Yo-yo-yoing

So, I finally passed the note to my prospective employer in Washington, and about thirty seconds later -- no, it really was; if I hadn't already loved them for their excellent judgment in being located outside India, I would've fallen for them for their efficiency -- they handed it back with the "YES" bit circled. And I cartwheeled home, and told everyone how I was about to become an expert on "Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia external," and then I panicked about how fast my sliding-into-middle-age brain could get up to expert status these days, especially as I haven't asked it to perform any heavy lifting for the past seven years, and then I spent about an hour on the internet trying to find where "Indonesia external" is. (Yeah, it's a ministry, not a geography. I mean, I know that now.)

And then I went off for some work-related travel, and then two nights ago my boss called me while I was on the road and just happened to casually mention that the uber-boss was refusing to sign off on my request to close up shop here, leaving me with one full-time job too many, and a prospective bitch of a commute.

After talking to her, I didn't eat or sleep for the next 24 hours, flew back, stormed into her office, and calmly explained my position, neutrally delineated the absence of logic to the opposition, and -- and I know it seems a non sequitur here, but, trust me, it fit -- objectively analyzed and emphasized the more distant reaches of the uber-boss' Darwinian history, which, of course, we all share. Though I may have stressed the recency of his a bit more than ours.

Oddly, it seems to have helped my case. Apparently, as soon as I'd gone on the road and hadn't been applying constant pressure to the machine, it jumped back into its usual path and a mass delusion sprang up that I could be dissuaded. I've been running around since then disabusing the major players, one by one, of this notion. Continuing to not eat or sleep has helped me greatly in this endeavor.

I hesitate to forecast how it'll go. In any event, I have to save some strength to not throw K out on the street when he comes home from an event, as he did tonight, which I couldn't go to both because it's my turn again in the emergency-phone-duty barrel and because I keep shivering and seeing moving shadows in my peripheral vision, and announces, wistfully, that maybe we could make things work in India if we just really tried.