Saturday, oh Saturday

Saturdays for us generally involve people coming over, doing a little cleaning, depending on how many dollars we have, going out to lunch and hanging out with our roommates. Today was no exception. We had a DELICIOUS lunch at Fish City Grill then went to goodwill and picked up some well needed items. Jake decided to indulge in a burger stuffer (don't ask) and I got frames for a commissioned kitchen project I'm working on for my sister in law Kellie. It will ultimately involve several chalkboard frames as well as cork boards that will hang in her kitchen as sort of an informational hub -- a place to hang artwork, etc.

We have finally gotten our report date to Germany -- the first week in May -- and we're VERY excited. We had our transportation briefing yesterday and ultimately they told us how and what we need to pack. I'm glad that I went because let's be honest, husbands aren't always the best at relaying information properly :) A 3 hour briefing (according to my husband) can easily be summarized in a 4 minute dissertation.

Right now, we're trying to coordinate what/how we want to move certain items, which items we want to be shipped and which items we want to be flown, and then after that, what dates we want all of this to happen on.

Stressful stuff but it'll all get hammered out! Super excited to be going to Iowa next week!! Yay!

pcs-ing and other fun acronyms

i think potentially what is most difficult about coming into the army is a whole new world of crap that no one, anywhere else in the world, has to deal with. time schedules, jargon, levels of hierarchy, the dreaded over use of acronyms, historic inefficiency (ok...that happens everywhere) but what makes all of those things harder than anything else is trying to explain yourself to people who either don't know how to relate or people who "understand what you're going through" when the biggest family issue they have is where to go on their next vacation. i'm not naive enough to think that people don't have money or boss or other issues in general but when things are overall out of your control -- meaning you have almost 0% choices, options, or opinions regarding your own life, it feels as if you are living in some crazy world that no one else (except for other military families) understands.

for instance, right now, we are dealing with a particularly frustrating issue called pcs-ing. pcs stands for "permanant change of station" or essentially relocating to a new base. pcs moves can be as simple as going to a different part of the state or transferring half way across the world. because jake does a particularly fancy job that requires a rather high security clearance, he gets a little bit better choice of jobs out of all of the jobs available. he gets to "request" where he's going but, as is with the military in general, HA! if you think it will happen for sure. what is tough about this is that it is a waiting game. for instance, i can't secure a full time job to start paying back student loans because i have no idea if/when we're leaving. we can't purchase a new car, get a new apartment, make vacation plans, or really even save money effectively because everything could change in a moment's notice. but back to jake's clearance...

he has to occasionally go through a battery of testing to make sure he's still fit to be handling important information and when asked, completes them in a timely manner, turns in his paper work, and goes about his business as normal. this request for an update happened sometime around february 2010 and all was as normal. last week we find out not one, not two, not three, but FOUR individuals somehow "lost" said paperwork/review that was conducted back in february and that the department of national security was going to be taking away his clearance for non-compliance (all while he in fact DID do what they asked and he was never informed of the miscommunication). we also found out that this was why he hadn't been given his paperwork to get ready to go to germany (to pcs) or to go anywhere else for that matter. no one had informed him, no one called, corrected, contacted his commander...absolutely nothing. and all because of these lapses in the system - jake could've been faced with not just being re-deployed with his unit because we couldn't pcs, but losing his job and his entire military career. 

although he has a meeting with the head of that department tomorrow to find out what mistakes happened and how to fix them (that will hopefully end in two one way tickets to germany...), it really starts to wear on you when you find out how hard some people work and how NOT hard many others work. it's difficult to watch when other families go through this too. we happen to know several in the same crappy boat right now -- military life is hard enough for troops and their families when people are actually doing their jobs, let alone when things fall through the cracks. super frustrating.

have you ever had to deal with a situation like this? yuck. tell me all about it.