Taking Your Pet to the UK

One of the things you have to consider when living and moving overseas is your pet. The State Department won’t directly pay to ship your animals like it will your car and your household effects, but you do get a lump sum Foreign Transfer Allowance to help compensate for additional travel costs likes excess baggage fees or pets.

For most countries, importing a pet is simply a matter of paperwork and application fees. For Belize, our cat had to have a health certificate from the vet and a permit granted by the Belize Agricultural Health Authority. The General Services Officer (GSO) at post helped pass the forms back and forth. Then we had to make a flight reservation for her so that she could travel in the cabin with us. Only a few animals can travel in the cabin at a time, and spaces are granted on a first-come-first-served basis.

However, there are a few countries in the world that have a MUCH stricter immigration policy. Most, if not all of them, are quiet isolated islands that are rabies free. And they don’t want you and your scurvy little pet being the first ones to bring it into the country. England is on one of those islands.

I was hoping to get super detailed information from the embassy in London on how to import our pet. But they basically directed me to the same website that anyone can go to, which is the Pet Travel Scheme page of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

It’s pretty well laid out. But I found it helpful to actually create my own step-by-step list of what to do and when. The last thing you want to do is show up in the UK with your pet and have it put into quarantine because you didn’t follow the steps correctly. The good news is that as of January 2012 quarantine is no longer mandatory!! It used to be a devastatingly long six months no matter what, which would be ¼ of your tour. Now you can avoid it completely if you do the legwork in advance. Here’re the basics:

1. Have your pet microchipped – Before any of the other procedures for pet travel are carried out, your pet must be fitted with a microchip so it can be properly identified.
2. Have your pet vaccinated – After the microchip has been fitted your pet must be vaccinated against rabies. There is no exemption to this requirement, even if your pet has a current rabies vaccination. Rabies boosters must be kept up to date.
3. Arrange a blood test – After your pet has been vaccinated, it must be blood tested to make sure the vaccine has given it a satisfactory level of protection against rabies. The blood sample must be taken at least 30 days after vaccination. There is no exemption from this requirement: If a blood test was carried out without the 30-day interval (which would have been acceptable prior to January 2012), a further blood test will have to be carried out. The length of the waiting period before entry to the UK is three calendar months from the date your vet took the blood sample that led to a satisfactory test result. When calculating the waiting periods between vaccination and blood test, and between blood test and entry into the UK, the date that the vaccination or blood test was carried out is counted as day 0 and not day 1. Send the blood sample to one of two approved labs in the UK.
4. Get pet travel documentation –You will need to obtain an official third country veterinary certificate. If you’re going to training or on home leave in the States, this will be done by a vet in the US.
5. Contact the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to find out if you need to make an appointment or if you can just walk your paper work through just prior to shipping. All the paper work that your vet fills out must be reviewed by the USDA and stamped just prior to shipment of your pet.
6. Arrange for your animal to travel with an approved transport company on an authorised route – Your pet must enter the UK with an approved transport company on an authorised route.
7. Make sure that if you are using your own pet crate for shipping, that you have acquired the proper crate well in advance of the shipping date. There are strict regulations on what type of crate may be used and how big a crate must be for the size of animal being shipped.
8. If you are not taking the animal to the airport, make sure that the person taking the animal for you knows where to take your pet. Most airports have a specific location within the airfreight area where animals are taken for boarding. Before your animal is shipped, an air freight inspector will review all of your paper work to ensure that everything is in order.
9. Pick up your animal at Heathrow. There are several companies that specialize in animal transport in the London area and can make arrangements for your animal to be picked up and delivered, or you can wait the three hours at the airport for your pet to be processed through customs. The cost is between $150 and $350 per animal depending on where you live and what time of the week your pet arrives.

With all that in mind, choose your airline carefully. American flight carriers are usually pretty good about transporting pets overseas…in cabin, as accompanied baggage in the hold, or as manifest cargo. We usually try to avoid sending our pet as manifest cargo because it’s a much longer and more expensive process. If you can’t take them in the cabin, they can at least pop out the other end with your luggage as accompanied baggage.

But if you’re heading to a strict immigration country, the airline might not allow pets at all. American Airlines is one of those. So make sure you check with the airline directly. We’re planning on traveling with United, and they will only accept pets as manifest cargo into the UK.

Also, if you are currently overseas and transferring between posts via the US, don’t forget that you have to have a health permit from a vet in your host country to get back into the US as well.

Happy Mother’s Day!!

Last year we had a nice relaxed low key Mother’s Day. But this year…my husband went all out. He’d been staying up till about 11:30pm all week and blaming it on video games, which I totally believed. Plus we’re not big surprise people, so it didn’t occur to me that he could be up to something else. I was thrilled enough that he got up with the baby at 6:30am on Saturday morning.

So when I finally lumbered out of bed around 8:00, I truly was surprised to be met by a photo collage complete with commentary documenting our relationship from the beginning through to Mother’s Day lining the walls from the bedroom down the stairs and into the kitchen that ended in a big sign saying “Happy Mother’s Day!” There were also framed photos of me and us all over, a personal note and a custom card that he and our son had both signed.

This was followed by a leisurely breakfast of sausage and waffles prepared by Chef Hubby, and then we packed up the vehicle and drove down to Placencia for the night. We hadn’t done much advanced planning for this trip, but the brush fires had been so bad in the area that I just wanted to get out of town for the weekend.

So we went to Laru Beya, our favorite family-friendly resort and played in the sand and swam in the pool. As usual, the customer service was great. And they were kind enough to give us the low-season rate, even though we were still in high season, which is a HUGE difference…almost half the cost…and still gave us a bit of a diplomatic discount on top of it.

We had lunch at the resort, and for dinner ordered takeout from La Dolce Vita, our favorite Italian restaurant. And since this was probably our last trip down before we leave post, we had gelato not once, not twice, but THREE times. The first night I had a lovely combination of rum raisin and lime. The next morning I had cappuccino and chocolate mint…followed shortly by baileys and pistachio.

I was so absorbed in mine that I don’t remember what the hubster had, but I helped the kiddo keep himself somewhat clean by maintaining his cone for him. And he had banana the first day and raspberry the second. I’m not a banana fan unless it’s cut up in a split…so that flavor was probably my least favorite. But everything else was fantastic. And for the first time, even our son was saying that he didn’t want to go home.

Five Years with Dom Perignon

My hubby and I celebrated our five-year anniversary this weekend. A few months ago I was trying to think of all the things we could do to make it special…spend a long weekend in San Pedro or maybe Cancun now that they have direct flights from Belize again. But everything sounded exorbitantly expensive, and we are trying to save money for home leave. So we decided to stick close to home and try to do something nice here.

We’d pretty much been to every restaurant in town a dozen times, and none of them are that fantastic or romantic. And my hubby is a fabulous cook, so we opted for a fancy meal of steak and pasta salad at home. I’d picked up a few jars of caviar on a whim at some point in the past…can’t even remember if it was here or in Colorado…that we served on crackers with cream cheese. And we’d seen Dom Pérignon on the shelves over the holidays at the duty-free liquor store. So I gave them a call, and they ordered a bottle up from Belize City for us.

Neither of us had ever had Dom Pérignon before and only knew that it was ridiculously expensive. Tax free and with the 12-bottle discount (we picked up some other normal wines to replenish the wine wrack), it was “marked down” to $180 USD for a single bottle. So I did a little research to see if it was worth it.

Ed McCarthy, an online wine reviewer, had this to say about this particular brand. “I love Champagne, and have many favorites, but no other Champagne impresses me more than Dom Pérignon.[…] Prestige Cuvée Champagnes such as Dom Pérignon develop very fine, tiny, delicate bubbles as a result of the lengthy production and aging process; their aromas are more intense, complex, and elegant than other Champagnes, and they demand time to develop. You are rewarded, in time, with exquisite aromas and flavors, and a lengthy finish on the palate.

Dom Perignon 2003

“You can only truly appreciate the greatness of Dom Pérignon after it has been aged for a while. If you’re drinking it when it’s young, you’re not getting the essence of Dom Pérignon. In my experience, Dom Pérignon—or any great Prestige Cuvée Champagne, for that matter—needs at least ten years from its vintage to mature. And in great vintages, such as 1996 and 1988, Dom Pérignon really needs 20 years to fully develop.”

This made me happy as the bottle we procured was from 2003 and had just aged the recommended 10 years. I’d also come across some interesting details for that particular vintage that talked about how harsh the growing conditions were.

In her article “Dom Pérignon 2003 – A Phoenix from the Flames”, Heather Dougherty said, “It might seem contrary even to attempt to make Dom Pérignon in such a difficult and certainly atypical year as 2003. It was incredibly hot and dry – difficult conditions to make any fine wine, but well nigh impossible, you might think, for a luxury Champagne, which relies on high acidity to give it drive, structure and ageing ability.”

Apparently, champagne can only be produced under tough conditions. “No other wine growing region can challenge Champagne’s claim to produce the world’s greatest sparkling wines because no other area can duplicate Champagne’s austere growing conditions. In Champagne the vines struggle to ripen their grapes each year. This results in a balance of richness, extract, and acidity that can only be achieved through the long-drawn-out ripening process that occurs when the vine is grown on a knife-edge between success and failure,” said a contributor from Henri’s Reserve on their education page.

And last but not least, I consulted the Tasting Notes from Dom Pérignon itself. It mentioned the 2003 harvest and compared them to the fantastic vintages produced in 1947, 1959 and 1976. The nose was described as a bouquet that “spirals through sweet, bright floral notes and the lively minerality so typical of Dom Pérignon, then notes of candied fruit, plants, the incredible freshness of camphor leaf and finally the dark hints of spices and liquorice root.”

On the palate the wine is “compelling, tactile and vibrant rather than aromatic. The rhythm and tempo are more dominant than the melody. At first mild and delicate, then strongly, confidently mineral, persistent, precise, with a refined bitterness, and an iodine, saline tang.”

I’ve always thought wine and food writers come up with such over-the-top descriptions. But I actually agree with this one! I’m no expert, so the subtleness of candied fruits, spices and liquorice root were lost on me. And I think I’d probably pick something more pleasant than “iodine” to describe such a high-end wine. But it did have great bubbles with a hint of mineral water. I interpreted the “rhythm and tempo” being more dominant than the “melody” to mean that the effect it had inside of your mouth with the bubbles and the afterglow were more pronounced than the actual flavor. Definitely a very tasty champagne!!

I also think that champagne is the perfect allegory for marriage. Sometimes the tougher the situations that you weather together, the greater the reward. Being in Belize has been no picnic for us. And I wouldn’t even say that it’s brought us closer together since we don’t really have a chance to spend much time alone or go anywhere special. But when we get to London, that’s when the real harvest celebration will begin. And we’ll appreciate it twice as much after being here.

Take Your Child to Work Day

I vaguely remember hearing about this event on and off throughout my life. I’d assumed it had been around forever and was some tradition left over from the 1950s. But I was way off. According to Wikipedia (reliable source that it is), it’s actually called “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day”, and it’s been rather political since its establishment in 1993 by Gloria Steinem in an effort to get girls out of the home and into the work world…the “sons” were added later.

I know that parents have been dragging their kids to work a lot longer than that, so I guess that’s when the official U.S. calendar day was established. Many workplaces don’t participate, and some people even think the idea is outdated. But some companies embrace it, and Google even has a “Bring Your Parents to Work Day” instead since so much of their staff is so young!

When you’re in the Foreign Service, it’s AWESOME. Since the structure of your life and your children’s lives are almost completely engineered by this entity that is the U.S. Embassy, it’s great to be able to take a day and find out what it’s all about. I can’t speak to other embassy programs since this is my first post, but I think ours is pretty cool.

In most posts, I believe you have to be nine years old to participate. But since we’re such a small post, we dropped our minimum age to seven last year…and to five this year, so that it would include most of the local international school. Granted, some of the kids’ parents and teachers don’t actually work here, but they decided to turn it into a field trip because embassies are just cool. So hey, the more the merrier!

The day starts out with the Ambassador swearing in the kids as Foreign Service Officers for the day, and then each department does demonstrations and activities. In Consular, they get to have their fingerprints taken and get little passports. And I know the Regional Security Office is always a hit with the boys. They get to see lots of gear, check out the x-ray machines and help the staff stop a fake intruder. Then they all get Diplomatic Security hats or pins at the end.

This year, some of the kids actually did a presentation for us and sang a few songs in the atrium. It was super cute. Happy 20th Anniversary, Gloria!

The Art of Being a Guest

In the Foreign Service people often talk about what it takes to be a good host, which is understandable since many people are in positions where they have to entertain or have representational functions in their homes, etc. But I’ve never spent much time thinking about how to be a good guest.

We just had our eighth guest since arriving at post leave today. And we’re expecting two more in May that will round it up to 10. They’ve stayed anywhere from five days to two months, and it’s been fantastic spending time with every single one of them. I imagine we will have even more when we get to London.

Many of our guests have done sweet little things that have either touched me or surprised me and made me think about what kind of a guest I would like to be. So I’ve compiled a little list of things, inspired by our visitors, that I am going to try to keep in mind when it’s my turn. Because I already have three people in Europe that I plan on invading with my husband and our son as soon as they get comfortable in their posts.

Bring a Gift.

Especially if your hosts live in a difficult country with little infrastructure, and you’re coming from the States, it’s very nice to ask them if there’s anything they’d like you to bring. My husband is particularly fond of Taco Bell fire sauce and is always delighted when someone brings him a few packages. Our guest that left today was a friend of my husband’s and currently lives and works in Ethiopia. Not only did he bring my hubby some fantastic Ethiopian coffee, but he brought me a stunningly beautiful pashmina made partly of blue silk and gold thread. I was so surprised, I think my jaw might’ve audibly dropped. Another thoughtful couple brought our son a toy, and he’s still asking where they are two months after they’ve gone home.

Pitch In.

I’m not saying you have to do chores or babysit the kids, but don’t expect your host to foot the bill for everything. If they get a large number of visitors that could probably break their bank. Our guests have been kind enough to do everything from treating us to a meal here and there to helping pay for groceries (especially on longer visits) to handing us cash on the way out the door. All of which we are eternally grateful for.

Be Flexible.

Whether your goal is to just hang with the family you’re staying with and catch up on old times or see every tourist site within a hundred-mile radius, remember that they’re not necessarily on vacation. If they haven’t been able to take much time off, they probably still have to work, or they still have to get up at 6am with the baby. So you might have more fun if you can take a little initiative and do a little sightseeing on your own. A few of our guests have been able to spend quality time with us and then puttered off to go diving or snorkeling further afield when we couldn’t quite get away. So they were able to get the best of both worlds.

Be Patient.

Never think for a minute that they’re not excited to have you there. But tired hosts can sometimes be cranky hosts. And even though they might be having the time of their lives hanging out with you, it could be a disruption to whatever scheduled or orderly life they might normally maintain. So don’t take it personally if your host gets a little snippy now and then. Just give them a big hug and tell them how happy you are to be there…or give them a little distance, whichever you think they’d prefer.

Keep It Short.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly said that “fish and houseguests smell after three days.” I think that’s a little abrupt. I’d say that a week or two is usually good. Again, it will depend on how close your relationship is with your hosts and what your vacation goals are. In Belize it wouldn’t take longer than a week to see pretty much everything, unless you’re a real adventurer and want to get lost in the jungle. On the other hand you could spend years in the UK and not see everything they have to offer. But the longer you stay, the more you might need to exercise some of that patience.

So those are some ideas. This is by no means an exhaustive list. And please don’t think that if you’ve come to visit us, and you haven’t done any or all of the above that we were any less excited to see you. That is not the point of this post. I just wanted to thank all of our guests that have taken the time and made the effort to come all the way to see us and to let them know how much we appreciated it. Hope to see you all again soon!

Shark Ray Alley

Now that I finally have my pictures back from the camera shop, I feel I can write a longer review of the snorkeling trip we took last month. We went to Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley, which were both on my bucket list.

Since these particular snorkeling sites are off of San Pedro, we left the house at 5:30am and drove an hour from Belmopan to the municipal airport in Belize City. We managed to catch one of the rare cold and rainy mornings and sat in the air conditioned waiting room wrapped in our towels to ward off the chill.

The flight was short, and we didn’t get great views of the reef as it was overcast with low clouds, but the sun was peeking out here and there, so we were hoping that it would clear up. After we arrived in San Pedro, we literally walked across the street to the Sun Breeze hotel that hosts the satellite Hugh Parkey’s dive shop.

Even though we’d booked several weeks early, the trip was full of other divers and snorkelers, so they pimped us out to another snorkeling company. I’ve already forgotten the name, but they were friendly and relatively professional. After two snorkelers drowned last year when their boat left them on the reef, and they were swept into open water, I was a little nervous about how much attention we would actually receive. But it was a guided tour, so one swam in the front, and the other trailed along behind encouraging stragglers to keep up with the group.

The visibility was decent, but the sun still wasn’t out, so the colors weren’t as vibrant as they could’ve been. And they really moved us along at a fast pace, stopping only to show us a specific itinerary of points along the reef…sea turtle (check), Moray eel (check), brain coral (check).

Then we piled back in the boat (there were about eight of us), and sped the five minutes over to Shark Ray Alley. At both locations there were at least half a dozen boats tied up to each other with other snorkeling groups milling around in the water. Our guide began to throw chum over the side of the boat, and we were instantly swarmed with nurse sharks, stingrays and other small silver fish. So we launched ourselves over the side and into the water.

The sharks disappeared within a few minutes and went back to lying in the grass on the sea floor. But the stingrays hung around a little longer, and our guide was able to play with them and maneuver them around a bit so we could each get a turn petting their slippery skin. I’ve seen pictures of the guide named Alphonse who will actually grab a nurse shark and turn it over so you can pet it. But our guides didn’t do that.

So the whole thing was a little underwhelming, but it was great to get out of the house and show my visiting friend a bit of the country. And I’m definitely hoping to get back into the water a few more times before we leave.

I’d bought a ridiculously overpriced disposable underwater camera or $35 USD that had 28 exposures. It took almost three weeks for them to be developed, which really made me crazy. Not sure if it was from hanging on a rack in the heat of the dive shop or from whatever methods they use to develop film, but the printed photos had a very retro feel to them that I think is kind of fun.

Life in the Jungle

The world really is an inhospitable place sometimes. Not only is the news coming out of Boston horrible, but we’ve had a few local incidents recently that make me want to keep my family a little closer to home. They’ve both involved children…and not violent crimes for once, but bizarre natural events that may or may not have ended in tragedy in a first-world country.

One of the first things they tell us about here are the snakes. We have a few species of solid poisonous snakes…11 out of the indigenous 56. In February an 11-year-old local girl in a nearby village was bit by a snake while walking to church with her cousin. She went into convulsions and had a heart attack before they could get her home. Then they rushed her to the hospital here in Belmopan where they gave her six vials of anti-venom. But it was already too late and she died the next day. The doctor felt that even though there were no ambulances available to take her to the big hospital in Belize City, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Yesterday a four-year-old boy was killed by a swarm of Africanized honey bees near Orange Walk. He was playing under a tree with his five-year-old brother, and they were both attacked. The older boy is in critical condition, and the father and adult cousin that ran out to help them were both stung but not badly injured. The little one didn’t even make it to the local hospital.

So whether you’re living in a physical jungle or a metaphorical one, there is no guarantee of safety. All you can do is treat each other kindly, work together peacefully, love each other unconditionally, and try to make the world a better place.

Garage Sale

We participated in the embassy-hosted garage sale yesterday. It was kind of like a normal garage sale in the sense that it was basically five American families that are departing post dumping a bunch of things they don’t want onto long tables and hoping to sell it.

It was different in the fact that it was held in the visitor parking lot under nice little tents that had been erected by facilities. And you couldn’t sell anything over $200 USD without having permission from a customs officer because most items were being purchased by local staff that do not have duty-free privileges, so the item would have to then be taxed as an import.

The difficult part for me was that it was egg-boilingly hot. I’m sure I made that word up, but you get the point. It was literally 100 degrees, and the event, including set-up, lasted from 10am to 1pm. At 11am there was about 70% humidity, which comes out to a heat index of around 140 degrees. I can honestly say that it felt like it. I was light-headed, not thinking clearly, and almost passed out after two hours and had to go inside.

I was pretty much useless the rest of the day, so it’s a good thing that I have a nice air-conditioned desk job. At the end of the day, my awesome hubby, who always pulls it together when I’m fading, put our son down, and I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept for almost 10 hours. So I guess I officially had the exhaustion part of “heat exhaustion.”

As for the sale, I thought we did fairly well. I sold about $300 USD in outgrown baby stuff, and my hubby made about $600 USD in old electronics and video games. Not bad for three hours of work. But next time, I think I’ll just do it from the comfort of my air-conditioned home like a normal person.

Bucket List

One of my best friends just came to visit for a week. She left Tuesday, and I was sad to see her go. But we had a great time while she was here!

One of the highlights of the trip (other than spending quality time with my friend, of course) was snorkeling off of Ambergris Caye! It’s been on my bucket list for a while, so I was super excited to be able to get out and finally see the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley. We flew from the municipal airport and had a nice view of the reef on the way, then spent the morning in the water.

We had great visibility, and hopefully I got some good pictures with my not-so-cheap disposable underwater camera. No one-hour developing available…but they promised to get the prints to me in five days. The only real bummer of the trip was the fact that my hubby lost his wedding ring in the sea. And it wasn’t just any wedding ring; it was the one that he’d made by hand in a silver class we took in Antarctica before we got married.

After that, we did the usual trips to Xunantunich and the zoo. Junior Buddy was out this time for some R&R and medical check-ups, so we took the whole family and did the “High Five” with Lucky Boy instead of getting our foreheads licked.

High Five with Lucky Boy.

Lucky Boy was rescued from a resort last year…starving and emaciated. The other jaguar that was in captivity with him actually did die. The resort was so corrupt and poorly managed that the employees actually burned part of it down a few months later because they hadn’t been paid their wages (see this article in the Belize news). Happily, the Forestry Department had already collected the remaining jaguar and delivered him to the Belize Zoo for rehabilitation, and he’s doing really well.

Other than that, we had a pretty quiet Easter. My hubby made some lovely pulled pork in the slow cooker, and we spent some time swimming in the compound pool. Our toddler has just started taking swim lessons, and he’s a little fish and loves the water.

The week-long visit went way too quickly, and then it was time for my friend to head home. On the way to the airport for her departure flight, we stopped at one of the gift shops to see their pet coatimundi…but it had been killed by dogs. So I think it goes without saying that it’s tough to be an animal in Belize. They’re lucky to have such a great zoo. If you’re feeling generous, and you’d like to support them and adopt an animal, you can fill out this online form. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

But I think my friend summed it up at one point. She said, “It’s great seeing how you guys live. And it’s great that it’s not me.” Ha ha! :) We only have three months left in country, and we’re pretty much ready to go. (Did I mention that our departure date got bumped up by a month?  Yay!!)

There’re a couple things that I’d still like to do…see the ruins at Altun Ha, visit Caye Caulker, do one more trip to Placencia and make a sandcastle with our son, maybe spend the day on one of the catamaran’s I saw in San Pedro last week.

We have two more groups of visitors coming in the next two months, so maybe we’ll be able to squeeze all that in. If not, I’m not too worried. Home Leave is just around the corner.

Transitions

Departures

Well, folks, it’s beginning. Official transition season doesn’t really kick in for us until summer, but a few people at our embassy are leaving shortly for training, early assignments or to have babies…which is the case with my closest friend here in Belize. I’m very sad that she’s leaving early since we will have 4.5 more long months without her. But I’m happy that she’ll be able to deliver in safety in the U.S. and can’t wait to meet the baby when it’s our turn to go back for training!

Spring

It’s also the first day of Spring, and today the air is filled with smoke as Belize begins its seasonal slashing and burning of practically the entire country to get ready for planting. So nasty. We actually kept our son home from playschool today since it’s outdoors, and the air is so bad. It kind of helped me with a more permanent decision as well.

Playschool

Our son LOVES his local playschool. He’s such a social baby (I know he’s 2, but he’ll always be my baby) and has a lot of energy. But he’s starting to come home tired and cranky, has had one chest cold after another since December, and is picking up all kinds of poor behavioral habits. I’m sure part of it is his age, but part of it might be a cultural difference in how the children around him are raised. Boys are definitely given a lot freer reign in Latin American society than girls are.

It’s also starting to get hot outside…like 95 degrees with 70% humidity, which is like 120 on the heat index. It takes about 20 minutes of playing outside before his entire face turns bright red. And it makes me nervous. I had heatstroke once growing up in Northern California and had headaches for years afterward.

Plus we have to leave work to take him to and from every morning, which is disruptive. We have less than five months left, so we’ve pretty much decided to just pull him out at the end of this month. But I feel guilty thinking of him trapped in the house and not running around happy with his friends.

Moving

And of course there’s the impending move looming on the horizon. I woke up at 3am this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep…my mind just wandering over home leave options, EFM job opportunities in London, housing locations, cost of living, etc. Not resolving anything, of course, just looping through the same thoughts over and over. Sigh. I should probably check my blood pressure.