My little blog is four months old now. I think I'll go out for ice cream to celebrate.

Sticker Shock. That's my excuse for not blogging (oh yeah, and the fact that my computer is still in transit, so I am at the mercy of others when I want to get on-line). But good grief, things on this side of the Atlantic can be downright nuts. Real estate searches were bad enough; yesterday I went clothes shopping - yes, I know, two months to go, where's the point? The point is that I can't live on one pair of jeans alone. Anyway, I have to wonder who they think is buying this stuff. One blouse for 150 bucks, are they nuts? A sheer top for 100? Thanks, I'll stick to raiding my husband's t-shirt drawer. I found one shirt I liked, and my head was spinning at the thought of spending 40 bucks on it, but it turns out to be designed for nursing too, so there's a longer lifespan there. On the positive side, I can walk into a store and there are pleasant people who speak my native language who don't look surprised at the notion of my asking for assistance. In fact, they actually offer to help before I have a chance to ask - what a concept! Home sweet home.

I had a great day yesterday visiting the zoo with my godsons, who keep getting bigger every time I turn my back for a second. I also got a preview of my life to be, surrounded by little kids everywhere on the behavior spectrum. I suppose that when I'm walking around with one of my own, it will be easier to tune out the incessant chorus of "Mommy LOOK!" and "Variations On A Theme of I Wanna/I Don't Wanna...!" that makes me wonder whether I'm really cut out for this gig. I'm not someone who thinks haughtily, "MINE will be better behaved than that" or "I could handle that better" - far from it, indeed. I'm much more likely to groan to myself, "How would I cope with that situation?" I guess it's time to start researching places to put my dignity in cold storage for the next 20 years.

My husband was teasing me a week ago about my "last days of work this year." Upon reflection, I will concede that he was right. I had not focused on the fact that if all goes well, I will not have to go to work (except to do some check-in stuff at HQ for processing my leave of absence) again until 2005. This is equal parts disorienting and exhilirating.
Not that I expect this time to be relaxing and restful, mind you. I may not be going in to an office, but I fully expect to be working my tail off, between finding a home and relocating to it, and oh yeah bringing another human being into the world and trying not to let it starve to death or develop mental scars. The next stage of my great adventure begins.

We're Baaaaack!!! Ah, home sweet home, Terra Firma America Borealis. The airline trip was not too awful, we got all our luggage, and the cat survived the trip with relatively little trauma. Hooray. We have a rental car to tide us over while our car is en route from the Baltic Sea, and yesterday we went shopping for something for my husband to drive. We went grocery shopping in our old neighborhood and didn't quite faint from sticker shock. The bigger shock was the renovation they'd done to the place, really. They yupped it up and moved a Starbucks in. Sheesh!
Home-hunting begins in earnest now, since we've almost resolved the car situation. I'm still torn between rent and buy. If we buy, that commits me to going back to work after Bizzleburp is born. If we rent, and later decide that I won't go back to work, then we'll be in the market for a house in about another year, and will have to move with a baby. Oh heck, if I stay with the company we're still looking at a move with a baby. (The difference being that the company would pay for it...) Decisions, decisions.
I have a doctor's appointment on Friday. That's the other major search that commences this week: where to bear?
But the really good news is that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Abkazan is still on the big screens here. My husband goes back to work tomorrow, and I start playing some serious hooky. Whoo hoo!

Okay, so I blogged about the car twice. I was tired, sorry. Packout does that to me. I couldn't fall asleep last night to save my life. Tonight will either be a repeat performance of that, or I will sleep like the dead.
This evening was my farewell at work. I'm saying goodbye to a lot of people and still not quite believing that I may never see any of them again. That's the drawback of this business: a lot of goodbyes. But considering what a big Hello! I have coming in about two months, I'd say it all balances out. I also had my last doctor's appointment here today. I've gained almost two pounds since my last visit three weeks ago, and baby's heartbeat is still steady and strong in the 130s. Not a bad way to wrap up.
And on that happy note, I'm off. We leave Saturday morning and if all goes well, we'll be on our home side of the Atlantic afternoon local time. I should be back on-line by Monday. Since I don't know whether I'll get to post again before we leave, I'll say Happy Trails now, and thanks for sticking with me through these long weeks. Hopefully, I'll get to see a lot of you all soon.

Packout Day One went pretty well: the only major glitch was with the car: we have to de-register the car in order to export it. Problem is, I seem to have lost the registration card. OOOOOPS. So today one of our Admin guys took the car in to be re-registered -- yes, that's the way things go behind the Rusted Iron Curtain. They can't just pull the record out of their files, oh no. It's back to Square One. So the car has been successfully re-registered; now it can be de-registered. On the one hand, bureaucracy here is an art form and keeps lots of otherwise useless human beings off the streets. On the other hand, it is a huge byzantine pain in the neck. One less thing to miss.
Last night my husband and I went to dinner with a friend to say farewell, and after a nice meal we drove around to say goodbye to some of the various sights we will miss in this city: the museums, churches, and riverside walks that make this place livable. It's not enough to keep me here, but it's enough to make me say that the last two years have been worth it.

'Twas the night before packout, and all through the house... I am still in denial. It doesn't help that I seem to have lost my car's registration card, which is going to make de-registering it for export just a little more complicated. If it were not for Bizzleburp, I'd probably be doing really unhealthy things right now, like taking mass quantities of Xanax (no, I did not raid my mother's airline survival stash) and/or caffeine. I have, however, given myself license to have a good hissy fit and blame it on hormones. Don't be alarmed if tomorrow's headlines say something about a meltdown near the Gulf of Finland - it's not the polar icecaps or the local nuke plant, it's just me.

The main reason I decided to take a sabbatical: somewhere along the line I realized that I spent half my time at work wishing I were home, and half the time I was at home I was preoccupied with work. I needed my sense of perspective back, if I ever had one at all. Sounds like I'm not the only one with this problem.

Yesterday Blogger was on the fritz again. Argh. More later, pre-packing laundry frenzy in progress.

Well my friends, it's the beginning of the end: my last week behind the Rusted Iron Curtain commences. One step at a time, I am getting ready to go. My mom just wrapped up her three-week visit and I miss her terribly already. My replacement has arrived and is getting to know our co-workers and routines (such as they are in this business). The packers come on Wednesday. My last day of work is Friday. We take off on Saturday. I still feel as though I have a million things to do between now and then. But at this point I'm just so happy to be in the home stretch, I don't care about the stress. I'll just keep on plugging away and looking forward to seeing my family and friends back home, a mere one week from today.

Grin of the Day: Logging into the network at the office, I got the message, "Your password will expire in 14 days. Would you like to change it now?" In fourteen days, I won't need this password, I won't need this account, I won't need this computer. NO, I don't want to change my password. Let it wither and die, bwahahahahahahahahaha! I'm very much going to enjoy starting up my computer over the next week.

As someone who hopes to feed her baby the way nature designed me to, I have to jump in on this debate: there has got to be a happy medium here. I don't think it would be unreasonable for someone to ask me not to flash a lot of flesh while Bizzleburp has a snack. However, anyone who tells me that it's "disgusting" to feed a baby in public is likely to get a mini-lecture on the differences between nuturing an infant and picking one's nose. I intend to be tasteful and discreet in my approach to nourishing my child in public when the need arises. Yes, breast milk is widely considered to be better for babies. I do not intend to use Bizzleburp's needs as an excuse to educate the masses through shock value.
Let's make a deal: I promise to cover up as best as I can if you promise not to gawk and make comments. Fair?

Another day closer to escape velocity. We had the movers' survey today. Packout is pencilled in for next week, Wednesday and Thursday. It occurs to me that it won't be easy to keep up with the blog once the computer is packed up. WHINE. I'm not taking any chances on posting from work. But other than that, hey, I can handle this. One day closer to family, friends, and sanity. I'll start panicking about finding a real home and place to give birth after the plane lands on the other side of the Atlantic. I can only have one nervous breakdown at a time.

The baby has been busy kicking this week. I think it's getting big enough now that it feels squished if I sit too close to my desk or lean forward or cross my legs for too long. Bizzleburp seems to be saying, "Hey! How about some room here?!" I'm still making adjustments to my changing dimensions.

The cat has figured out that she can't sit in her usual spot on my belly when I'm lying on the sofa, but aside from that I'm not sure she has the slightest idea of what she's in for. She just sits further down on my legs and curls up alongside the growing bump. The baby has yet to kick the cat; this gives me hope for their future relationship. I'll be curious to see whether the sound of the cat purring has left any impression on Bizzleburp in utero, like playing Mozart or Brahms.

One down, nine to go. Actually, fewer than nine days in the office left, if you count packout days. I can't decide whether to weep or scream. Time to break out the pregnancy yoga videos and remind myself how to breathe. One day at a time, right?

And Congrats to my friends in South Carolina who welcomed a new addition to their family last week. The gene pool warmly welcomes you!

I haven't done much blogging this past week, as I'm sure you've noticed. Two factors are responsible: one, I'm still coughing up the occasional lungbunny; two, I can't avoid going to work and getting stuck there for long periods of time. The good news is that the guy who's taking over my contract arrives this week. This is good for many reasons, not the least of which is that I can actually relax and spend some time wrapping up all my loose ends, as well as give my replacement some time to adjust. Overlap is good.

It's time for an updated Purple Scare FAQ. You'll find the original in the June archive, if you haven't seen it before.

Q: When are you coming home?
A: We'll be home in two weeks. We should be back on our regular side of the Atlantic the evening of August 21.

Where are you going to live?
We've arranged a short-term rental so we aren't homeless when we land. We'll look for someplace more permanent once we're back. But we're looking around the same area we were in before, since it's convenient to my husband's workplace. With any luck, we'll have a place to move into before Bizzleburp makes his/her debut. For details and contact numbers, e-mail me at purplescareblog@yahoo.com.

Ah, Bizzleburp. Boy or girl?
Yes, it's one of those. We don't know which. At last week's ultrasound, the doctor said she was pretty sure she knew but we asked her not to spill the beans. We want it to be a surprise.

Are you registered anywhere?
Yes. E-mail me if you really want to know. But really, we aren't asking for a lot of stuff. The whole "not having a place to live" thing makes it hard to assess what we need vs what we have room for.

What are you looking forward to most when you get home?
Hard to decide. Seeing our families will be a big one, or course. Going to the movies without subtitles will be nice. For me, not having to go to work every day will be nice - though I expect to be busy looking for a home and a place to give birth. Voting will be nice. Drinking water from the tap without fear will be nice.

The other day it hit me that within 15 days I could be eating deli sandwiches and spicy onion rings with my big brother at one of our favorite neighborhood joints. I swear I almost cried. Damn hormones.

Anyway, that's all the news that's fit to print just now. Further bulletins as events warrant.

I have pregnancy freckles! The technical name for it is "chloasma" and I have a pretty mild case of it, since my skin is darkish to begin with. It reminds me of the time my best friend and I pretended to have a fight in the fifth grade so our teacher would sit us next to each other again (yeah, the logic escapes me even to this day). I just remember making a big show of calling her "Nutmeg Nose" in front of Mrs. Bowman. So I now I see myself in the mirror and think "Nutmeg Nose! Nutmeg Nose!" And if you think I'm going to tell you what my fight nickname was, you're out of your minds.
I'm also facing another wardrobe dilemma: the suits I bought in London, which didn't fit me very well in May, now don't fit seasonally. I could wear them, but it's too warm out -- I'd sweat off any weight I'm supposed to gain. Ugh. Air conditioning is still a rarity here behind the Rusted Iron Curtain, so I've taken to wearing my husband's boxers around the house. (It's still possible to tell us apart; I'm the short one.) But what to wear to work? I think I'll just cut some holes in some potato sacks, and rely on my keen sense for accessorizing...not!

Sorry about the absence, kids. I came down with another stupid cold and of course I still can't take anything for it but vitamin C and chicken soup. The doc said I should also get plenty of rest. Good thing he told me by e-mail so I couldn't laugh in his face (or kick him in the shins).

The Countdown Begins: I have 20 days left here in the Baltics. Fifteen of those days must be spent, at least partly, at work. (They do give me time off for the movers.) Three weeks left to deal with the people who get up in the morning and take their Stupid Pills before coming to see me, three weeks left to see the sun still up near midnight. Wish me luck.

Our security guys threw a 70's theme night party on Friday. They let me DJ their parties sometimes, which is a lot of fun, but 70's can be tough. Half the crowd wants Led Zepplin and the other half wants disco, and they're both right. What does one do? Fortunately, 70's also mean FUNK, which I love and is very crowd-pleasing. But the highlight of the evening was when one of the expat military guys walked up to the podium and asked me why I was playing Black Sabbath, "like dude, they're not 70's!" My contemporaries around the podium and I looked at this kid as though he'd just said that Jesus's native language was English. Gobsmacked, I asked him, "What year were you born, child?" He replied with a perfectly straight face, "1981." I should feel sorry for a person who was born into a world with no living John Lennon. But, no, suddenly this guy was facing a cluster of women over the age of thirty ready to strangle him. I sent him on his way with, "Boy, leave the music selection to people who were there, OKAY?!?!" And we spent the rest of the evening shaking our heads...perhaps banging them slightly.