers every time. The drive across the country, no big deal. They settled perfectly in the car and then made the drive from DC to Ohio a number of times too. But Addison's is a genetic disorder than manifests right around the age MeiLi is now. And now we are going to have to examine what situations, like moving around the world, might bring on stress and prepare her with medications.

We are moving to Hong Kong in 2014. But MeiLi is not. It would be too hard on her. We wouldn't be able to medicate her properly and the stress of flying in cargo alone for 14+ hours and then being in quarantine in Hong Kong for 4 months would be too much. We had already decided that they were not coming, but I was holding out a little bit of hope. Maybe something would change and it would be easier and more humane to get them there. But this just clenches it. For the foreseeable future, the United States is the only country MeiLi will ever live in. And that breaks my heart just a little bit.

Exciting Times

I feel like if there is any word I overuse, it is probably exciting. But there are just so many exciting things going on and that have been going on for over a year. I am constantly excited about the future, so I just keep expressing it with the same word! Perhaps I need to invest in a thesaurus.

Anyway, things have been exciting! Non-stop, as always.

With work: I sent out my first cable today! Like, the first cable that has my name as the drafter. And people actually have to read it and carry out some meetings based on it. Thats exciting.

With home: Scott has finally moved here! I walk around all day every day with a silly smile on my face because I know that when I go home the house won't be empty. And for the next few weeks we have the same schedule, which is so exciting.

With the future: We are headed to Hong Kong! I didn't think we were going to get our first choice (again) but we did. I am thrilled. We are thrilled. But honestly, I would be excited to be going almost anywhere. The world is a fascinating place and I can't wait to experience all of it.

In short: life is exciting.

Silly Dogs

One of the joys of owning animals is when they things they do make you laugh.

Lately, MeiLi gets stuck in the bathtub. It's a shallow tub and both dogs used to jump in and out at will. But last week I heard whining coming from the bathroom and there was MeiLi, in the tub, little dog prints around the edge where she'd tried to get out but hadn't been able to. Since then she's been stuck a half dozen more times and I've had to help her out. I don't know if this happens when I'm not home and she just sucks it up and jumps out or what. I might be enabling her by helping her out when I'm home.

Funnier than this, however, is when the dogs put themselves to bed. During the week I go to bed pretty early and they either get in their kennel or on the bed (if Scott is not here) and we go to sleep. On the weekend I stay up considerably later, but the dogs expect their schedule. I go in and find MeiLi already in her kennel, settled down for the night. There is rarely any fuss about getting in bed, but it makes me laugh when they just do it themselves.

Even as I write this...

Stuck in the tub....again...

Breaking News

On the "where are we going next" front, we have news. Well, a little news. So Wuhan, China is not our destination for sure. I found out last week officially that my assignment was broken. I had heard of this happening to other people before and in the back of my mind I felt like until we arrived I wouldn't feel like it was for sure. Clearly I was spot on with that one.

So after I found out the assignment was broken, as I mentioned before, I didn't have a lot of information about what comes next. I talked to my Career Development Officer and she said that they could offer me a full list of all the positions available in the world (yeah, the WORLD. This is the kind of awesomeness I get to choose from) but after looking at my preferences from the last time I bid she guessed I would end up bidding on all China posts high. I told her she was right and could save us both the time; her searching to see what was available and me feeling like I needed to look into all the places on the list.

So here was my list: Hong Kong, Beijing, or Guangzhou. Not a bad option among them. We get to go to China and we get to go in 2014. We talked debated and submitted our preferences for which one we would prefer over the others. This coming week we should find out where we are headed.

While this may not seem like a big deal ("you're still headed to China, how different are the cities?"), its a pretty big adjustment when thinking about our future. Wuhan was more "rural"than these three cities. While it still has a population larger than most major American cities, it is very non-Western. So non-Western that we would have been able to bring a shipment of consumables (any non-perishable foods and other items that we wanted to bring with us). Now we won't get that. Honestly, we were really excited about living in one of the most non-Western options when it comes to the locations of the U.S. consulates in China. Now we will be living in a place where there is a fair chance people speak English, or in the case of Hong Kong, everyone does. Either way, we are thrilled to be going back to China, but now we have to readjust our thinking on what life will be like there.

But hopefully, come Tuesday, we can start looking planning on life in a new locale!