Next Month...maybe

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 Good Morning November! 

Precisely 5 months ago we woke up in someone else's world which, somehow, is simultaneously a glittery fairytale and hellacious fire laden journey - yes, glitter 🧚🏼‍♀️ and fire 🔥 all rolled into one, giant, overseas move! 🌍

As we wake up to November, with its below 0 Alaskan temperatures, Halloween candy hangover, and a calendar with every weekend already booked, we THINK we can say, "Next month we move to Italy."

MAYBE.

There are a lot of moving parts, but if the behemoth that is the military industrial complex bureaucracy continues to turn as it should, we are expecting to leave Alaska on December 11th - as in NEXT MONTH. Per typical of the DoD we are waiting for someone, somewhere, to put a second picture in a red passport and stamp that picture with a magical seal, which most people call a visa, that qualifies us to be in Italy for more than 90 days. (then apparently upon arrival there's another process to get another piece of paper that qualifies us to be there longer than 1 year 🙄) One person told us visas right now are processing really quickly and it should only be a few weeks. Another person warned us the very opposite and said, "don't expect it faster than two months." 🤷‍♀️ 

We are choosing to believe the glitter and not the fire.

Cartoon by Alfredo Martirena, 2017

Then there's the selling of the house, which is moving at molasses speeds.

...And the logistics of moving a bulldog overseas.

...Oh, and preparing a household of schtuff to be moved while still using that stuff for an undetermined amount of time

... And deciding which things are unnecessary for the next 3-5 years and can skip the journey and go straight to military storage

...And setting aside enough wears for three months of existence, but only in two pieces of luggage, and for two polar opposite climates

... And attempting to be an electrician and learn voltage and hertz and wats and converters, transformers, and adaptors so the things that do go, don't blow

BUT it is November, and in the world of bureaucracies that means NEXT MONTH we are moving to Italy. The glittery dream that we woke up to five months ago is getting close. If one little wrench gets thrown into one little cog we will amend our November mantra to "NEXT YEAR" we are moving to Italy. There's much more fire, I mean flexibility, in that one.  

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