Stuff

I just got the email.

Our first shipment will be delivered to our home on Tuesday morning.

I am so excited!

This is our air shipment.  This is a few hundred pounds worth of the stuff you need the most.  At most posts, the air shipment arrives within a few weeks of packing it up.  Frequently, I suppose it arrives before the officer and their family arrives.

We will have been here for over 8 weeks.

I am so excited to see my stuff!

Really, its rather disappointing how excited I am about my stuff.  I wish I were a person who didn't value stuff.  I would still like to think that I value other things much higher.  But there are a number of key pieces whose absence have made life more difficult.  Many of those things belong in the kitchen.  Most of the rest of them belong in my closet.

For better or worse, I fully expect that having all of my clothes and more of my kitchen here will make me much happier.

Now, one packs their air shipment with the things they can't really live without (8 weeks in, that's an amusing thought).  Everything else goes in the sea shipment.  At a typical post, the air shipment comes within a few weeks.  The sea shipment comes within a couple of months.  We will receive our air shipment at about the same time we would receive our sea shipment, were we at a more typical post.

However, I can not complain too much.  Rumor has it that the rest of our things - not only our sea shipment, but also our car and our food shipment - will follow very soon behind.  And I am not at all ashamed to say that my house will feel much more like home once I am surrounded by my own things, rather than gleanings from the embassy's much appreciated pool of cheap dishes and sheets.