Moving date

At least we have a date that's written into soapstone: March 20th.  Apparently we have to remain a tiny bit flexible still, but it's nice to have something that's as close to official as we can get before getting the house inspected.

Congratulations! Here's a punch in the stomach

Yesterday, I came home from picking up Pebbles to Man, who greeted me with the news that our approximate separation date would be March 28.

What???  You mean that we have to move out of here within two weeks so we can go find a house only to get cut off with no paycheck until May, with no job and no house lined up yet????

Yeah, something like that.

So I started to furiously clean the stove, prime some walls, and apply spackle to corners that have chipped.  Man came home from a recon mission to the the transportation office and the human resources office to find that when they told him his date that they were flippin' looking at the wrong paperwork. 

So I swallowed my heartburn and cleaned at only a slightly slower pace, because we still have to be out of here by mid-March at the latest.  We get a lovely benefit called terminal leave, which is the leave Man's allowed to take to look for a job/house out in his home of origin (home of origin is how the military knows where to send you when you get out of the military, and it's how the IRS knows how to tax you.  State income tax on military members is based on home of origin, which is why you've never known why so many soldiers "come from" states with no income tax, nudgenudgewinkwink).  He also gets a block of time called Permissive TDY, or an opportunity to travel with the same goal as terminal leave.  It's a way of getting him some time out in the real world to land on his feet while still drawing a paycheck for a short while.

I have to say that, despite knowing that the other shoe would drop for the last year, it came as a shock.  We were told last November that the whole process would take three months.  Obviously, there was a miscalculation.  Taking school in the spring was a risk, because we thought were might have to move soon.  Taking school in the fall was even more of a risk, and I prayed that we'd be in the area at least until mid-December so I could take my finals and dash.  Then we were told that we would have to move in mid-January.  Now, mid-March actually has some credit since that's what's written on the orders packet.  All they have left to do is calculate his actual retirement pay, how much Tricare is going to cost us (military health coverage), and get him outprocessed from post.

We have learned that they definitely will move us if we ask them to.  And I'm going to ask them to.  I don't want to pack and lift my house any more than I have to.  We've given up on buying at the moment so we know that after we do buy we'll have at least one more move to do before we throw out our strap clamps, old blankets, and plastic grocery bags (cheap packing material).  But my mom has suggested that we keep everything as boxed up as possible if we're only going to rent for a year.  Which might sound like a long time, but it truly isn't. 

It's still a complicated situation.  No job, no house (those are the two over which I'm all but obsessing, because it leads to...) no idea where to put the kids in school after we get there, no real understanding of the layout of the city, no knowing where to shop for groceries in an affordable manner, and no way of knowing how long this situation will persist.  Anywhere we move, it'll be stepping off of a cliff yet again and I'm getting dizzy from all of this cliff diving over the past ten years.

Nutrition

We can't send goodies to school for birthdays, Halloween (aka Fall Festival), Christmas (aka Winter Holidays, with which I'm actually ok given the plethora of religious observances at that time of year), Valentines Day (aka Friendship Day), or Easter (I don't know what PC moniker they've got for it this year, but anything's better than the now popular "Zombie Jesus Day").

On the other hand, they'll serve chicken nuggets to my kids every Monday, hot dogs/chili dogs every Tuesday, crispy chicken on a roll every Wednesday (once a month it's grilled instead of crispy), tacos on Thursday and pizza on Friday. 

If they put as much thought into lunches as they do for keeping treats from home out of schools, they might get more creative with the menu, yes?  There are alternatives for each of these digestive horrors, along the lines of macaroni and cheese, ravioli (from a can), cheese fish sandwich, and fish nuggets. 

(this rant comes after my son came home with a stomach ache today.  Poor kid did nothing worse than eat what the FDA put in front of him.)  (yes, yes, I'm a parent with all the power to teach him to pack his own lunch each day and I should, but this rant is more about a pathetic irony than a towering outrage over his lunch choices.) 

Monsters

Adrianna the Monster.  The purple flower on her left arm is to cover a slight mishap.

Adrianna and Linus.  Linus was my first monster ever, Adrianna is the third.

A new haircut.

 

I've been having some fun with stash busters lately.  Man found out that his orders hadn't even entered the Human Resources department yet, so until that happens we're perpetually T - 2 weeks until we get them.  In the mean time I've been working with all the odds and ends in the freezer and cupboards to clean them out as gracefully as possible.  In between job and home hunting, I've also been doing some stash busting.  The above monsters require about 2/3 of a ball of fun fur and just the knobbly little bit of a ball of yarn left over from any project for arms and legs.  The flowers are from the $1 store and buttons are also from the stash.  They are stuffed with old rags.  My little girls are going nuts over these little guys, including one little girl whom I see regularly at Tag's basketball practices.  I made hers pink with heart eyes because she's about as girly as little girls can get.  Princess may break me of monsters though, due to high monster ambitions.  That girl's got plans nigh unto a French court where its appearance is concerned. 


Then there's Freida, whose ambitions merely included a personal topiary on her head.  Luckily she didn't get very far before getting caught.  In the photo she's demonstrating how she can fly like a butterfly when she's wearing her butterfly shirt. 

from the block: Music Monday - Valentine's Day Mix

from the block: Music Monday - Valentine's Day Mix

Bwahahaha! The Bee Gees crack me up, but I always come back to them somehow. Seeing a good looking, manly man singing like some sort of chipmunk never gets old. And the music sounds pretty good, too.

The H Times

Me: Pebbles, your birthday is tomorrow!  Do you want to send a treat to class?
Pebbles:  Yes, I do!  [giggle]
Me: Ok, the school says you can send in pencils.
Pebbles: Mom, pencil isn't a treat.
Me:  I know.  [sigh] 

No sugar, no allergens, no soda, no candy.  And we're celebrating Friendship Day next week and we can send in "snacks that are good for our hearts."  I thought about sending in ribbon wrapped Omega 3 capsules.  Those are good for hearts.  Or maybe some granola bars made primarily of flax seeds and oat bran.


This morning we found that the door wedge that was missing from the chapel doors was tucked into my youngest daughter's purse.  Sweet.  We'll be surreptitiously giving that back next week.  "What wedge?  You mean this wedge?  Oh, yeah, I found it over there.  Just putting it back over here.  Good Sabbath!"


Youngest daughter has also been caught in the infinite loop of "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.  Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb...."

So I rebelled:  Mary had a little ham, little ham, little ham.  Mary had a little ham that tasted good with jam.

Freida: No!  Not a ham.

Me:  What about a fan?  Do you like fans?
Freida: Mary had a little fan?
Me: Yes!
Frieda: [looking at me like a deer in headlights]  Noooooooo, not a fan.  [pause, thinking]  Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-Ohh!!  Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-Ohh!!
Me: [my turn for deer in headlights, right before I turn Pandora up]


No orders.  No house.  No job.  Sigh.  Man takes an A+ exam tomorrow to see if he can get a certificate.  If he does, then he'll qualify for a lot more jobs in the government.  He'll also have his degree by this time next month. 

In the mean time, I'll be nudging a little 3 year old out of any number of infinite loops.