After my last blog post, my mom called up to say that she was surprised I shared so much information about our list. I usually keep it really quiet right up until we’re assigned. Well, this is why, mom. We will change our minds approximately 972 times before we decide on our final list of jobs to bid on. It’s happened every time, but I have chosen not to share it up until now. Bidding is a stressful, ugly process that makes you want to tear your hair out. And we do it every two years!

So, yes, life in our house right now is revolving around this list and figuring out who we know that might know somebody that can get Shawn a job. But…I have resolved to start taking more pictures of life around here, and I actually have been doing some sewing, so my plan is that my next blog post will be less “foreign service,” and more “other stuff.” Gotta keep the balance. Stay tuned.

The big question right now is: Washington or Overseas? That’s right, for the first time (realistically) we could be posted back in the U.S. While coming back to Washington does have a certain appeal (Target! Whole Foods! Walking around the neighborhood without fear of being mauled by a street dog!), there are other big things to take into consideration. Like where would we live – being overseas has the major bonus of not only not having to find your own place to live, but also not having to pay for it. Pretty tough to beat that. Also, even if we find a place to live that we can afford, we don’t own any furniture. Yeah, that’s going to be quite an expense. A big part of the reason I took a job here is so that we could start a savings account exclusively for house or rental payments back in the U.S., if we were posted there. In theory, we should be prepared for this expense. In reality, how is anyone ever prepared for such a large expense when you haven’t been dealing with it for several years?

Setting aside the first question, here comes the next big one: If overseas, where? Right now we’re focusing on Europe (eastern for the most part) and Africa. But Europe versus Africa is a pretty difficult decision as well. How can you possibly compare the two?

I spent all day yesterday researching our Europe options. Unfortunately, by the end of the day they had all kind of blurred together. We have lots of friends who have served in a lot of these places, so we’re putting out requests for personal input at this point. And Shawn’s working on his resume — I don’t envy him for that. Of course, if we end up in Washington, I’m going to be working on mine soon enough.

I’m feeling a little bit bad about being so excited to bid. At some point, we may actually have to stay in one place for more than two years. Am I going to be able to deal with that? Because when it was time to bid in Kyiv, I defintely wanted OUT of Ukraine. And now that it’s time to bid in Nassau, I don’t think I could want to be OUT of The Bahamas any more than I currently do. I had/have completely different reasons for wanting out of each post, but I feel a little guilty about it. Like I need to just be happy where I am. But how to do that?

I’m proud of myself for doing much better here with getting out and having friends outside the Embassy community. I’ve got my quilt guild friends (some expats, some Bahamians) as well as some other people that I’ve met along the way. So I did manage to improve that aspect of life overseas.

But it gets much harder when the challenges are out of my hands. I’ve always struggled with how to be happy with things that annoy me that are totally beyond my control. I don’t understand how people can just “go with the flow.” I find it very hard to let things go, particularly when I feel that things could be different, if only people were willing to work at it.

Oops. I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant. But I think it would just be best for everyone if the stinkin’ bid list came out already! Fingers crossed for this afternoon….

This is just what I cut up and froze yesterday. Earlier in the week, I had cut up four which I promptly turned into sorbet. Really, really good sorbet. And this morning there were two more ready to be cut and frozen. Now I’m looking for a good chutney or salsa recipe.

And by the looks of things, we will have an embarrassment of bananas next:

“The Little Couple” was pretty easy to spot since they were being filmed for the show. At least I assume that’s why they were preceded down the sidewalk by a camera operator, a guy guiding the camera operator (since he was walking backwards to film them drinking their Starbucks and chatting with friends…), and a boom mike operator. Then they were followed by a whole pack of people — other tourists trying to get in on the action, I guess. It was pretty crazy!

1. I started a new job. It’s not quite full time, but it’s more hours per week than I’ve spent working for at least the past five years. Bye, bye free time.

2. I went on vacation. Sixteen days in Indiana and New York City. There was a lot of much needed relaxing during that time. But also some time spent weeding, resulting in some lovely blisters. (You’re welcome, dad.)

3. The last week has been recovery time from vacation. Why is it always so hard to come back? And Thursday was the official Embassy Independence Day celebration — 8am to 10pm spent working. Mostly standing. I must be getting old because that wiped me out. I apparently slept through a doozy of a thunderstorm last night, complete with the dog running back and forth over my legs in bed. I remember none of this.

4. I’m currently preparing for the in-laws’ arrival on Monday. They’ll be here for six days. So, yeah, the blog is going to be quiet for a little longer.

But for your patience, here are some pictures to prove that I really was on vacation:

Wind farm in northern Indiana

I love New York!

With some giraffes at the Bronx Zoo

For my birthday, we went to Savannah for a long weekend. Here’s our sweet ride:

(Yes, Shawn rented the car.) Savannah was gorgeous and so much fun. We just explored — both on trolley and on foot — and enjoyed being back in the US for a while.

For Memorial Day, we took a trip to Harbor Island (or Briland, as they say here) with a group from the Embassy. It was a long day, most of which was spent on the ferry from/to Nassau, unfortunately, but it was so relaxing while we were there. We were still in the Bahamas, but it felt like a different world. Things were much slower, but in a good way. They have to be when your main mode of transport is a golf cart! And the “pink sand” beaches were amazing. I’d heard that some people were disappointed by the sand after all the hype, but I was impressed! It definitely has a pink hue, and it’s powder soft. Again, so different from New Providence Island.

June 1 was the official start to hurricane season, and it has definitely felt like it. We’ve had rain and thunderstorms for at least part of the day every day since then. Unfortunately, we’ve learned that Laika is absolutely terrified of thunder and heavy rains. (I blame the dumb GWU students who decided to set off fireworks 5 feet from our front door last July 4th.) So…I’m not sure how we’re going to deal with this all summer. I was up from 3am to 5:30am last night — first trying to calm her, then just trying to get her to quiet down enough that I could get some sleep!

In with all of this, I have had a little time to do some sewing. My fabric finally arrived for my challenge quilt for my quilt guild:

That’s pre-pressed, obviously. Since the guild members take this challenge very seriously and the finished quilts are to remain secret until our Christmas luncheon, I can only tell you a few things. As you can tell, it’s a monochromatic challenge (I picked blue), and the finished dimensions are to be 36″x48″. It has to be done with only log cabin blocks (of any variety). I’m about halfway done at this point. I’m really happy with how it’s turning out, but I have had to put my math skills to some serious use. Lots of drawing and measuring. I’m stealing Norm Abram’s motto: “Measure twice, cut once!”

If you look really close, you can see several red and yellow flowers in there. Here’s a close up:

Pretty crazy, huh? After some internet research, I learned that this is a heliconia plant. I had spotted one or two of these flowers in this plant before, but never in the numbers that are currently out there. It’s pretty amazing to have something so exotic-looking in your backyard.

This Omnigrid ruler is my new favorite tool. Six-and-a-half inch squares are easy-peasy! The squares are for a new quilt for our bed. Our bed is currently covered with this quilt, which was originally supposed to go on a spare bed. A twin size spare bed. You can probably guess what the problem is. The quilt just barely fits the top of the mattress, which leads to some crazy half-asleep tug-of-war in the middle of the night. I usually wake up in the morning with all of the sheet, while Shawn has all of the quilt. So I’ve been slowly working toward a solution.

You may remember this fabric that I picked up in Kyiv. I’ve been gradually picking up other pieces that go with it. Many were purchased on our trip to Portland last spring. And last week, I got my birthday present from my mom, which included (I’m sure you guessed it) several yards of fabric. Two of which match my Kyiv/Portland collection and put me into the necessary variety and yardage needed to make a quilt top.

So I’ve started. Photos to come.

I scoured my pattern collection and came up with one pattern that I thought would work. (Unfortunately, I realized that my pattern collection is starting to look a little dated.) It’s New Look 6407 and I did a mix of views D and E:

It’s hard to tell, but it’s white with a light blue stripe woven into the fabric. And, yes, it still needs buttons.

So since my pattern collection offered nothing else suitable, I had to look elsewhere. I started online at Burda’s website. I’ve browsed there before, so I knew they had some good looking patterns. And a lot of them are free. But I was curious about this whole print a pattern at home thing. I decided to give it a try with their JJ blouse pattern. In order to print at home, you need a lot of paper (this one was 27 pages) and it’s meant to print on A4 paper, so you either need that, or legal size that you can then cut down to the correct size. I went with the latter option and then there was about an hour of trimming and gluing, until I got to this:

Look! A pattern! I didn’t bother to print out the instructions. A blouse is a blouse, right? And I can look them up online any time if I do need them. So I went ahead and put together a blue shirt in this pattern. The original called for a total of 6 ruffles, which I felt was a little excessive and might end up looking like a 1970’s prom tux shirt, so I just stuck with two.

So I didn’t get quite as far on this one. The good news is that this picture was taken Sunday evening, and I can report that the shirt now has sleeves and the ruffles are a little less out of control thanks to some hidden tacking stitches. Still no buttons, though.

And finally, I apparently decided I needed a real challenge. So I pulled out my Burda magazines from Ukraine to see what blouse patterns I could find. I found a cute one in the June 2007 issue and got to work. My Russian skills are a little rusty, so it took some translation assistance from Shawn. Here’s what I started with:

You can’t tell, but this sheet of paper is the size of my dining room table. And those are all the pattern pieces for something like 8 different patterns. There’s a complex system for figuring out which pieces go with which pattern. Well, probably not so complex if you’re doing this in your native language, but I did not have that luxury. Anyway, I finally figured it out, then realized that my instructions also told me to cut out 5 rectangular pieces in 3 different sizes. I almost had to call for translation reinforcement, but my sewing brain figured out that those must be the pieces for the sleeve bands, facing for the slit in the sleeves, and the ruffle around the collar. So after all this brainwork, this is as far as I got on this one:

Oh well, that will give me something to do next weekend.