Six Months to Go

Every post that we live at has certain milestones: six weeks, six months, one year, halfway, six months, and six weeks again.  Recently we reached the six month milestone.

With six months left at post, nothing much changes in our every day lives.  Everyone still goes about their usual schedule of school and work, the same as we have been doing for years.  The children have barely started into spring (winter?) semester and it's much too early to every start dreaming of the end of school.  Brandon still has several reports to check off his list before he can be happy to have them done.  I still have to cook dinner, make sure the house doesn't fall apart, and make sure everyone has what they need.

It's too early to start getting rid of things, but I have started thinking more carefully about ordering things, especially things that don't get used up too quickly.  How many bags of masa flour do we go through in six months?  Do we need another two boxes of mint tea, or is the one box we have enough?  Can I get along with only one muffin tin until we leave?  

Our consumable shelf causes anxiety every time I pass by it.  I evaluate how much food we have there and make notes of what we need to eat more or eat at all of so that I can feel better about another empty place on the shelf.  Right now my list includes molasses cookies, anything with coconut milk, and lots and lots of bean dishes.  

After thinking of the things I need to eat more of, I think of the things we have to eat less of.  Our root beer supply, sadly, is completely gone, and the bacon stash in the freezer is down to one solitary, sad box.  Then I remind myself that America has lots of both.

As I walk through the rest of the house, I evaluate everything that I see, mentally looking for things that I can get rid of.  We were just at our allowed weight of 7,200 pounds when we left Dushanbe and - as Brandon likes to point out frequently - the Amazon boxes haven't stopped showing up for the last 2 1/2 years.  We have hauled furniture with us from post to post that will find its final resting place here in Tashkent.  Every time I get rid of something, I am filled with virtuous elation, as that is a pound or two less that we will take with us.  I've sometimes mused on how strange it is that I feel virtuous for getting rid of things that I spent Brandon's hard-earned money on and was so happy acquire at the time.  Then I look forward to the day when I can buy anything I want without having to worry about its weight.

While getting rid of things, we're also acquiring all of the Uzbek treasures that we haven't gotten yet.  I have a rug or two, pottery, and a few other things that have caught my eye, and there's a limited amount of time to buy them.  I've spent the whole tour planning on getting them, and if I don't get them now, I know that I will regret it later.

The last six months is also filled with all the trips that we've been meaning to take, but haven't.  The lack of traveling this tour has also been helped by spending almost the entire last year in pandemic mode, and the year before that in being-pregnant-and-having-a-baby mode.  But we can hardly leave Uzbekistan without taking the children to see the Silk Road cities, so we'll slip those in before we leave.  

The most interesting things about the last six months is how six months feels like a lot of time to get things done right until you hit the last six weeks.  And then utter panic hits and everything you've been meaning to get done has to get done right then and it's a complete mess until everyone gets on the plane.  This is our fourth tour and so theoretically I will have learned from the previous three times.  I should start looking at rugs now, go through the kids' old clothes in a methodical fashion, and start eating strange meal combinations this week.  If I do those things, my life will be much less stressful when June comes and things get very real and any semblance of normality goes out the window as I have to pay the price for my procrastination.  

But, let's be honest.  I probably won't.  Brandon and I have a constant debate about which is better, to shove all the pain into a short, intense burst of insanity so that the rest of the time is reasonable, or to have a longer, less intense, dose of pain.  He favors the latter and I favor the former.  Over time he's managed to convince me to give myself more time so that complete and utter insanity becomes just insanity, but he still hasn't won me over to his preferred way of doing things.  And sadly for him, I'm in charge of the logistics of our household, so he has to suffer through my method.  

So when June rolls around, don't be surprised if I disappear, keep walking if you hear loud screams coming from my basement, and say a prayer for everyone in the house.  They'll all need it.