1. A while ago, I cut my finger, helping chop vegetables for one of Morgaine’s goodbye parties. It was a fairly bad cut, bled like a bitch. Morgaine’s husband poured peroxide on it and stuck on a band-aid. It’s good when people understand that you should never have to put a band-aid on yourself. Someone else should always do it for you.

About a week after I got the cut, I went in for a manicure. I was a little worried the girl would have a problem working on the finger with the healing cut. This was not an issue. Instead she went after the scare with her cuticle scissors and trimmed off all the ragged bits of dead skins.

2. I have been watching a fucking LOT of M*A*S*H lately. I mean, a lot. I have five seasons of it on DVD and a rotate through depending on what kind of mood I’m in. Watching it makes me wish for camaraderie. That might be what I miss most from college – the point at which your life has gotten so difficult, so stressful, and so hard that you just go utterly strange to cope with it. Suspect Granger used to sneak up on people and cut their hair when he got stressed. I used to put a blanket (or a coat, if we were in public) over my head and make people pretend I wasn't there.

I miss having that comfort level with people that I spent all my time with. I spend all my time with my colleagues right now, and I don’t have that kind of ease with them. I probably shouldn’t. But I wish I had a life where I could.

I do have that comfort level with Mike and Gulnara, and it’s good. Very good. Being with people who could happily see me every day for the rest of their lives, people who have known me for years and know who I actually I am and nonetheless love me – it’s healing a lot of the bruises my heart took on in Turkmenistan. So I guess I just need to found some sort of organization where Mike and Gulnara and Kir and I can all work together. And, as long as I’m dreaming, Ian and Rani. We’re all Central Asia experts, right?

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.