My heart is aching...

Thursday was a rough day. Nothing seemed to go the way I wanted it to. I put the kids to bed early and was relishing some time watching some TV I had taped while doing some work on the computer and enjoying a delicious sushi dinner. I spent a few minutes wallowing in the long hard day that I'd had. Children who didn't nap, taxes that took to long to complete and to top it off, cleaning up a bunch of poop. I realized how blessed I was that after such a rough day the kids had gone to bed early. I was heading there myself.

And then it happened. My day got worse. Very quickly. The news of the 7.9 quake in Japan (which was quickly elevated to 8.9) was bad enough. Watching the devastation and the fear and imminent deaths there broke my heart. But a large earthquake like that means a lot more to me now that it affects me personally. An earthquake that size most definitely means a Tsunami is likely. And considering that I can see the water from my living room window, I couldn't spend a lot of time sitting around and doing nothing.

That brings me to another reason why being a military family is different from being a normal civilian family. When you grow up in Nebraska, you hear the civil defense sirens and know that a tornado is threatening your county. That is, unless it happened to be 10:00 AM on Wednesday. When you're a military family and you move thousands of miles, the shortlist of natural disasters changes with each move. The ones you're used to really don't apply in each place. On the east coast you worry about hurricanes. The west coast has wildfires and earthquakes. And apparently, an island in the middle of the pacific has issues with volcanoes, sulfur dioxide air, and the aftermath of major earthquakes all along the ring of fire - Tsunamis. The thing is that when you grow up in an area you learn to stop being afraid of the natural disasters that are common in your area. You get used to the sirens, warnings and know that you're relatively safe even if the disaster threatens to strike. But when you move to new areas, you have to learn to cope with new, scary things that you aren't used to.

I am truly, TRULY blessed to live in a very close-knit community. We all watch out for each other's children and talk almost daily. If we don't see someone for a while, we check to ensure that things are okay. And because of this, even when my best friend is thousands of miles away, I have people I can lean on. People who have in just a few short months have become family. And so, when the earthquake hit in Japan, the word was passed quickly throughout the neighborhood. We all know that earthquakes, though far away can directly impact our area. When the tsunami watch was issued, we all talked and knew that should it become a warning, we would go somewhere together. When civil defense said it was "highly likely" the watch was going to become a warning, we had decided to get ready. So that if it became a warning we would be able to leave ahead of everyone else and avoid traffic. So, fifteen minutes before the first siren, we were already packing up, planning to go somewhere together, in the middle of the night, with all of our children. And when the siren sounded we were already well on our way to seeking safety.

My heart is aching for those in Japan who are dealing with the tragedy. But my heart is also aching with gratitude for a Great God who helped to place my family in this home. Aching with love for my neighbors who have stepped in to watch my children when others had to be rushed to the emergency room. We may not live in a brand new house, but we have a roof, walls and plenty of room. We have a view of the water in a wonderful area of the world where the weather is almost always amazing. We have friends for the kids to play with (and get hurt with). We have block pot-lucks and birthday parties. We have a community that is hard to find. So it was with great relief that Friday morning, when the all-clear was sounded that we returned to our homes. But the relief was not because our houses and our things were in tact, it was because our neighborhood family was.

Moving -- Showing up and Setting Up!

One of the most exciting parts about being in the military is getting to a new duty station. I love getting to a new place, especially the first morning if we've arrived late at night -- which is usually the case. It feels like Christmas! That's not to say that there aren't a lot things to do to get set up in a new place.

Just like in any civilian move, we have to find a place to live. You can sometimes get into housing. But, generally the waiting lists are ridiculous. Some places it can take years to get into a house on base housing. It used to be that housing kept a ton of houses available for incoming members, but it isn't the case anymore. Housing pretty much everywhere (at least in the US) has been privatized to try to save money. I'm not exactly sure how much money the military is actually saving by leasing the land to a third party, and then paying all military members the housing allowance, but it has made life a bit more difficult when you're trying to get into base housing in some places.

Housing Allowance? What? We get a certain amount of money for housing costs based on where we live. Everyone in the military gets paid the same based on their rank and time in service. BUT if they didn't give a housing allowance, people in some areas would effectively get paid more than others. Someone living in Omaha, Nebraska would be making a ton more than someone stationed in San Diego CA, if they didn't change the rate for housing based on where we live.

One of the first places you visit when you get to your new station is the housing office. Now that it has been privatized, it's kind of a mixed bag. It used to be that you visited a place on base, and you got a house if one was available, based on the active duty member's rank and the number and age of their dependents. Now that it has been privatized, though, some places are wonderful to work with, and others are a nightmare. When we visited the housing office in California we were offered an old, dilapidated looking home with two bedrooms, one bathroom, no washer dryer hookups, and a driveway that was to be shared with five other families and a broken fence. All for the low cost of our entire housing allowance. Seven miles away we were offered a very new three bedroom house with a two-stall garage, a driveway we shared with one family. And the fence wasn't falling down. How much was the newer house? The same amount as the first place. Which house would you choose? I wasn't exactly hip on paying to live in a shack where I'd have to visit the laundry-mat with a toddler every week. The problem wasn't even the lack of available decent houses. The issue we had was more in the way we were treated. When we arrived, we waited around to talk to someone about what we would be offered. The two housing offices played against each other, and if we hadn't been smart about the way we were accepted and offered our lists, we would have had to wait an additional 30 days to even see what was available. We felt like we were looked upon second-class people getting a free handout from the government, rather than a renter who was paying $3000 per month for rent. It was completely obvious that the civilians that were running the housing office despised the military and the people who showed up to rent from them. It seemed odd. That isn't always the case, though. When we applied for housing in New England, we expected to show up and have the same situation. We called to find out where the office was to meet our agent, and she instead had us meet her at our house. She was incredibly friendly, and as has been the case here, that everyone is happy to help with most everything. (Except for the speeders the race through the neighborhood, but that has nothing to do with the military). I've already talked about the differences between the two houses, so I won't go there, but I'm much happier here where I don't feel as if the people at the office despise us because we are getting "free" housing that we are actually paying for.


If you look for a house out in town, it's the same as civilian life, with one exception -- you HAVE to have a military clause in your lease. Orders change. Orders can, and do change mid-tour. So, you have to have a clause exempting you from the lease termination fee should you need to move out early because of a change in orders. In some places, you'll be treated like crap whether you're leasing in town or from the housing office because of that termination exemption. The housing office usually has a list of "black-listed" agencies and complexes that you shouldn't rent from, because they are notorious for being unfair and mistreating the military members when they need to use the military clause in their leases, sometimes even refusing to honor it.

Once you've found your house, vacation is over. You get in and you call the moving company to tell them your new address. You can update your address with the post office, hopefully get caught up on any bills and obligations you've had to put off while you were "homeless" between addresses. In housing, generally your basic utilities are automatically put in your name, while out in town you have to arrange all of that yourself, just like everyone else. If you're in housing you have to figure out cable and Internet. Cable and Internet is one major bonus to privatized housing. When housing wasn't privatized, the civilian cable companies didn't have cable run to the houses, so you couldn't get 'normal' cable, and getting any kind of high speed Internet was next to impossible. Some places, (ahem, where we used to live) the privatized companies didn't deem cable and Internet as "necessary" utilities. So, they simply didn't pay the companies to come in and install any hubs or lines to the neighborhoods because they were too cheap. At our last house, we didn't have any option other than satellite for TV. After the digital conversion, we couldn't even get over the air channels because the TV stations were too far away and there were too many hills around to get a signal except for in one bedroom upstairs -- and even then you had to be standing on your head, touching your nose and sticking your tongue out just so to get the one channel that would come in. As for Internet, we were lucky that they did have "high speed" (IE, barely faster than dial up) Internet set up, but it was still incredibly slow, worked about 1/2 of the time and cost twice as much as anything else we could have gotten anywhere else.

If you're lucky, and moving somewhere in the US, you can usually have your stuff within a couple of weeks of getting into your house. We have had it take a full month before, though. Your stuff has been shipped across the country, and has probably been put into storage if you didn't fly from one place to the other, or drive like a crazy maniac trucker or stop and visit family on the way. In our experience, when your stuff goes into storage it gets broken. The movers treat your stuff a bit differently when you're watching them. Have you ever watched how the luggage handlers at the airport treat your bags? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's the same deal at the storage facility.

In my experience the movers who offload our stuff whine a lot less than the ones that pack it and load it. I think that's because most of the time they aren't doing quite as much work since they're not unpacking. Yes, you have the option of having them unpack for you. However, while they will take the stuff off of the shelves and put it into a box, they won't take it out of the box and put it onto a shelf. You have to put your dishes into the cabinets, your clothes into your dressers, and your books on your shelves. So, unless you have eight arms, no children and can be in three places at once, it's much easier to unpack at your own pace.

A military family learns to unpack quickly too. Since we move so often, we don't have much time to waste unpacking. If we spent months unpacking our boxes, we'd be living out of boxes our whole lives. Our last move, it took us one week to have our house completely set up and unpacked. However, there always seem to be a few boxes of miscellaneous stuff that don't get completely unpacked. Those are the boxes that never seem to get unpacked and they seem to multiply with every move.

As you're unpacking you will most likely, find broken things. Because, like I mentioned earlier, your stuff has been moved without you around. The moving company (if you've paid for the replacement insurance -- we always do--out of pocket) will pay to repair and replace any broken items, but it's often a pain to get all of that sorted out. And how do you really replace stuff that is irreplaceable -- you can't find some things again.

Remember the lamps we got rid of at the last place because the entire house had lighting in the ceiling and you didn't have an affordable option for storage? Too bad. So you're out buying lamps. And new curtains because the windows that were 84" above the floor in California are only 65" off the ground in New England. This is something that happens no matter who you are and you move, but it all adds up when you move every year. The last house you lived in was built in 2004, so it had network cable in the walls and electrical outlets (or several) on every wall. This house, however was built in 1950. When you plugged in a lamp and a TV. So there is about 3 plugs in every room. So you have to buy extension cords.

Most of that stuff I had to give away at the last place, because the movers couldn't move it will have to be replaced. Every year or so I've had to replace my entire kitchen cabinets with new spices and cleaners. Not a big deal, really, except that it can get expensive. And it's really annoying when you get to the new place and go to cook something, and What do you MEAN we don't have any garlic powder, vinegar or baking powder? Didn't I JUST buy that the other day? Yes, but the other day was in our last house.

Luckily, some things have gotten easier recently. It used to be that if you were a military spouse, even though you moved on military orders, you became a resident of the state you moved to. So you had to change your driver's license right away too. If you were smart, you'd leave your car titled only in the military member's name because otherwise you were required to change the plates on it to a new state every time as well. Sometimes, it's better to change the plates. We do if we are going to be in one place for a long period of time and the cost is reasonable in the new state. For the past few decades, they have been trying to pass a bill so that military dependents can keep the same state of residence even while moving around. It passed this year, which is wonderful. It makes the whole "arriving" in a new place a bit easier. It basically means that we don't have quite as much paperwork to do.



Now that we're here and set up we can begin exploring!

Moving -- Setting it up and Setting out!

Moving is inevitable when you're in (or married to) the military. Sometimes you know its coming and other times you have no clue. Sometimes you have months to plan, other times you are lucky to get a few weeks. But moving happens. Military jobs have a timeline. You're not in one place for very long but you generally know how long you're going to be at any specific job.

There are many variables, but at some point in time, you know your time is waning at the job you're in, so in some way, shape or form you either pick or get picked to go to your next job. Sometimes you get to pick, other times the government picks for you. That all falls into the whole "government property" thing. At any rate, you are set up for a new job and you have an idea about where you're going next. However, before you can do any planning of any kind you have to wait for orders. Once you have orders, you can begin planning. Most military members know, though, that you shouldn't plan too early if you're lucky enough to get orders a few months out. Because orders can, and often do change.

Before we got married, when I decided to move it was because I couldn't afford rent, wanted a change of scenery, etc. I knew when my lease was up, so I started looking a few months out, put down a deposit on a place and scheduled everything so that I had a few days overlap. One sweaty weekend, a case of beer, a U-haul, some friends and family, and I was in a new place. Now, when I move it's because someone is telling me to. If I'm lucky I get a few months to think about where we're going to move to, but I can't start searching for a new place to live until we have orders. Usually I can't find a new home until after we've already moved to the area.

In order to move, there are several forms to fill out. Just because we're being told to move from Place A to Place B, doesn't mean it all happens automatically. We have to tell someone to schedule the moving trucks, packers and loaders. We have to tell someone to arrange for our travel, especially if travelling requires airline reservations.

After you fill out all of the forms, which can take hours and sometimes days, letting everyone know that you're moving, where to, and when you'd like to have it all arranged, you are told when everything will actually happen. Sometimes it is when you want it to happen, other times, not so much.

Sometimes you can visit your new destination ahead of time to find a place to live, but most of the time it is expensive and you're moving too far away for any kind of real house hunting. Leaving one house before you find a new address can create problems. Technically when we're between houses, we're homeless. We don't have an address to put down on any forms. We can't fill out a mail forward until we know the new address, so we have our mail forwarded to family or friends nearby temporarily, but that isn't always an option. So you're stuck using your last address and hoping that no one is going to try to mail anything important to you. It's especially difficult to explain to utility companies that you don't have a forwarding address for the final bill. They don't quite get it sometimes.

Once you've gotten everything "scheduled" you have to prepare your house. One nice thing about military moves is that if you choose, someone will actually come pack up your stuff for you. (You can also pack your stuff and move yourself. But with a military spouse who is lucky to get time off for dinner, it's hard to arrange a move on your own without it turning into a nightmare. If you can, though, the military will pay you part of what they'd pay the movers to do all of that work.) That doesn't mean everything is easy, though. They don't move some things. All those cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink? Can't be moved. Do you have anything flammable such as propane canisters, spray paint, any aerosol products? Nope, they can't come. Open boxes of cereal? Nope. Ketchup in the fridge? Sorry. Pretty much anything that is perishable or open is garbage. It can't be moved.

What do you do with all of that stuff? Most of the time I try to donate stuff to neighbors or the homeless, etc. However, most of the food that can't be moved is open. And the homeless shelters won't take open food items. I get the reasons for it, but if you're neighbors have all moved before you, or can't take any more free stuff (because their fridges and pantries are stuffed from everyone else moving ahead of you), you're pretty much throwing away a bunch of perfectly good food.

There are pests in some parts of the country and the world that are dangerous to the environment in other places. One example, the gypsy moth. If you are lucky enough to get stationed somewhere that the gypsy moth lives, you have to inspect every single thing that has ever been outside for larvae to ensure that you're not going to single-handedly kill off the endangered species that live ONLY on one island in the entire world. If you don't find it, and the movers or customs finds it, it's a whole lot of fun trying to get your shipment without a bunch of red tape.

Have pets? Travelling with pets in CONUS isn't a big deal. You just cram them into the car with the travel high chair, pack and play and your kids. Moving OCONUS (outside of the continental US)? Good Luck. You have to fill out several pages of paperwork, have blood drawn, and pay close to a thousand dollars out of pocket between vet bills, paperwork and plane tickets to get your pet from Place A to Place B. And if one thing goes wrong, you're looking at thousands of dollars for the quarantine period.

The date arrives, and the movers are supposed to show up to pack your stuff at 8:00. You've sorted out all of the "un-movables" that you can find early, but know that they will tell you that they can't move some things this time, even though they did last time. You get the kids up and ready, everyone is dressed, donuts and coffee for the packers have been purchased. 9:00 arrives and no movers. 10:00, and 11:00 and noon. At 1:00 they show up to pack. And then they spend the entire day whining about how much stuff you have. How many movies and books to you really need? Do you really have to have so many pictures to load? What about all those toys? Do your kids really need that? Your furniture sure is heavy! And you have a lot of it! Never mind that you only own 6,000 pounds worth of stuff and you're authorized twice that. I forgot to mention that. We can only own so much stuff. It's not based on the number of people in your family, just on rank. Everything is finally packed at around midnight.

The truck is supposed to arrive tomorrow. At 8:00. So, you get up at 6:00 in the morning, get the kids ready to go, buy donuts and coffee for the loading crew, and get to your house at 7:45 to make sure the place is ready to go. 9:00 arrives and no truck. And it's 10:00, 11:00, noon and 1:00. The truck shows up at 4:00. You've been sitting at a house where everything is packed, waiting for several hours for the truck to show up. When they show up there is the whining again. Do your kids really need all of those outdoor toys? Your furniture sure is heavy! And you have a lot of it! How many boxes do you have to load? The truck is finally loaded at midnight. If you're lucky, your spouse is around so one of you can return to the hotel with your children before they reach critical mass and explode.

Once the truck has pulled away, you ensure that you've gotten everything packed. Everything you need for the next two months is loaded into your cars. You need two months worth of stuff, because moving is about the only time you get to visit family. And because most of the time you haven't found a house ahead of time, you don't have an address to give to the moving company. Your stuff goes into storage. And you have to wait your turn to get stuff out of storage and into your house. Which sometimes takes a month or more. If you're brave, you drive across the country, small children in tow. You have to drive yourself because the military won't pay for shipment of vehicles. (The exception is if you're travelling over seas and lucky enough to be moving somewhere where you're authorized to move a vehicle, but even that isn't easy. If you are having a vehicle shipped, you often have to drive it several hundred miles to a drop off point -- they will NOT pick it up at your house and send it from there.) If you have small children who don't do well in the car, you have to have vehicles shipped on your own dime, and fly from one place to another. Many families have one parent travel with children by air, while the other drives a vehicle packed to the brim.

These few days between houses can be incredibly irritating or wonderfully amazing. I love it when we're between homes. We always drive if we're travelling in the CONUS (Military speak for Continental United States). We don't have any responsibilities other ensuring that we're to our destination on time. We usually attempt to turn our moves into an adventure. Not quite a vacation, because we're usually on a tight schedule and can't afford long stops in many places, but we try to have fun anyway. Even with all of the reality checks, problems and pains that go along with moving, it's always exciting. It's fun to live with the anticipation of a new place. Those few days between duty stations are like the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is a buzz in the air that can't be contained. I often hope I get to our new destination in the dark. That way, it's like Christmas to wake up in a new place that you haven't seen in the light and go exploring -- only Santa has delivered a new start in a new place. What an adventure!

What's next? Getting to your new place!

Military Life. Part One.

I started writing and realized what a big undertaking this series is going to be. I am still writing and thinking and considering all of the aspects of my life and how different it would be if I wasn't married to someone in the military.

I've narrowed everything down to two main "causes."

1. 1. Moving. We move. A LOT. And by a lot, I mean usually once every year or so. Sometimes more often. Sometimes we're only in a place for six months.
2. 2. At least one person is literally "property of the US government." Doubt me? I wouldn't. It means that the government can -- and will use the person where it is best for the government. Usually there is some consideration for the families, but leave and liberty are always privileges -- not rights. (Leave is like vacation, and liberty is getting to leave the base for any reason at any time -- like to go home for the night, etc.)

Unless I'm totally overlooking something, every single thing in our lives revolves around those two things. Where we live, what we eat, where our kids go to school and for how long. We as military members and their dependents have little control of many aspects of our lives. And those aspects that we don't have control over are often what civilians consider part of their identity. So what is our identity? We are in the military. Our lives are different. Most of us embrace the differences, dealing with them day-by-day.

Things I think about that you don't have to.

The other day a good friend and I were talking about different groups we've joined trying to get social interaction for both ourselves and our preschool children. She had joined a group that was designed specifically for mothers who have children who are too young to go to school. I'm not going to name names, but you should be able to figure it out. She mentioned that the specific group she joined touted their 'welcoming attitude' toward military families. Then, she mentioned how when she joined, she was surrounded by a bunch of ladies who had all grown up in the area, never moved, and hadn't been very friendly to her. They weren't mean, but they weren't friendly either.


I know -- why do you care? Well, because this is something that most people don't get about being a military family. We have almost an entire culture to ourselves, because of the differences in our lives that regular people don't have to put up with. So many things that most people don't put up with we do without blinking an eye, or even thinking about. Most of them, in fact, we don't even notice after a few years. Ever since having that conversation about how she got the cold shoulder, I've been thinking about how different our lives must be, and how we don't even notice until we are confronted with it.



So I'm going to try something. I'm going to start telling you the ways that my life is different than the 'average' citizen of the country. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure I will be adding to it as we go. I don't want anyone to think I'm whining or complaining -- I'm not. I accept all of the parts of military life as just that -- part of our lives. This is a topic I've tried to write about multiple times, but haven't ever posted because I didn't want anyone to think I'm a whiner. Well, I am, but I don't like to whine when it comes to aspects of military life. I married into it knowing all of the ups and downs that were going to come along with it.



To the other military spouses -- leave a post in the comments about the things you notice about your life being different than the civilians you live near and around. And if I can, I'll try to post about it. Non-Military spouses, ask questions -- what do you want to know?!