Prodding for hope

The Army exists in an interesting sort of time warp. Or maybe time warp is too simple an idea... how about a folly fractal. Everything that happens on a lower level also happens on a higher level, and everything that goes wrong in a small way also goes wrong in a much larger way.

They have the most antiquated ideas concerning how to treat a traditional single soldier and yet they engage the most advanced science to grow ears in a petri dish for those who lost them in combat. They build state of the art recon gadgets but can't get body armor right. They can invade a country but can't figure out when to leave.

On a smaller level, hazing is still a large part of the training process no matter how small a group of people you have or whether the team leader is a lower rank than the people s/he is in charge of, but every sympathy is extended and they bend over backward with help from chaplains or even money if a close family member dies. They spend a lot of money building new houses to attract new recruits but the houses are so shoddily built that, on a windy day, you can fly a kite in your living room. They can tell you when to report to a place, but they can't tell you when movers might show up until just a couple of weeks before it happens.

I've found that there is a dance of acquiring details from people no matter how high up a chain they might be. No one wants to commit to anything.

Calling the housing office of the place we're moving to:

Me: Thanks for putting me on the waiting list!

Office Lady: There's one little detail we need to talk about. Do you want to go onto the 5 bedroom waiting list or the 4 bedroom waiting list?

Me: What are the advantages of either list, besides the obvious extra bedroom?

OL: Oh, the 5 bedroom wait list moves a little more slowly.

Me: Slowly? How slowly?

OL: They're redoing houses and making new ones, and we give them to people on the list as they are available.

Me: So.... right. Are you saying you get one about every 3-4 months?

Timeout: Sometimes when I give people a ballpark window to choose from, I go with what I imagine to be a worst-case scenario. I thought that 3-4 was a really long time, so I prepared myself for the worst so that I could feel some relief when she would laugh and say "oh, no, about every other month or so."

OL: No, every 6 months, and you'd be 4th on the list.

Me: Oh, dear. What's the wait time like for the 4 bedroom house?

OL: Oh, shorter than the 5 bedroom for sure.

Me: [exasperated that she won't stinking tell me HOW LONG without doing the hope dance] So... 2 months? 3 months?

OL: No, less than that.

Me: How long might that be?

OL: The average is 45 days.

-sigh-

We've had the same headache concerning getting movers to our house ("Oh, it might be around these dates"), when some training will happen ("if everything goes the way it's supposed to, it may happen around these two weeks"), and etc.

These are uncertain times, indeed.