All quiet on the Western front

Today I went to the yuppie supermarket down the street and discovered that not only did they stock good Swiss Emmi yogurt, but that it was on sale as well! For a mere $0.99, I could imagine - via the Proustian powers of a creamy spoonful of pink grapefruit - that it was August in Bern again, and that I was sitting on the terrace of Swissy Pie's home, admiring the early snow that had descended overnight upon the Alps.

A bout of homesickness has seized me. And Switzerland has never even been my home.

The whole situation is ridiculous. I've spent a total of 4, maybe 5, weeks in that country. How can I possibly miss it? But I miss it all the same.

Most of it, of course, is because I miss Swissy Pie. That comes and goes. Sometimes, I have so much to do that the whole day passes without me thinking about him. Other times, it feels like I'll never make it over there. The companies that ought to hire me without thinking are incommunicando; and while the interviews I do have are for jobs that I'd love to land, I'm horribly afraid that I'm entirely underqualified to do them, and that this will become very apparent during my interviews.

I look toward Thanksgiving with a mixture of dread and anticipation, because the day after, I fly out to face my fate. I can't help but think of the last meal of the condemned.

I'm going to have to stop being so melodramatic. After all, the Emmi yogurt I just ate was made in at Plant No. 36-9865 in Valley Cottage, New York. And I'm just an un-Swiss Miss.