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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

New House, New Place...New Kid?

Ben went back to work today. Well, not real work, but inprocessing. Inprocessing is much akin to going to the DMV, only you have to do it a bazillion times in one day. The lines, the rude people, the taking a million years to get any one thing done because, as the Ben puts it, "the enslave the elderly program is alive and well."

He says this for a reason...many of the people working for the places where inprocessing takes place are senior citizens. In my experience, most of the time they are incredibly pleasant, hardworking people. The problem is that, with how quickly modern technology changes AND the fact that rules/regulations/people's common sense changes all the time, it takes them a little while to get tasks accomplished. Benwas at one "checkpoint" as we call them for 2 hours today. He needed 1 piece of paperwork signed, to pick up about 4 pieces of gear, and there were only 2 people in front of him.

We get aggravated with this on several levels. 1: it just shouldn't take that long. Period. End of story. 2: while we understand that everyone has to make a living somehow, there are jobs on a post like this that should be going to military spouses who want to work (like myself) but can't get a job because all of the positions are taken by people who live an hour away. How on earth does that make sense? It doesn't.

So the Ben was in and out all day. That makes it hard on Monkey. He's become very attached to his daddy in the past 2 months, since Ben has been home most of the time. Now Monkey has to adjust not only to being in a new place, new house, slightly new routine, and a change in his eating (we're currently switching him off of formula to milk and more solid foods), but he also has to deal with daddy coming and going all the time. The  Ben's new job will mean that he is home periodically throughout the day, but then has to go back to work.

At our old duty station, if Monkey saw Benin the morning, but then  Ben went to work, Monkey had a bad day. If Monkey didn't see the Ben until he was home from work for the day, then all was well and everything was sunshine and rainbows. Now Monkey has to adjust to "daddy's here right now but he's leaving for a couple of hours and then he'll be back again" blah blah blah.

So, this morning, Monkey woke up,  Ben  was gone, and we had the meltdown of all meltdowns. Screaming, arching the back, pick me up no put me down punch you punch myself eat not hungry I'M NOT HAPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY kind of meltdown. For an hour. Just as I got him calm, Ben came home. Then he left. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I fully expect this to last for at least a week. Because he's cutting 2 more teeth. And apparently hates me now. Loves daddy, hates me.
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Friday, February 17, 2012

Settling in

Well, we're here. It feels SO good to have everything unpacked and *pretty much* in place. You have to realize, with every move comes an adjustment...different number of bathrooms, different layout, different square footage. Did you know that, on a military move, the packers are not allowed to pack things like plungers? I get it, sanitary issues, blah blah blah...but when you're moving somewhere that the closest Wal-Mart is 30 minutes away and it's a GHETTO WM...well, it's something you notice.

Maybe we're picky. We don't like our plungers naked, out there for the world to see. We like them to come in a little house that is all their own, coming out only when they have a purpose. Somehow the thought of toilet water pooling onto the floor just isn't all that appealing to us...go figure.

Then there's the issue of dealing with other people packing our stuff...it seems that these people lack any sort of common sense. Otherwise the kitchen stuff would not be in the same box as oh, say, stuff that was in the garage or the baby's room...or all three rooms in one box. Yeah, 'cause that's so much fun to unpack. You know what else? You can totally tell when the packing crew (who is different from the moving crew) was starting to get tired. Barely anything is wrapped carefully near the end. It's all just a jumble. Which accounts for my missing snow globe that I LOVED that was a gift from my mother in law our first Christmas.

Wait, let me clarify...the entire snow globe was not missing. Just the globe part. The mechanical bottom? That's still there. As in, the very bottom plate with a few gears attached. I can't replace it, it's just gone. They tell you to file a claim for things that went missing and/or are damaged. How do you file a claim for PART of a $20 snow globe that had immense sentimental value? The answer is you don't. Now, the $100 shelving that the movers lost the bolts to? I'm still working on Ben to claim that. I want my garage in organized chaos, thank you.

And now we're 30 miles from the middle of nowhere. Our goal is to go to the middle of nowhere at least once every 2 weeks or so. Since we have Monkey, going the fun "overnight" places nearby (read, ADULTS ONLY nearby places) is kind of out of the question unless family offers to fly here and babysit. That's OK. As long as we're not stranded on our military island for too long without contact from the outside world. Plus, there are some "family friendly" things to do in the area for a long weekend...we'll focus on those for the time being

And getting new plungers...because who really wants to have that kind of emergency and not have a plunger on hand. Even worse...who wants to have that emergency and have a plunger, but not have a house to put it in when the situation is taken care of? Not us.
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