This morning S. and I hung the ceiling fan in Rachel’s room.  It looks great with the gray walls.  Yet another step in the right direction.

By the way, I forgot to mention yesterday that S. received a call from human resources at the NGO she’ll be working for, letting us  know that her first day of employment will be a week from this coming Monday,  February 16th.  It looks like she will have to spend the week of the 16th at the organization’s headquarters in Atlanta.  After that she’ll return home to Lexington for a week or so and probably be gone to Bangkok by the end of the month, which was when we had originally anticipated she’d be leaving.  The only difficult detail in this is that we will likely be apart for a solid 2 months before I’ll be able to join her in Thailand during the first week of May.  That will be our longest time away from one another.  Previously we had only been apart for six weeks–which I remember as agonizingly long.  I can only hope that our relationship has matured to the point that the separation will be a little less painful.  In the past I suspect the newness of our connection left me feeling insecure.  I believe that we have now built a strong enough foundation that I will feel more grounded when S. is away.  At least I hope that’s the case.