After finishing my visit to my dad and stepmom in Washington state earlier this month, in returning home to Virginia I completed my eighth cross-country leg (and seventh solo) since summer 2022. My husband V had already flown home from my dad’s a couple of weeks earlier to meet his work obligations, so I road tripped back on my own. Still sticking mostly to interstates, this time I decided to modify my route slightly to see some new-to-me places, and checked off two more states I hadn’t yet been to.
Month: August 2023
Gone From My Sight
In July I wrote about the cross-country road trip I had just taken with my husband V from Virginia to Washington state. The purpose of our trip was to visit my dad and stepmom, so for the first time I went to the west coast without making it down to California.
My stepmom was diagnosed with a serious illness early last summer. Since then, I’d visited her and my dad five other times. But V had not seen either of them since they came to visit us in Mexico in October 2021, several months before my stepmom’s diagnosis. As she entered hospice in June of this year, it became more important V and I visit together. My brother C and my stepbrother J and his family came too; my stepbrother B had visited the week before. And she was very happy to have us all under one roof. For me, it was reason #528 a domestic tour is a great place to be right now vs. serving overseas.
Fifth Tour Bidding: Postscript, Paneling and Beyond
In my growing file of Foreign Service-related “All’s well that ends well” scenarios, I had no sooner hit the publish button on my previous post about waiting to be paneled into the job for which I received my SIP handshake in July before the Department notified me my paneling had been completed.
And thus my fifth tour bidding experience came to a close – all before the regular bid season even starts in September.
Fifth Tour Bidding: What Comes After a Handshake?
As a result of my Special Incentive Post (SIP) bidding efforts, on July 5 I was offered (and accepted) a handshake on our next diplomatic assignment to U.S. Embassy Rangoon in Burma.
However, I reserved a little corner of my mind for disappointment. After a handshake, a number of administrative things would still have to fall into place before the job would feel safely “mine.” Now more than one month later, we are getting very close to that point.
Collecting Postcards 