Contemplating our New Home:

Last night, we were all having dinner at one of the Vietnamese joints in the Eden Center located in our backyard (for those of you who don't know: The Falls Church Oakwood is located right next to both a cemetery AND what amounts to "Little Saigon"-- a giant complex housing numerous Pho and Banh Mi Sandwich shops, Vietnamese DVD stores, jewelery stores, and manicure suppliers. It's great for a family living on a government salary, as dinner for the four of us can easily be had for under 25$), and we were fantasizing about our new life in Frankfurt, Germany.

Stefan had such a glimmer in his eye when he spoke about the country where he spent so many childhood and adolescent weeks. His fondness for the place is contagious, truly, and I feel so blessed that we are going to a country where one of us has such strong roots. Germany has the added bonus of being Stefan's birthplace and his intimate understanding of the culture will certainly add an extra dimension to our time there.

While we don't have to do very much heavy research (because relatively speaking, the lifestyle won't be so different from what we are used to here), we do get to do a lot of fantasizing about how we will spend our free time. One of the greatest advantages of Frankfurt is its very central European location and we have, of course, decided to take as many road (and train and plane) trips as we can comfortably afford. I am looking forward to spending time with one of my oldest and dearest friends who lives in London. Word has it that a flight to the UK can be had for a mere 20 euros on Ryanair. I also look forward to visiting Stef's cousin in Berlin and hopefully, experiencing the Oktoberfest at its epicenter in Munich. I have never been to the Netherlands and I haven't eaten nearly enough Parisian meals. I have always longed to take long, slow walks in Prague. I have never experienced snowboarding in the Alps and I've missed Brussels ever since I fell in love with my husband there. It probably sounds overly ambitious to do everything there is to do in Europe, but we are a resourceful and adventurous family and I have little doubt that our memories have just begun to be made.

I am so so excited by this move (made even more so by the reaction of friends and family; so many have said they will visit and I really do hope this is true!), that I can't contain it. I have trouble sleeping, for thoughts of German Christmas Markets and homemade sausages fill my head. I wake in the morning exhilarated, knowing how much opportunity and richness awaits us. It's a lucky thing that we will be leaving in September because with more time to anticipate, I would surely implode.

I want Bauhaus! Waaaaahhhhh!

Now that we know where we are going and that particular worry has been put to rest, I am free to worry about the finer points. In particular, I am concerned about this whole "Drexel Heritage" furniture situation. Thankfully, I have Shannon over at Cyberbones to help soften the blow and give it to me straight now, so that I don't walk into my own personal interior design nightmare when we get to Frankfurt.

For all you veteran FSO's and Trailing Spouses out there, I am sure this is old news and you probably are far less superficial than I am. But for me, this has been a concern ever since my husband started the application process.

I have faithfully been collecting mid-century post modern furnishings and accoutrement for the last 10 years. I have done so on a minuscule budget and with the help of many familial donations (Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Grandma.) I had hoped that when I reached this age of maturity, I would really be able to rev it up and start buying some valuable additions without straining quite so hard. I always thought that by the time I was happily married with two children, I would settle in somewhere and really have the opportunity to adore and add to my teak, chrome and enamel "things." Alas, it will now probably be many years before I have such luxury. In the meantime, I have dark-finish American Colonial style furniture to admire (er... wretch over).

I get that the State Department in all its bureaucratic loveliness has to streamline the process of furnishing 12,000 Foreign Service homes. I get that. But what I don't get is why they chose such a stylized (and heinous) line of furniture. Why didn't anyone say, "I think we ought to chose something neutral so the families can find a way to easily integrate their own things." That makes perfect sense to me. No scrolly knobs and handles. No patterns or potentially offensive fabrics. No over-the-top headboards or back-lit curios. Just simple, unobtrusive, functional and straight-forward furniture.

I stole the attached picture from Cyberbones so I could show my friends and family what I am working with (thanks Shannon). The collage shows what her Carl Schurz Siedlung apartment looked like when she arrived. It pains me that we are moving to Germany, the birthplace of Bauhaus and austere but beautiful architecture and design, and yet we are going to live with the worst furniture design that the good ole USA has to offer.


I want to know who has the job of choosing the furniture for the Foreign Service and I think I want to take over. Now, I realize that hyper-modern isn't for everyone and I respect that. If I were the person who chose the furniture, I would find things that would fit everyone's taste and match everyone's colors. Foreign Service housing people: for the next round, pick me! Pick me! I promise I can make 99% of the people happy.

In the meantime, I am in the process of ordering multiple slipcovers...

Just to Clarify:

It was an artistic choice to name the country only, but people have asked, so I wanted to clarify that we are being posted to Frankfurt, Germany. We are very excited about it, too.

First and foremost, there couldn't be a better place to take the dogs. I hear that dogs are permitted on the subway and in most stores. Secondly, Stefan's maternal family is from Germany and his aunt and cousin live there still. We are very anxious and excited for both of them to be a bigger and more frequent part of our lives (and our children's)! Maybe I should reverse the order of those two points... nah, everyone here knows how important the dogs are.

I am also looking forward to learning to speak German because there has been more than one occasion where I've felt left out of a conversation in the Whitney family home. They chatter on in German and I imagine the worst... that they are all talking about me. No more. I will soon be in on the joke myself.

Stefan tells me that Germany is a wonderful place for children and I have no doubt, seeing as how all the best toys come from there... I imagine the preschools are like amusement parks and the playgrounds are built out of over-sized playmobil bits. I think the girls are going to be very happy. I just hope they have some memory of our time there as Flora will only be 2 1/2 and Adela will be 4 when we leave.

Having attended a "Logistics of Moving Overseas" class yesterday, I am starting to understand just how many things there are to think about (by the way, I really wish I had been able to take that class before we moved to the Oakwood. It would have been great to have been armed with all that information before we packed up our house. For those of you who are yet to make the initial move, don't be afraid to ask for some of the highlights when your time comes). I feel overwhelmed by all the details and I am going to a fully developed Western European country. I can only imagine how it must feel to be going to a place like... Luanda, Angola!

The only downside to our first post is that because Stefan is already fluent in German, we will be leaving NOVA sooner than I had hoped-- not because I am so in love Falls Church, but because I am loathe to move again so soon and had hoped to enjoy getting to know Washington, DC and some new friends before we depart. But I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am totally psyched. This is awesome.

Tomorrow: my rant on government-issued "American Colonial" dark-finish furniture.

Flag Day!

During the first part of of the day, yesterday, I had wanted to write about my anxiety, but then I read my fellow blogger's perfect explanation and knew my own description would fall short. It was one heck of day... so much waiting, so much anticipation, so much fantasizing and so much fear.

I got dressed while the girls' napped and carefully clothed myself in all white, for optimism. I put on my best turquoise jewelry and looked in the mirror knowing that it was the last time I would ready myself without knowing where I was going (for a while anyway). Then I put the girls in their best dresses and clumsily loaded us all into the car. I was shaking the whole time. I was excited (but also really hungry because I started Weight Watchers last week). As I pulled into the gates at FSI, I breathed deeply and found my sweet, wonderful husband waiting on the other side.

Entering the room, I could feel the tension and excitement. There wasn't an officer or a spouse or an eligible family member who wasn't feeling the same sense of helplessness that I was. But, oh, my helplessness was to get much worse. With the help of a friend, I got seated with my infant and toddler. And for a moment, all was well. We were looking forward at the giant screen that read, "Welcome to Flag Day," and knew within an hour or so, our most pressing question would be answered. And just as I got nice and comfy, Adela started to freak out. Like, completely freak out. Like I have never seen her freak out before. Out of total humiliation at my lack of ability to control my eldest child, I threw Flora and her bottle to my friend and ran out of the room with Adela dangling from the crook of my arm. I begged her, "please, please, please Addy. This is such an important moment for us. Don't make me miss it." But that seemed to only inspire her frenzy more. So we walked and walked and walked. Occasionally, I could hear the crowd explode when a delighted officer went to pick up the flag she had so hoped to hold, but really, it was just murmurs from a distance. Soon, it became clear, I had missed the moment.

As I looked at Adela with such sadness, the sun was shining brightly and I surrendered. It wasn't such a big deal, right? As I turned to walk back toward the building with the hope of it all being over and done with, Stefan opened the door, and came walking towards us. He had a big, bright, mischievous smile and from around his back, he pulled a tiny flag.

Deutschland.

And all was well and good, indeed.

Coming out of Hiding:

I haven't blogged in a while... a long while, relative to how frequently I had been blogging. I think it's because I have swimming in some pretty muddy waters lately-- dealing with family stuff that has me sort of out of sorts. I feel like I can't talk about it without compromising everyone's privacy, so instead of purging it and working it out here on Devonnaire, I have suffered in silence. But those things are so far out of my control, that I have decided to move forward and focus on our lives: the Whitneys' lives. Therefore, I'm back.

It's Saturday and Monday is the much anticipated Flag Day. We can hardly contain ourselves. There are cities on that bid list in which I've always longed to live and there are cities where I've never imagined living and really don't want to. So, it's a pretty big gamble we're taking. And while two years might seem a relatively short period of time when looking at the broader picture, it also has the potential to feel like an eternity. So, needless to say, this weekend is not without its anxieties.

One concern that has cropped up while living here in Falls Church, VA is the heat. Though I've always known my pale, freckly self is not at its most glamorous in temperatures over 80 and humidity levels exceeding 30%, I had forgotten how utterly miserable it makes me. I am loathe to go outside because within just minutes, I become bright red in the face and completely drenched in sweat. Every step is a labor. I move like a sloth and look like a pink-faced piggy. I hate the heat and humidity and without giving too much away, there are several potential posts that are both hotter and more humid than even here in Northern Virginia. My fingers are crossed so hard they are starting to cramp.

In other news, Adela is really starting to talk and Stef and I are quite proud that one of her most used phrases is, "Dank ooo." She's also become much softer and more predictable with her "Sissy" (as pictured) and she effectively uses her "doot bruh" to clean her teeth. Everyday, her communication skills improve and we are closer to light at the end of the tunnel.

I have officially made my first Foreign Service friend, I am happy to report. I have also found a wonderful yoga studio, which features (in addition to great Hatha classes), a "Toddler Together" class and a "Mommy Baby" class. And thanks to the help of Estela, our new babysitter, I am able to attend all of the aforementioned classes easily. I feel much more sane and energetic with a little extra help and another set of hands around here. I feel I can manage things much more effectively.

Now we are off, all four of us Whitneys, to explore Georgetown and try to forget the drama of the waiting game. Pictures of our outting to follow!

Lamenting the Absence of "Stuff":

All the dust has settled. We are here and its quiet. We are moving through our days as we would anywhere else. Stefan goes off to work and I stay behind, watching him go, wishing he could stay because truthfully, now that the move is over and we are all settled in, I'm a little... bored. Hard to imagine that a mother of two small babies could ever be bored, but I think its one of my dysfunctions that I am not truly engaged unless there's some sort of major crisis going on.

I think if we knew where were we off to next, I wouldn't be bored because I would be able to obsess over that place and how to get there and what to bring and what things I could do to make that place home. I have been thinking a lot about the nesting process lately, probably because I can't really nest under our current circumstances and in the absence of being able to, I've realized just how much I need to.

My friend (and fellow blogger and trailing spouse) recently made a joke about how much she fears the presence of "government-issued furniture" in her home. For some reason, it took reading about her fears for me to fully realize my own. All these years, I have lovingly collected what I consider to be beautiful things for our home- furniture, vases, pot and pans, enamel dutch ovens, paintings, sculptures, photographs, rugs. And now, they all sit somewhere in rural Virginia in a storage unit. I feel like the rest of my family is locked up, out of reach, all alone, collecting dust.

It probably seems totally shallow (especially since I was inspired to write this post because of today's "Home and Garden" section in the NYT, which features about a hundred things I really, really must have), but it's not just about the stuff. Its about my identity and I really do believe that our homes are (or certainly "can be") an expression of who we are and how we view the world. (Is it at all ironic that as I write about how important my "stuff" is, there's an ad on TV for an upcoming episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive"?).

What's the point of this post? I guess the point is, that every time I identify something exciting and wonderful (i.e. liberation from "stuff"), it's met with a new fear (i.e. liberation from "stuff"). While my husband is realizing his own dreams and identity, I am really struggling (hard) to find my own. It's like I have been stripped down to the barest, most basic version of myself. So while I have dealt with the separation from all my friends and family (reasonably well, if I do say so myself), I am still dealing with not being able to nest and make a home for myself, my children, my husband and my dogs and I am little scared... well, a lot scared... that I'm going to have to wait a really long time before I am able to do it again.

What a Week (plus) it's Been...

I'm still spinning...

Eight days ago, we were in New Jersey and this whole Foreign Service thing still seemed something distant and intangible. Now, a week later, we're here and fully in the throes. Stef has completed a whole week of training. We are calling our Oakwood apartment "home." I have attended (most of) the spouse/partner orientation. Best of all, we have the much anticipated "Bid List" in our hands...

Of course, I can't tell you anything about it. I can't tell you about all the wonderful places where we might end up living nor can I tell you about the few god forsaken places we might end up living. But I can say it's a great relief to have the list in our possession, so we can begin the process of processing all the possibilities and doing the necessary research on each destination.

As those of you who know us well would guess, our biggest concern is getting the "boys" to our new home, safely and without having to quarantine them (as you can see in the attached picture, they too are quite comfy in the Oakwood). As the girls get a little older, I think the available education will probably trump the comfort of the Labra-dudes, but for now, they are still the kings.

When we first began talking about the logistical aspects of FS life, my biggest concern was for my dogs. It still is. Otis is nearing 12 years old, so it makes sense to think a very long journey could be dangerous and overly taxing for him. We also need to go to a place where there is adequate veterinary care because in these later years, medical issues arise almost monthly. It's a lot to consider, but I still stand firm that I won't go anywhere Otis (and Rudi) can't come.

I will never forget the day I picked little, six week old Otis up from the breeder. He was the last of the litter to go home and boy, was he ready. When I got there, he was hiding under an end table from his mother and auntie, who were relentless in their rough-housing. He was so small and scared, but grateful to see me and to be carried off. We made an instant connection. We were fast friends.

Since that day, I have taken Otis everywhere. First, I took him back to college to finish my senior year (yes, I have had him since college!). Next, we went to New York for my first "real" job. Then, we went to the Hamptons, for my first "restaurant job." Then we drove cross-country for the first of many trips to the West Coast. We lived in Massachusetts, Montana, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, New Jersey, and now Virginia.

When I look at the bid list, I look for mainly one thing: in which of these fascinating cities will Otis be most happy and comfortable? For some, this probably seems irrational and to others, it probably makes perfect sense. Despite all the wonderful people I have met along the way, there's only one who has always been there and always been very, very happy to be.

Otis has gone everywhere with me since the day I got him. And as long as his heart is still beating, he will continue to, for he is truly the best friend I've ever had and I won't go anywhere without him.