you can take the girl out of america . . .

We are all familiar with the notion of comfort food and we've all relied heavily on it during certain moments of homesickness or nervousness or exhaustion. When you are far away from home and in an environment that is unlike anything you've experienced before, a good slice of pizza can ground you better than anything else you might imagine. For me, at least. For some people it's ice cream, or macaroni and cheese, or a hamburger, or an ice cold Yoohoo (those are all drawing on the preferences of people that I know).

Life in the Foreign Service forces people into dependence on comfort food for the brain. As we all move constantly and are often in difference degrees of separation from our earthly belongings, FS folks tend to develop things that they rely on for constancy and familiarity in a lifestyle that demands perpetual movement. For us, it is DVDs.

When we first got here, newbies to the lifestyle, we both deeply regretted the fact that we didn't have and movies to watch. Our things had not arrived yet, we had only Tamil television, and there was no easy way for us to just sit still and take part in some focused zoning out. And such focused zoning out is essential when every detail of your life is new and every experience is significant.

Right after we got settled, Chris started his very prolonged DVD buying rampage. He's still on it, actually. We have the best damn DVD collection I've ever seen. It is creative, artistic, eclectic, trashy, and voluminous. We have made this investment in our future so that we will always have, if nothing else, our laptop and a few movies to watch.

However, the real junk food of the comfort food world is often the most expedient and guiltily satisfying. Yes, I was known to eat a Twinkie now and then, on the sly. When I felt sad. And I have now discovered the DVD equivalent. God bless the person who decided that there might be a market for serialized television shows in the realm of DVD box sets. The Foreign Service alone must make a viable niche market to let that idea fly.

I now own the entire Jeeves and Wooster set, Home Movies (the best adult cartoon show since the Simpsons), Samurai Jack, four seasons of the Sopranos, and Twin Peaks. But most importantly, the mother load, the granddaddy of all possible Beth comfort TV items . . . the first three seasons of Law & Order.

Silly, but these things make me happy.