Tales from Packout 2020

Yesterday and today we (well, our excellent team of movers) packed up our little life in Tbilisi for our move home. This is now our fourth PCS/overseas move, and while some aspects get much easier – we have our air shipment down – other things stay the same level of weird and difficult. It’s always […]

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Let’s PCS While Pregnant in a Pandemic!

A month from now we will be a few days from my 31st birthday. We will be well into fall and pumpkin spice and apple season. We will be about four weeks away from baby girl’s arrival. We will also be back in Maryland. It’s hard to believe we are a few weeks away from […]

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Bad Methods for Coping with Stress

We’ve done it. We’ve managed to create the perfect storm of stress. In the next 30-ish days the following things are happening: the ACHA Annual Meeting, Sean goes TDY, vet appointments including dental surgery for one tiny cat, a trip to Costa Rica (which is meant to be relaxing but I’m not so sure it […]

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Life’s a Zoo

We have five animals. Yes, you read that right for anyone who doesn’t actually know us. Two cats and three dogs. It’s an excessive number, I know, but this is what happens when you bring a bleeding heart to Central Asia and sick puppies turn up at your doorstep. They are all relatively young, and […]

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“Surprise!” I’m Anemic

Last week Friday I went in for my pre-PCS physical. Now, I’m a fairly healthy adult human. I exercise regularly, eat relatively healthy, don’t smoke, don’t drink in excess – I’m boring – so I was feel pretty confident in my ability to pass my various blood tests with flying colors. I even joked with […]

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Consumables: The List

PCS-ing can make you look and feel insane. I mentioned this once before when we were preparing for our first overseas move three years ago. I chronicled all the times I wanted to assure total strangers “I swear I’m not crazy” as I bought 15 cans of black beans (which was no where near enough) and […]

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Tangible and Intangible

We leave today. Three short words put into a sentence I knew was coming but almost didn’t believe, but here it is. In the last few months I started looking around me thinking “I’m going to miss you so much, Annapolis.” Annapolis is the only place in Maryland I’ve called home, and it’s the only […]

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I Swear I’m Not Crazy

One of the more frequent thoughts I’ve had as we prepped for the three shipments that were cleared out last week and the move in general is some derivative of “I swear I’m not crazy.” Anyone who’s done a PCS (permanent change of station) move probably knows what I’m talking about to some degree. Diplomatic moves […]

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Wait…Did You Just Say Tzatziki Sauce?

So you’ve never heard of Tajikistan? That’s ok, I hadn’t either until Sean came home from work one day with the news that it’s capital city, Dushanbe, would eventually be our new home. I definitely misheard him and the first thing out of my mouth was: “Wait…did you just say tzatziki sauce?!” And so it was […]

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