It's the pictures that got smaller.

Or, The Thrill is (Nearly) Gone.

Perhaps it's just this miserable cold that's had me sidelined the past couple of days (and which seems to be receding tonight), but I've been thinking:

In my first tour, some article came out which mentioned the "glamorous" life of the Foreign Service Officer -- I think it was in conjunction with the rather silly and rightfully failed Fox show "The American Embassy" (memo to Fox: call me. I could make that baby sit up and sing for you). The article made all my older, wiser FSO colleagues titter.

I was nonplussed. The job was glamorous. Didn't I have a closetful of hand-tailored floor-length Thai silk ballgowns, and wasn't there an entire season of extravagant dinners on the lawns of mansions from the pages of international design magazines, with wealthy and jaded expat hosts vying for the most decadent entertainment? ("Oh, Cecil, the midget chamber quartet in blackface was just too, too!") And what about the late-night after-parties in bars that turned out the lights and locked the doors to circumvent the license laws, and flirtations with straight-backed square-jawed military types with courtly manners and shady pasts, in the country on officially nonexistent missions, with quasi-existent agencies?

My second tour was a bit toned-down. There was the occasional arrival in a sleek car to the Ambassador's estate in Regent's Park, but I always felt like I was one insouciant remark in a Country Team meeting away from being asked to serve the cocktail weenies. And forget about hand-tailored, and forget about being able to find my size -- or the money to buy anything, really -- in the High Street shops. Two weeks before a 'do, I'd be prowling the Oxfam shops, looking for something that (1) had shrunk in the wash, and (2) could be revived with a good drycleaning or a strategically-placed shawl. When I got it right, some weedy office drone with bad teeth and an overactive Adam's apple might buy me a Pimm's.

Third tour. The Thai ball gowns no longer fit, and I try to sneak off from my representational events whenever and wherever possible, especially if it means getting home in time to watch American Idol (memo to America: booting Mandisa and Chris? Are you crazy?) with K on the couch, dinner balanced on a stout knee.

Sigh.