The Long Goodbye

My life is beginning to feel like one long goodbye. It wasn't this hard when we went to Uganda. Of course, that was just for one year. This is permanent, but we will come home on furloughs every three years or so.

Trying to talk myself out of the emotional goodbye phase is working about as well as the government balancing the budget right now. This gal who absolutely hates to cry in public is crying copious amounts of tears in public.

I wonder if my new contacts will hold up under the deluge of tears? Apparently new technology passed me by a few years ago, so the nice doctor is bringing me into the 21st century. We're still doing the dual vision (one for far and one for near) but the new contacts will get more oxygen to my eyes and that's a good thing. I most definitely want living, breathing eyeballs. 'Cause think about the alternative.

I probably shouldn't be up so late (almost 1 a.m.) but the hubby got to sleep first and his snoring is *ahem* distracting. I'm hoping in half an hour or so he'll have shifted down into his low snoozin' rhythm that doesn't shake the bed or rattle the windows. Then I'll crawl back into bed and drift off to sleep.

The hubby is getting new glasses as well and the plan was to use his old titanium frames and get new lenses put in. We have searched high, we have searched low, we have searched in obscure places but to no avail. We even disassembled one of the pallets in order to get to a box where we thought it might be but wasn't. So plan B kicked in and he's getting new frames as well as lenses. Tried to go for more European look, which is better suited for Argentina. I'll have to post a picture of the handsome hubbs in his new stylin' shades when he gets them.

I'm sticking to contacts. The new improved kind that let me breathe. Breathing is a good thing. And not just for eyeballs.

Resumed Writing at 7 a.m. Saturday morning:
Breathing has been difficult at times, you know, between the great big gulping sobs, as I've said goodbye to many friends and family in the last few weeks. I know that our bodies are made up of a high percentage of water, and I may need some transfusions 'cause I'm pretty sure my water supply is seriously depleted.

We had hoped to get a lot done yesterday and be on our happy way back to Indiana this morning. Not happening.

But hopefully with an early start, we won't get out of here much beyond lunch. I had wanted to spend more of today with my daughter but she goes to work at 4 p.m. so that's not looking good. Oh well. As the dear hubby is fond of pointing out to his overly emotional wife these days, "It is what it is."

I had a nightmare last night (when I finally did get to sleep) that I was having trouble getting our suitcases packed and we missed our plane out of Detroit. So then we were trying to find a charter plane to take us to Miami so we wouldn't miss the flight to Argentina. I woke up before the end of the story and don't know if we got there or not. In my nightmare, I mean.

In real life, those suitcases will be packed LONG before we have to head to the airport! I've got them half packed now and will finish them next weekend, A WEEK BEFORE THEY NEED TO BE. 'Cause I'm like that when it comes to big trips, especially those moving-over-seas ones. My living, breathing eyeballs wouldn't have it any other way.