Give me an E! Give me a P!...E! P!...E! P!

Yesterday morning I was in a funk. Wallowing in apathy, as I am wont to do when things aren't progressing on pace with the imaginary timeline in my head. I was distressed that we hadn't heard news of YH's emigration permit being approved yet--we had hotel and pet care reservations lined up for mid-May and it looked like we would have to cancel them. The darkest corner of my brain was convinced there was another unexpected delay and we wouldn't be approved for months.

Adding to my despair: over the weekend our elderly tripod beagle developed sudden paralysis. He has since regained some use of his back right leg but his back left leg is useless. This is particularly challenging for him because he is missing his front left leg--so in essence he can only support himself with the legs on his right side. We've had to carry him up and down stairs and outside to relieve himself. He's not in pain, but the prospect of having to determine how this impacts his quality of life completely drained my emotional reserves and filled my stress cup to the brim.

I dragged myself through the morning preparations (packing lunches, putting socks on tired little feet, filling dog bowls with organic kibble, loading the dishwasher). I checked email 4000 times. I checked the facebookery 5000 times.

I decided to wash the windows.

Then a friend and former student came over for a perfect diversion. My friend is a finalist for a very prestigious fellowship and had an out-of-state interview later in the week. She had a new suit that needed a blouse; so I got to dress her up in my clothes, trying our best to transform her into Hillary 2.0

We finished our sartorial labor quickly and moved on to giggling over things on the internet (word to the wise: never try to freak out a college student with creepy videos on the interwebs; the college student will always one-up you).

And in the midst of our giggling my phone rang. It was my program specialist. I warned my friend I might cry and hastily grabbed the receiver.

J*** said, "Hi Nora. I have good news for you--YH's emigration permit is approved. You can expect your travel call within 1-3 weeks."

And I died a thousand deaths from happiness.

And then I spent the rest of the day in a fog. We went to our favorite Korean restaurant for dinner, to celebrate, and my daughter asked many insightful questions about what things will be different/same when we travel. Questions about food and drink, about bookstores, about building height, about public transportation--she's a traveler at heart, that one.


My son matter of factly said "I'm pretty sure I'll be the one who comforts YH when he's sad. Pretty sure he'll need me for that."


Final stretch. We're finally in the final stretch.