Acronyms

Last night Andrew and I were talking about The Future. He has this hierarchy of choices, some of which may prevent other options from becoming available if we don't plan carefully. Most specifically we were talking about when to take the Foreign Service Officer Test, or FSOT. If we take it too early, we might not be able to do this other thing that Andrew wants to do.

"What about the AFO?" I asked Andrew.

He answered me with a blank stare.

"Or whatever it is. I don't know—I'm just throwing out acronyms here."

"If you're talking about what I think you're talking about you only got one letter right. The acronym you're looking for is PMF. It's like PMS only with an F instead of an S."

"So what about the PMF then?"

The PMF thing is his first choice. It stands for Presidential Management Fellows (I only know that because I just looked it up). As far as I understand it's a highly competitive, highly paid, highly prestigious internship of sorts with the federal government. But you don't find out if you're in or not until the month you graduate so it's a bit of a risk to depend solely on that option, which is why we're not.

Andrew's second choice is the JO program in USAID—that's the Junior Officer program in the United States Agency for International Development. We're not quite sure how the timeline works on this but we imagine it is slightly less rigorous than trying out for the FS (Foreign Service).

His last choice is to work as a FSO for the State Department. But it takes a good year to go from passing the FSO Test to making it on the "roster." Or whatever. So Andrew was thinking he'd just take the FSOT right before graduation and if nothing else pans out we'd just keep working our same dinky jobs until we make it into the Foreign Service, if we make it. I told him he should take the test earlier so that we make it on the roster soon after graduation because if we time it right we should find out about the other opportunities before actually going through the whole Foreign Service process.

I think we figured something out but I'm not really sure because it was late. And there were way too many acronyms flying around.

"I don't know if I can be a Foreign Service Wife," I told Andrew, "I will never understand what anyone is talking about. R&R, UAB, I don't know. There are just so many."

"You'll do fine," Andrew assured me, "You're LDS."

Very good point. Then he told me that we even have an acronym for the President of the United States.

"We do?" I asked.

"Yup. It's POTUS."

Only I heard "PODUS" so I asked him what it stood for, "President of duh United States?"

"President of THE United States. That was a T."

"Does anyone ever use it to his face? It sounds kind of like an insult."

"You're potus," Andrew tried out.

"You're podunk," I countered.

"Provinces of duh United Network Kings? Hey! The Network Kings! That could be a good name for a band."

"Or for a computer shop," I suggested.

"Nah, a band," insisted Andrew, who really doesn't have any desire to start a band. At least not that I know of.

I'm thankful for Andrew and how hard he works at school and at his job. I'm so, so lucky to be married to my best friend—I'm really grateful for that random Italian kid who proposed to me in proxy for Andrew. He makes everyday wonderful and still makes me laugh, everyday. I'm especially thankful that we were sealed together for time and eternity in the house of the Lord.