As the move date grows closer, the pressure mounts. I feel the stress in the pit of my stomach nearly all day long and when I wake up during the night. The medical, educational and travel paperwork seems to multiply every week. We are making progress, though.
We took the boys and all applied for our passports last week. We drove an hour to the military base and spent about two hours filling out paperwork and sitting for pictures. Each of us needs two passports for this station: diplomatic and tourist. We have to pay for our tourist passports but because they are required for this posting, we might get reimbursed once we are on station. The thing I found odd is that adult passports are valid for ten years and cost $110, while children’s passports are valid for five years and cost only $5 less. Where’s the logic in that? Expenses related to our many moves add up quickly. $640 paid for the passports is the first of what will be a long tally, and tidy sum, by the time we are settled in our new location.
Dwight’s passport picture from when we first moved overseas in 2006.
I try to get a little of the house organizing done each day. The basement is the largest of the tasks, with its toys, 1000s of legos and books, but every room holds jobs to be tackled. These days, I walk into a room and get distracted by the organizing. We have to sort everything before we pack out because we don’t want to pack things we no longer want or need. Harold and Bob have colds, so I looked for medicine in the closet for them last night and ended up spending 45 minutes throwing out expired medications and other things in the closet. This effort delayed Harold’s bedtime and I’ll pay for it today. The other day, I gave Harold a five minute warning to come inside for dinner and end up spending 30 minutes cleaning things off of the deck and out of the garage.
Bob’s pajama shirt fell behind his bed and when we pulled the under-the-bed drawer out so he could crawl under the bed to retrieve the shirt, I could not keep myself from sorting through the clothes in the drawer, to pull out some warmer weather clothes and make a pile of clothes to donate. I feel a compulsion to fill bags of things to throw out or donate in every room I enter. This means two things: I am making progress, but I am also so distracted that I cannot focus on any one task. I forget what I entered a room for, put off one task to do another, and even wear mismatched shoes because I have some sort of move related, situational ADHD!
I looked down at the doctor’s waiting room and saw I’d worn mismatched shoes
The Deployment Diatribes 