Artifacts from Mental Space

OK, rather than descreening comments, I decided to just post the answers to the quiz.  Feedback, as always, welcome.

Man I hate being sick.  The deathFlu has really hammered the embassy, and what with taking care of poor sick miserable Mallory, I have no energy to get better myself.  The only good sleep I had this weekend was 4 hours during the day Saturday (and that was with non-drowsy cold meds, which usually make me wired and shaky, and lots of caffiene).  I get no sleep at night, hallucinating and waking up exhausted.

And of course Friday night, the last healthy night before we all got sick, Mal was up all night anyway with Gas From Hell.  I'd made a nice salmon with dijon and crispy kashi crust for dinner, and he chowed down on it like whoa.  We let him have a lot since it's good for him, but a little too rich too late.  Starting at around 11:30, I was up and holding him against my shoulder, with him howling as his whole torso rippled, then a pause, and his diaper would literally flap.  Poor kid.  There was a thunderstorm between 2:00 and 4:00 am, and I don't think everything we were hearing was thunder.

So yeah, we're all sick.  And yet, still working long hours.  So I've been a crap correspondent and I apologize to everyone.  I am trying to get stuff ready to sell at the embassy's Christmas bazaar, so I will continue to be busy next month, but I hope to write all you people whom I owe letters.

And now, off to bed with NyQuil.

(cross-posted to Mallory's journal, because I'm lazy)

I think the reason they just decommissioned Pluto from planet status is because it's the new Guantanamo.  Realizing the jig was up, the government had to find some new secret prison to send people to.  They're sending them to Pluto, where they'll get Miranda-ized (either become so nice and calm they die, or jam silverware through their faces).  Making Pluto not-a-planet was the first step in having the rest of us forget it exists.

Also, and this is for casperflea and others familiar with Greece, a colleague of mine wrote a report about the many live music clubs in town, where bouzouki players perform.  He called them "bazookas."  Athens apparently has many bazookas.

18th month checkup for Mallory today.  The new doctor walked in and said, "Dang!  That's a huge occipital lobe!"  The head is off the charts.  He's using his big brain to determine that I have a throbbing migraine, and has reverted to whine-crying, which I thought we were past. 

The cat is also contributing to the headache, or has contributed.  I woke up at 5:30 with horrendous pain from an eyelash in my eye.  I tried eyedrops and rubbing, anything to avoid turning on the lights.  When I finally couldn't take it anymore and turned them on, I discovered that I had a cat hair in my eye.  I got that out (ow), but it gets better:  a tiny piece of kitty litter was embedded in my cornea. 

I apparently scratched the hell out of my eye with all the rubbing, so it hurts like whoa.

The Department of State is busy re-structuring its policies in order to force staff to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.  There's a lot of discussion back and forth about whether this is wise, whether it's helpful, what it means to be a commissioned officer in a disciplined service (hey, at least State officers can resign if they don't want to go), but the main point is that both these posts are unaccompanied: Your spouse and children cannot go with you.

In a recent informational cable, State mgmt responded to the question "Does this signal an end to State's "Family Friendly" policy?"  The answer: "Absolutely not.  We have produced a handbook for children whose parent has been assigned to one of these posts."

A handbook.

That'll help.

We're trying to figure out what the handbook could be.  I'm kind of hoping it's a coloring/activity book, with pages like "Here's Mommy's car!  Where would you put the bomb?" and "You're the first responder after the terrorist attack - which mark would you put on the foreheads of each of these victims?"  Other folks think it will be dry reading, something along the lines of "Who Needs Two Parents Anyway?"  (which will then be utilized according to the Republican Playbook to show how State lacks family values).

It's just tough.  A friend who is a Marine just left for his second tour in Iraq.  He's kind of hoo-ah anyway (Marine), but his comment was "Better me than the guys that have kids."  Another Army officer I know is on his third tour in Iraq.  He has two children; he's never seen one of them, almost 4.  He's missed over half the other one's life.  He's rabid in his belief that there are WMDs, that he's fighting terrorists, that he's doing the right thing.  He has to be.

As for us, we are still waiting.  When we accepted Athens as a post, it counted as a hardship post (just barely, but it did).  We chose it in large part so we could do a hardship tour.  That status was removed while we were here (in an accounting maneuver to give more money to folks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so), but now we, and others like us, don't know whether we count as having taken a hardship assignment or not.  If not, Robert's bound for Iraq.  We won't know for months, as it's in the Department's interests to delay that decision.

Robert was leaving for Japan that day.  I worked near Dulles Airport, so I dropped him off at the United terminal to catch his 9:00 am flight.  Once at work, I jumped right into working on a database, getting my friend the star db developer to sit with me as we pounded out some code.  We were both deep in coding brain, and idiot coworkers kept coming by with nonsense.  There was a group of guys in particular who never seemed to do anything but watch TV all day.  When the second one of them stopped by and said "Hey!  Didja hear?  A plane hit the Twin Towers?!"  we shut my office door and put a sticky note on it that said "We KNOW!!!  DND."   We assumed it was a private plane, because big real commercial planes don't do that.

Then an IM popped up from another, more trustworthy source, telling me to turn on CNN.  I did, and our jaws dropped.   That was some serious damage for a little plane.  Then we saw the second plane hit - it happened just after I'd turned on the TV.  Now, whenever I see that shot or think of it, I immediately tear up.  Then, I went instantly into denial.  I could not process it.  Another IM popped up from an intern, wanting to know if it was terrorism, wanting to know if it was, why the WTC?  I typed back "Yes, and there are probably planes in the air for buildings in DC right now."  Then I thought, "Oh shit, there are probably planes in the air for DC right now."

My friend left for his desk to call his wife, who sometimes works at a government building.  I wanted to call everybody - State, the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol, the CIA, hell, the Smithsonian - and tell them to Get Out!  But I couldn't.  There was nothing I could do except be glad Robert was safely away from DC, answer all the people coming and asking me if this was al-Qaeda, mindlessly watch TV.  Then came the announcement about a United flight missing from Dulles.  Or something.  All I know is that my brain finally put it together that Robert was on a trans-continental flight from a DC airport, and his plane could've been grabbed, and I was on the phone to United.

They actually answered - normally you can't get a person on the line, but they answered and were nice, and explained they had no information but had asked all their flights to land at the nearest airport.  I went over to my friend's desk to tell him I was going home, and to suggest that we all do the same, as, like I said, close to Dulles.  Over his shoulder I saw the TV, and there was only one tower.  I remember blinking at it, thinking, how weird, from this angle it looks like there's only one tower.  Then he asked if I'd heard State Dept had been bombed.  I hadn't, but I doubted it; spending all that time working the al-Qaeda target meant I had some idea of what they'd pick as targets, and Main State wasn't it.

A United plane hit the Pentagon.  Another friend, who lived in an apartment overlooking the Pentagon, was running late as usual, and saw it happen.  He called me, asked what flight Robert was on.  I started to come unglued.  Our boss had said there was no official leave for work, but I left anyway; I was going to melt down and didn't want to do it at work, and no one had my work number, not even Robert.

My friend from near the Pentagon met me at my house and we watched TV all day.  By the time I got home, I had messages from all over the States, all my family and Robert's.  I returned calls as I could, saying that Robert was somewhere, but not on United 93 and I'd let them know.  I have no idea how all these phone calls got through.  I zapped quick emails to friends in NYC: "If you are reading this, I guess you're okay but please let me know!"

Around 2:00 pm Robert called.  His plane had been grounded in South Carolina.  At first they'd thought it was a technical problem, but when they deplaned they saw the news.  By this time the news that State had been bombed was playing, so they tried to call State; no answer.  State was transferring to emergency operating locations at the time, but not getting an answer from the Ops Center dismayed them.  So many planes had landed in the smallish town that there were no more rental cars, and Robert's delegation got the last hotel room.  We made various plans, ending up that another spouse would drive her minivan down and pick them up.  He got home safe and sound sometime after midnight.

The next day at work it was quiet.  The constant noise of airplanes taking off and landing at Dulles was gone, and the silence, as they say, was deafening.
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Thanks to casperflea and ste_noni for inspiring me to write this. 

I'm going to keep my FS hat on a moment, and say that I find these movies, especially the ABC piece, irresponsible beyond measure.  9/11 still very much informs our foreign policy; it's still an active, living, breathing problem.  The purveyors of media like the ABC piece are making things up that will be taken as historical fact, and will be used by the public to demand certain courses of action.  al-Qaeda is a huge part of our foreign policy, and to create pressure to base that policy on lies is criminal.

I'll be spending it like usual, deep in my survivor's guilt.  Thankfully I'm not in the US, for the media frenzy (Hey, it beats broadcasting actual news!).  The only thing here is that CNN International will be masturbating via satellite all day, re-playing their exact broadcast from 9/11.  "Gross" doesn't even come close to describing it.

However, if you are trapped in Media Hell, I highly recommend liz_marcs article on the ABC/Disney thing.  Lovely and well-written.

Fun with Yahoo! Avatars.   In lieu of actual content.

Edittionals on my last two posts:

Greece vs USA:  Ultimately there was a 2-hour lockdown at the embassy this afternoon when a bunch (~200) of your basic lager louts showed up. 

August:  Yep, that's the short list.  There were at least 5 things I left out on purpose (a pregnant friend had to be hospitalized, and I don't want to jinx the pregnancy, for example) and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Greece beat the USA for the World Championship in basketball about an hour ago.  The Charge d'Affaires bowed to the inevitable and called a 2-hour break from work so everybody in the embassy could head to the cafeteria to watch the game (plus he wanted to watch it).  I took Mallory in to root for both sides.

The second that the game was over, the honking started.  Even at home I can hear tons of honking, but it was really impressive at the embassy - every single car that passed by the front of the US Embassy honked.  (Even me on my way home, because heck, when in Athens....)

Sorta reminds me of the night Romania beat the US in the World Cup when we were living in Bucharest.  No point in trying to sleep.

So here's a question - in what circumstances would Americans drive by and honk at someone's embassy after beating them in a sport?  Beating the UK, India, or Australia at cricket?  Or would any American with a car care?