Kirkland sparkling water

Per the Foreign Service Act of 1980, this summer we completed our Home Leave “to ensure that employees who live abroad for an extended period undergo reorientation and re-exposure in the United States on a regular basis.” It took two weeks of DC concrete, two weeks of Colorado mountains, and two weeks of Missouri rivers to make it feel like Uzbekistan was a distant memory- but only just. The fun of home leave didn’t shake the heartache of missing my Tashkent friends and colleagues, but rather amplified it. I feel their pull of stories, laughter, support, and pranks, even as I write this from my new post in Astana. Only now, it’s the angsty pull of not just Tashkent, but the U.S. friends and family I reconnected with too.

In addition to seeing old friends from previous posts and lifetimes, highlights of Washington included our kids independently taking Metro down to the National Mall, visiting museums and monuments, and vibing at the Folk Life Festival while Mark and I went to trainings all week. Mark took a reassuring retirement seminar, while I learned how to get into a helicopter (pro tip: duck low) and drive a getaway car Fast and Furious style. After rekindling my love for music and rocking out with the Fowl Owls (or maybe it was the Foul Owls??) I bought a flute off Facebook and trialed it in a highly trafficked women’s bathroom at Nordstrom in Tyson’s Corner. We ate too much Costco “trash pizza” and drank cases of Kirkland sparkling water.

Colorado time was filled with daily bike rides but this time mostly on gravel. (Mark anticipates all season riding to work in Astana, so he bought a steel cross bike to manage his commute. School is a five minute walk from our house and our growing children (how do they do it so quickly?) so we got them cross bikes for their commute as well.) I only brought my road bike which meant they got 2 weeks of riding Centennial Cone trails, while I’d climb up and down Golden Gate Canyon. Then we’d meet for a family ride leading back to my parent’s house. It was pretty perfect. In between rides, we hiked in my parent’s backyard and schemed on stealing my brother’s poodle named Jed. Colorado evenings entailed Hazel Miller Band, Shawn Eckels Band, and Billy Joel, and SO many home cooked dinners, my favorite way to food and each meal paired nicely with cases of Kirkland sparkling water.

Fishing, hiking, and canoeing ruled our Missouri time. My father-in-law took us to Roaring River State Park, a place he used to bring Mark and Mark's brother Danny for trout fishing. They fished at Taneycomo Lake, a place “guaranteed for catches” and while the act of fishing was a success, they caught nothing. One try left, we canoed and fished the James River, something Mark would have never fathomed doing as a kid. Back then, the river was famous for being disgusting. So much so, Big Smith wrote a song about it called Dirty Old James. However, state conservation efforts improved conditions of the river so well that herons, eagles, and other animals have since returned. When we couldn’t get out of the city, the Springfield Conservation Center assuaged the need for bird watching and tree bathing. Other SPFD field trips included Buc-ee’s, a gas station of 24/7 Texan proportions with a vibe not unlike Black Friday, and the World’s Largest Fork (by mass) weighing 11 tons. Probably the same amount of consumed Kirkland sparkling water on this MO trip.

And poof! After hefting our rental car from Denver to Springfield and back and consumed ample amounts of Chipotle and Kirkland sparkling water in the world’s most monotonous 12-hour drive across Kansas, home leave time was up. In CO, we organized consumables, packed bags, and said a temporary goodbye to our bicycles before catching flights to Astana for the next round of Foreign Service life.

Kids on their own (credit: Margo)

Hiking with Grandpa Tom

Fishing with Grandpa David

On the James River, canoes from Hootentown (credit: Margo)

A big fork. SPFD.

Leaning into beaver culture if only for 20 minutes.

A rock we paid waaaaay too much money to see in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Driving across Kansas with Window Peeper,
 the green monster puppet.

Pretending we are either 8 year girls, or 80 year old women at that Brown Palace for Tea Time.
The Great 2024 Bestie Summit: my college bestie and her North Dakota bestie.

Hiking in mom's backyard. (credit: Mark)

Mark and the kids with Grandma Kaye, Grandpa Tom, their cousins Isaac and Alina,
Uncle Gabe and Aunt Nettie with Jed the dog. (Credit: Mark)

Centennial Cone

More hiking in their wee backyard.

 Hazel Miller Band and so many people wearing
hats at 13,000 feet.

Golden Mill with musician Shawn Eckels,
cousin/football player/cycling shorts model/actor/producer/Bryan Harris, 
and Pennsylvania stoop legend and dear friend "Tuesday" Jenn Marti.

 Vintage bike dreams do come true at Golden Velo

BILLIE JOEL! (Credit: Amy)

My first time scootering. (credit: Amy)

Kansas Meme-ing.

The Case for CPR/AED Training

I can't decide if this story should start with me boarding the 2:30am flight from Tashkent to Istanbul (then onward to London and Orlando) when I got the call, or if the story should start with my dad working out at the gym in Colorado. Either way, the story ends the same.

The original plan was to meet Mom and Dad in Florida. While I would attend a nursing conference for work, they would hang out at the beach and visit friends. In the evenings we would enjoy dinner and each other's company. Considering the Schlink's not-so-great winter start with David's appendicitis, the unexpected and painful death of my brother-in-law, and various orthopedic injuries between Mark's parents and mine, we all agreed our short reunion would be a very welcome break. Even if it had to be a place like Florida.

Well, we planned, and God laughed.

Two days before the trip, while working out at the gym, my dad went into sudden cardiac arrest. Thanks to quick recognition and response by Conrad, a 71-year-old gym member, CPR, 911, and the AED were started, called, and executed. He was dead for about 8 minutes when the rescuers got his heart pumping again. Two ribs broke on the right, five on the left. The paramedics started two huge IV lines, intubated him, and loaded him into the ambulance for the 45 minute drive to the hospital. Mom, who was at lunch, got a notification that the gym would be closed for the rest of the day due to an emergency. Then she received a call from the emergency room but they wouldn't discuss on the phone what had happened. Unsurprisingly, worry and panic set in.

His heart was beating again, but how much brain damage did he suffer? We wouldn't know until he could be extubated and breathe on his own, if he could breathe on his own. Their other plans were to stabilize Tom's blood pressure, cool his body temperature, and rebalance his acids, bases and electrolytes. Only then could they evaluate heart by way of cardiac catheterization. All we could do was wait: mom frantic in the hospital waiting room, me trapped on airplanes with crappy (nonexistent) internet for the next 9 hours. Finally supplied with wifi upon arrival to London, I reconnected with my mom (no news) and I rearranged my tickets for a Denver arrival. I'd have to transfer from Gatwick to Heathrow, and connect in Chicago, but I'd arrive after nearly 48 hours of travel, front-door to ICU-door. I didn't know if I'd be coming back to say hello or goodbye to my dad.

Part of my own heart was/is broken, living so far away from family and when emergencies come up like this, the distance is especially painful. This part of the Foreign Service sucks. However, I had the help of an amazing General Services Officer and the embassy's travel team to assist me in changing tickets without having to be placed on hold, or standing in line for hours. They got me to where I needed to be in record time.

Tom made an impressive recovery. Once he could breathe on his own and his labs improved, he was scheduled for a cardiac catheterization where a specialist would insert a wire and inject dye through his right, radial artery to take pictures. Depending on the number and location of arteries needing repair, he'd get either a stent(s) or need open heart surgery. By the time we returned from lunch, he had already been evaluated and treated. Interestingly, my dad has an extra bifurcation to the left anterior descending artery (LAD) the one famously known as the Widow Maker. The bifurcation called the ramus artery and only 35% of people have it. I couldn't find much information about artery in my medical apps, textbooks, or even google.

Tom was discharged from the hospital after just 5 days, oddly anticlimactic but very much welcomed. Soreness and exhaustion have been the main themes at home, he's had no brain injury apart from the amnesia of the gym day and days in the ICU. Four weeks from now and he will get a stent placed in his LAD after his heart recovers from the trauma, and also after my mom gets a new knee. (My parents have spent the last couple of years trading off being surgical patients, it's almost a running joke).

My brother, mom, and I had the pleasure to thank the people involved in saving our dad. We celebrated with cookies and fruit, hugs given, and stories were shared. So many happy tears were shed. Most importantly, the gym staff, police and paramedics reaffirmed the value that CPR and AED training brings to the table. We literally have NO idea when it will be our turn to save a life, or when ours needs to be saved. To say I am grateful would be an understatement.

My dad with his ICU nurse and 
his pressors, heparin, antibiotic drips, freshly extubated.

Crappy lab values in the ICU. Dx: NSTEMI in ramus artery,
resulting in ventricular fibrillation.

My dad with his new stent and heart pillow I coincidentally brought for his birthday. 
I planned to give it while in Florida.

Man Of The Year.
Mom with Conrad, my new favorite hero: retired high school
biology teacher, football and ski coach, and CPR doer.
  

Lt. Ron who helped Conrad shock my dad back to life.

Gym staff who fielded phone calls,
directed the paramedics, and kept everyone calm.

Celebrating life. Literally.

Colorado Summer 2022

Arriving to America was a virulent and sad affair. The Embassy held its usual Independence Day Celebration shortly before many families departed the country, resulting in many of us getting sick with upon arrival. It later became known as The Great 2022 Tashkent Super Spreader Extravaganza. We tried to avoid spreading it, but it also got to my parents (whom I am indebted to for their forgiveness). As if the multi-day trip wasn't hard enough, we also received news from my dad that our dog, Jim, had to be put to sleep after getting bitten by a rattlesnake outside their house. He lived a fabulous 15 years, the last two of which he lived with my parents because, well, pandemics ruin everything. Jim was a very good boy.

We made the best of it, leaning hard into the excitement and joy of reuniting with my family after two years. Everyone's health eventually improved, and we did all the Colorado things we possibly could, starting with massive amounts of bike riding. I maaaaay have purchased a new road bike (n+1, people) so obviously, we HAD to ride. Every day. Up mountains. Through snow, rain, wind, and very affronted drivers. Other activities included hiking, beer drinking, and rafting, roller skating, Pride, but the familying and friending was where we made serious efforts to make up for lost time.

Foreign Service allows us to make friends throughout the world, but the range in Colorado feels especially unique, probably because we crossed numerous paths in one location: childhood peeps, family friends,  university cronies, Denver stoop chums, pals from soccer, and those we made through skiing. My brother and his wife (another ski-nurse-friend) hooked up after I forced them to eat corn chowder while watching the AFC Championship on a 16" tv in my tiny Denver condo 16 years ago. Now they live in Montana with our niece and nephew, but they came down for a REAL family reunion! It's a tradition I look forward to keeping, considering it was only second time the kids got to connect with their cousins. 

Centennial Cone Park

Denver Pride 

Jim loved the snow.

Breckenridge.

Margo's 1st MLS game,
followed by the state's largest fireworks show.

Uncle Gabe!

Turning 12 and 45 means you must 
celebrate with white water rafting.

Meow Cat with my bestie.

Fireworks from the Colorado Rapids pitch.

Cousins! 

Summer of Quarantine and Travel: VA to MO to CO to UZ

When arriving to a new country, the excitement of taking in new sights, sounds, and smells usually make up for the hassles of flying, jet lag, and bewilderment of navigating unfamiliar expectations. Exploring neighborhoods and wandering through grocery stores are among my favorite activities for not only finding calm and gaining independence, but also to help with the activation energy that is needed to overcome an eleven hour time difference. Instead, we were sequestered inside the walls of our new home (a wonderful home to be sure) for a strict fourteen days, relying on grocery delivery services, our shitty grasp of Russian language, and the good will of Mark’s work sponsor to be our connection to the outside world. 

We knew our arrival to Uzbekistan would be super isolating but it was still a surprisingly hard adjustment. It didn’t help that one of our computers crapped out and the internet went down after the first day. Jet lagging exhaustion came in waves and it took all I could muster not to pass out on the couch, so I took running the stairs or pacing the hot tiles of our inner courtyard. Nothing seemed doable in the fog of nausea and there were only so many movies, games, and reading material we could stomach and rewatch for the tenth time. Every afternoon we’d take a strict, one hour nap. Getting up afterwards was brutal and for rest of the day we all looked like we had raging cases of pink eye. We’d pick at dinner and crawl into bed, hopeful that this time, we’d get to sleep an extra hour… five. Only to have our bodies bing us awake at 2:30am, 4:00am, and 4:40am like some sort of effed up clockwork.

We are lucky. We have our own beds and space in which to reacclimatize to Tashkent’s timezone and quarantine. I was told the repatriated citizens who were on the the charter plane with us from NY would be required to do the same at a state run facility. I keep this in mind when I get a case of the whines. 

Getting here at all took a lot of heavy lifting by the embassy crew. I am humbled by the travel team who waited hours long lines to add us to the long waitlist. I am grateful for the team who prepared our home, left us food and drink, and delivered our weary bodies to the doorstep. Boredom and jet lag are a small price to pay for us being able to move our lives forward after months of waiting, cancellations, and the annoyingly all-too-common anxiety of not knowing what’s what with life these days.

Speaking of gratefulness, I would be remiss not to mention all the joy and valuable family time we got to spend in Missouri and Colorado. Mark finished his training at the end of June which meant our lease was up in Virginia and we had all of July and possibly all of August to take home leave. At the time, we couldn’t find any airlines flying pets so we opted to rent a car for our travel. Aside from Margo vomiting into the wind while we were driving on the highway causing apple-pastry scented spray-back throughout the car, the drive was unremarkable. It took us many wipes, towels, and attempts to clean it up. Even the dog needed a bath. 

It took us 15 hours in one go to get to Missouri where we spent our days road biking, canoeing, and boating. Mark often complained that cycling in Missouri meant never finding a rhythm because of all the short and steep hills, but I loved it. I did well with the short bursts of energy needed to climb and descend. Deets all but lived in Grandpa’s garage woodworking, and Margo was her Grandmother’s wee sidekick, making cookies and swimming in their hot tub. We blew up fireworks, watched Hamilton, and ate blackberries from their backyard.

In Colorado, we enjoyed our first ever family reunion with my parents and my brother’s family. It was such a special experience introducing the cousins while we hiked until our knees gave out and grilled all the meats. Road biking CO-style brought back brutal memories of Mark effortlessly prancing up long-ass climbs while I heaved for every breath in the saddle. Visiting my home state made us remember how much we loved living there. Mark and I decided that Salida would be our backup retirement location, should the Slovenian mountains not pan out. 

I use the memories and hugs, photos and mementoes, and laughs and tears we collected during this time to carry me through the sadness of moving away from the U.S. I wasn’t ready to leave, especially under the circumstances that no one knows what’s going to happen next. It was a gift to spend the summer with my MO & CO family, and not just because they willingly accommodated 4 people, 1 dog, 1 kennel, 8 bags, and all the miscellaneous crap/essentials we thought with us. It was also a gift to know that regardless of what happens or where we go, we will always have more than one place to hang our hats and hearts. 

Chores on Douglas Mountain

Deets and Margo take their mountain chores seriously. They patrol the land looking for noxious weeds such as the Common Mullein, aka Miner's Toilet Paper. It's a very satisfying weed to pull out of the ground with it's shallow roots and soft, non-spiky texture.  They love watering the plants with Grandpa's super-soaker and hoisting up the newly filled bird seed feeders high into the trees. Almost immediately they get to watch giant blue jays gorge themselves. Margo and Deets helped with cleaning out my parents camper in exchange for taking naps/sleeping in it- they were both mortified to hear that we do not plan to use a camper when we move to Africa next month (as much as I LOVE sleeping on the ground...)

Probably the most entertaining chore of all is refilling the hummingbird feeders. My parents have several around the house and they go through about 3 gallons of boiled sugar water each week. With no wonder- at any time there are about 4 or 5 hummingbirds at each feeder, wings flapping up to 70x/sec and heart beats raging high as 1,260 beats/minute. Some are nice, others are bullies, dive bombing the others to gain position. Sometimes they dive bomb people too, so it's been an exercise in calmness and tranquility for me. I strongly dislike birds, but I have appreciated the challenge of capturing their movement mid-flight. 

Filling up the bird bath

Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Colorado

Years ago when I lived in Denver and obsessed with racking up miles on my bike, I would ride past Golden Gate Canyon State Park, 14 miles from the nearest city with only a cursory glance. Now back in Colorado without a bike but with bonus children, I decided to visit the park that I so often ignored. The park had something like 36 miles and 12 trails to pick from and I let the kids choose. They picked a 4 mile hike (out and back) along the Coyote Trail. We party crashed a group of birders, viewed a historic moonshine house, and the remnants of a liquor trolley that was quickly abandoned to nature after the repeal of prohibition. We hiked past cairn instagrammers and owners with cute-ugly dogs off leash. The children chased me down half the mountain with their proton-packs, obliterating the shadows and carrying on hefty conversations regarding their favorite meats to consume. Besides Margo accusing me of getting us lost when we completed our hike in the parking lot 200 feet further south than our start, attitudes were high all day. We even managed to stop off at the visitor center afterwards to feed the trout and terrorize the park employees. 

Abandoned space ship - per Deets

Blood red currants 

Seeing the forest through the trees.

Grays and Torreys 14,000 foot peaks in the background.

At the summit.

Margo's battle cry. 

Playing Ghostbusters.