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Silly Me
I had to read Sarah's post twice today. How appropriate.
Everyone here knows that the military is a neverending cycle of hurry-up-and-wait, of finding out about changes at the last minute, of thinking you're headed in one direction only to find you're headed in the opposite.
Everyone knows this. I know this.
I think this is all my fault. I had a plan. Silly me. I liked the plan, for the most part. It meant having my husband home for a full year (wow!) and then included him going to a school for the better part of the following year (double wow!).
I was jarred awake early this morning by my husband signing online. He had news and needed to discuss it with me right then before getting back to his monitor. Never mind that I'd taken an Ambien not six hours before and was having trouble reading, let alone processing "news."
We're moving. By fall. He'll be home maybe four to five months before we PCS. The best part is that the PCS is for all of five months, with the next duty station as yet unknown. My nice relaxing year with my new husband, in what was to be our first home together, is no more.
I'm still in that "Oh Shit!" mind frame. All sorts of logistical type things are going through my head, not the least of which is whether I should bother to finish decorating the house. Not to mention selling vs. renting this house out, maybe refinancing if we rent it, moving twice in six months - dot, dot, dot.
Why am I surprised at this? I knew better!
Can I cry now? 
9 comments
Not so. And this, what you describe, is the indoctrination we go through as milspouses. It stays an indoc until the day we're able to say "oh, okay, so what do you want to do for dinner?"
For the record, I'm still going through indoc.
So sorry for the frustration and anger, but with luck, the next year will be a new adventure that will turn out more amazing than you'd imagined. My fingers are crossed for you!
And in regards to your last entry - you just made me feel guilty for not paying any attention to the fact that it was V day and just took the day for granted. In fact I was actually annoyed cause he was home 20 minutes late and I was trying to cook dinner. Your last post made me realise that I shouldn't take the fact the he comes home every day for granted.
Hang in there girl. At least he'll be with you! Together you can make it through this!
Whew! That's quite a lot of changes for you. I had no idea...
KL - Give me a few more years. Maybe I'll get past the indoc stage ...
Carmen - that is one of the silver linings of this life. We realize how precious our time is together and strive to make the most of it. If I could share any part of this experience with the average person, that would be it.
Dena - PCS = Permanent Change of Station. It's a bit ironically named because it's anything but permanent, but whatever. Basically it is military speak for moving to your next location. We know where we're going for this particular move (I was deliberately vague for bloggy purposes) but we don't yet know what comes after that. Knowing whether we are coming back here or headed elsewhere would be quite helpful in deciding what to do with the house, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we find this out soon. We'll see! It's wholly possible that we won't know or that it'll change last minute. Hopefully I'll still have more hair than my husband if that happens.
Tonya - You're completely right. 'At least we'll be together' has been my mantra since finding out. I just need a few days to mourn our old plan and get used to the new one. I really am kicking myself for getting comfortable but I was hoping for a little bit of normalcy, which we've never really had over the course of our relationship. Oh well. Maybe the move after this one ...
I'm so sorry. I would say to just rent the house out until you know for sure you won't be coming back. HUGS!
or something like that! We moved five times in five years, and three of them were lovely 6 month PCSes. I totally get your pain here. Those short ones are really awful. Good luck.
P.S. Our situation has been resolved, though not at all in the way we expected. I'll fill everyone in soon, but for now it hasn't sunk in for me either...