Oh My I AM Alive!

Long time no post. HAHA. We are PCSing again. We’ve not enjoyed this base that is for sure. Yes there are some aspects that have been nice but for the most part we cannot get out of here fast enough. Since I was so bummed (pissed off actually) about so many things in this house and how things have transpired and the never-ending list of maintenance crap, I decided not to post all my negativity because really who wants to read that. Plus I ventured into other avenues of happiness like doing art and have a separate page where I am posting about that.

So what is going on? Well we (he) got approved for a special duty assignment to Montgomery, Alabama where we will be on a controlled tour for 4 years. This of course is fantastic in the sense that our daughter can go to the same high school for the 4 years we are there and have some stability for her. Not to mention no concern for a deployment while there. AND since this was something he really wanted to do to make him happy in his AF career, for me to be truly happy I had the condition that I would not live on base (since it is run by the same crappy company). Thus we have now acquired a house off base. Ahhh being able to not share a wall with someone and don’t have to deal with idiot landscapers who don’t know how not to run into a car (yes they caused damage to mine). And the added bonus of I can paint my walls and do whatever to my yard (without having to ask permission or have some stupid form filled out) that I want to and feel like a grown-up for the first time in 16+ years of military housing life. Since he is near the end of his 20 year career is is also nice to start experiencing life that isn’t all wrapped up in military everything. Having civilian neighbors and neighborhood is nice to experience while still involved in how I choose to on the military side.
Once I get there I will do my best to blog more since I will be in a happy place instead of this hell hole lol.

So our last day in this place is July 2nd if all goes well. Then we will drive for the day and be at our house in Alabama. If I have to sleep on the wood floor, so be it. At least it is MINE ALL MINE 😉

Arrived at New Base

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, assignment, base life, cardboard, daily blog, housing, moving, my life, PCS, unpacking

A lot has happened since last posting. They got all our stuff packed up and loaded to the truck. Next few days was spent cleaning the house to clear inspection. Then we hit the road for three days of driving. First hotel was crap. The room was ok except for the leak at the wall that could have been from the AC unit or from rain getting in. Either way it made the room stink. Smelled like cat piss. We were too tired to bother to complain and be moved to a different room so we mentioned it in the morning and they removed the pet fees for the night as a way of “making it up to us”. The next place we stopped was REALLY AWESOME. Great room, we now ave a favorite hotel chain lol. Third stop was to the TLF at the new base. It doesn’t surprise me that our old base won excellence awards when I see this place. No separate room for the kids, one is on a roll out bed and the other is using the pull out couch bed. No washer and dryer in the room like the last one. They do have it around the corner in the building though so at least there is someplace to wash clothes. Kitchen is TINY!

We spent the weekend doing a bit of winding down and exploring of the base. There is a huge area here for hunting, fishing and exploration. It is great. We’ve seen deer, owls, gators, and assortment of other birds. AND SQUIRRELS!!! I love me some squirrels!! (not to eat, but to look at and feed)

Monday morning our household goods arrived. (door to door is awesome by the way) spent all day checking off stupid inventory numbers. 19 sheets of two different color stickers gets old fast. I did not mark off two boxes so I am on the look-out for those as we go along. Yesterday J and I knocked out unpacking the kitchen and getting the washer and dryer hooked up. We also did a portion of the living room. Today I am headed over to sort out some of the bedrooms so we can sleep over there by Saturday night since that will be the last day of our stay in TLF.

On to the mountain of boxes and paper that consists of my new house lol.

Have a great day!
Lady Blue

Busy busy busy…..and moving week…

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, daily blog, enlisted spouse, moving, my life, PCS, sorting and purging, Yard sales

Past couple weeks have been filled with farewell events, more sorting and purging, selling of stuff, and cleaning. OH the dreaded cleeaannniiinnnnng. YUCK.

First off I got rid of a pretty big piece of furniture I was concerned about. Weight on that bad boy was over 400 lbs. I was pretty giddy over getting that our of the house lol. It was a loft bed my son has been using for several years and really did not need anymore. I sold it on craigslist and got what I was asking for it. It went to a family with four little girls. I hope they get lots of use out of it.

Sorting and purging I filled up my car including back seats and dropped a load off to the Goodwill donation trailer. We then filled up my car again and dropped another load off to Airman’s Attic. I also posted pictures on the base yard-sale page for items people could come get for free (and several things for sale too.) That stuff cleared out pretty good lol. Have one more load of donation items I think and we can call it all done on that part. I also cleaned all the fans and glass on the lights around the house. Cleaned up the back patio and my garden cart. Got rid of several outdoor pots and a couple plants I was not taking with me. Today I tackled laundry for the last time in this house and also washed the living room curtains. I will do the bedroom ones tomorrow. I’ve started on removing things from the walls in several rooms.

Tomorrow is my last full day of being able to do anything before the packers arrive on Tuesday. Couple days of that mess then off to TLF we go, pets and children in hand.

What’s really sad is our fridge and food supplies. It looks like the fridge before payday of someone who needs to penny-pinch. Today for dinner we cracked open cans of soup. Tasted good but was pretty boring compared to our “normal dinners”.

Well off to bed. Long day tomorrow. I’ll write more about farewell events on another posting.

Sleep well
Lady Blue

Holy Moly it’s HOT!!

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, being a tourist, celebration, daily blog, exercise, Geocaching, gym, my life

What a scorcher it is here the past couple of days. 113 degrees! I sure wont miss that lol. From baking desert sun to humidity, should be tons of fun right? I did manage to go to the gym once this week and walk. Seems my foot may finally be getting over being damaged. I sure hope so.

Well the family and I hit up the cave and the mine this week and enjoyed ourselves. The mine was especially nice yesterday since the temp inside was about 40ish degrees. Here are a few pictures from the mine.

This board was on the surface, not sure what it was used for, perhaps workplace accident notifications by shift? It looked pretty cool though with the light bulbs.

This is where all the safety gear for the visitors is stored. Each person received a helmet, coat, belt and light in addition to a metal tag pinned to each of us. I like the way the coats and helmets are all lined up nice and orderly.

1500 feet into the mountain and about 950 feet of rocks and dirt over our heads we came to an area where the tour guide talked about a lot of the machinery used in there. On the wall we see where a man named Joe wrote his name and the date of 1925 using perhaps the flame of his candle.

This shows the code system for informing the man running the cage (elevator) who needs to move to what level and how many people need moving. The tour guide said it was the miners responsibility to memorize all of those codes.

This coming week I will be going to a movie with a friend and possibly some lunch too. I think we are going to see Iron Man 3 or maybe Star Trek. Other than that we don’t have anything on the calendar yet to do as a family. We might go try to do some geocaching if it isn’t too hot. If it is, then we might just hang in the house and sort stuff. I only have one appointment for the week, big shock there haha. It is also a short week for many since it is going to be the 4th of July four-day weekend.

Hope everyone has a wonderful celebration with friends and family and remember to be safe if you are going to be drinking or using fireworks.

Lady Blue

Calendar

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, daily blog, enlisted spouse, Geocaching, moving, my life, PCS, sorting and purging

I have this magnetic calendar on the fridge I use to keep track of everything everyone has going on. It also allows J to glance at it to see when I have scheduled things. It’s a perpetual calendar in the sense that it is dry erase and I write in the dates however I choose. I have had it for many years. What I normally do is when the current date gets near the bottom I erase the top three/four weeks and shift the last weeks up. Then I add on more dates following where it left off. Today when I did my calendar shift, the packing dates showed up on the last line. This will be the last time I update the calendar while it hangs on the fridge in this house. The next set of dates will be the ones I add to it in our new home after we PCS. That being said, I will have a few more days after the calendar runs out that I am still here doing cleaning, visiting, etc. Kind of puts a perspective on things. That puts us at 37 days left in this state. We get in the car and start our drive across country on the 38th day.

On another note, J and I hit the garage and went through his three gorilla totes and one other container to and thin out his military gear he is keeping. We sorted things into four categories: keep, trash, send to Airman’s Attic, and take to homeless shelter or something similar. We were able to sort through enough stuff to get it all into one gorilla tote. We are keeping one of the others to fill with other Pro gear items, and the third one we will be getting rid of since it got the latches messed up during its shipment home one deployment. Other than the garage sale items in the garage and one other box, it is done. Have a couple closets in the house I need to go through and the living room table baskets to sort. Things are coming along.

We are hitting up a living cavern this week. Living means it still has water going through it forming more shapes in the rocks etc. We also have a copper mine tour we are taking. Perhaps we will pick up a few more Geocaches next week. We did three over the weekend.

Have a great week!
Lady Blue

Busy Week

Tags

2013, AFRC, Air Force Wife, busy busy, daily blog, PCS, scouts

So since my last posting we went to the housing pre-move briefing and found some helpful things as far as cleaning and damaged items. Since our home is the last one set to be remodeled, several things in the home are going to be removed so it doesn’t matter if there is slight damage to it. We stopped by self help and picked up some touch up paint to cover decoration in kids room and couple areas of missing paint. Also picked up some blind slats to replace the junky ones in the window.

Saturday we did manual labor helping out a Boy Scout with his Eagle Project of putting up some special fence at a horse riding and animal rehabilitation center. That was hard work. Sunday was a lazy day since it was Father’s Day. Dropped the kids off to the pool for a couple hours and booked the pool party in July we are having for scouts. Made some super delicious pork roast for J for dinner. My Mom showed me while she was here a way to steam baby red potatoes. I have no idea why I never tried it before but they turn out so awesome. I think she must have picked up this new way to do them after I moved away lol.

Today we had our smooth move briefing done by the Airman and Family Readiness (AFRC) people. Got a couple questions we had in regards to finance answered but for the most part we already knew the rest and felt good that not much has changed since we had last done a PCS and we should be ok. Was good to listen to all the information and the people who came in from each section did a good job. Was a little weird only having three spouses there. More civilian spouses should attend these kinds of things. Highly recommend you go to one of these if you are doing your first PCS. Called the company doing our move and found out that the dates I picked are scheduled as planned and we should be able to have our stuff delivered a couple days after we arrive. Awesome to get our things quickly so we can get settled in. We took care of all the nessisary things so that I could go get my vehicle tags renewed and then I went over to the facility and got them. Hate waiting there for over an hour. I swear I almost fell asleep. Rounded off my busy day with an appointment for myself in the afternoon and then home for spaghetti dinner.

Tomorrow I go to my two + hour appointment to get my braces off and then Wednesday I get to go pick up my retainer. Sure going to be weird lol. Couple more appointments and gatherings the rest of the week, along with taking the dog in for a teeth cleaning. This has been the busiest week so far. Next week is rather quiet and we are trying to plan a couple of family outings to places we just haven’t bothered to visit yet while here but have always wanted to.

Have not heard anything more from either of the key spouse mentors. Not holding my breath on it.

Have a wonderful week!
Lady Blue

Updates for the Week

Tags

2013, af wife, Air Force Wife, complaint, daily blog, enlisted spouse, ESC, friends, key spouse, my life, Spouses group

So on Tuesday I called the lady back and was told during our conversation that my messages through her husband and to the other lady “were abrasive” What the heck does that even mean? I mean I may have sounded a little annoyed over having to take the time to hunt them down and send them an email asking about information so I could be included but not hearing back from them at all. I thought the roll of a key spouse was to get in touch with incoming families and let them know stuff so they feel welcome to the area. So I apologized even though I probably didn’t need to. Makes me wonder if they are under the impression that their husbands position there entitles them to some ass kissing or something. Other thing she did that bothered me was talk over me here and there. Really… can’t let me finish my sentence first before interjecting your information over mine. I made sure to continue on with what I had to say after she stopped so she would learn that when I am talking I will say what I need to say no matter what you have to say. Don’t treat me like some little kid or new to the military lifestyle spouse whose comments aren’t as important. Other than that she was pleasant to talk to. LOL She also said that when they saw my email addy they weren’t sure if I was a “real person” because I don’t use my name in my address. Well I was always taught you don’t put everything about you out there on the internet for people to collect on you, so ya your damn right I don’t have my name as my email. Pffffffff silly lady. I guess the concept of writing a short note back to ask a couple questions to check who I was affiliated with was a little far-fetched. I also received an email from the other woman and hers reaffirmed the feeling that there really isn’t much of a spouses group concept. Guess I’ll be going to the enlisted spouses group activities for things to do and meeting people.

Marked off the checklist this week was turning notice to vacate papers in to housing and setting up the meeting they like to have before move out. Have that to go to tomorrow. On Monday we have another meeting/briefing thing to go to for some other entity. Hell next week is all sorts of appointments for me. Should go by quickly.

Have a great weekend and remember not to be like sand-paper 😉

Lady Blue

No Email Yet

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, computer problems, daily blog, enlisted spouse, exercise, key spouse, losing weight, moving, my life, neighbors

So remember on the 5th I mentioned I was sending out an email to the two ladies I was told are the Key Spouses? Well I hadn’t heard anything after three days so I called both of the numbers. The first person’s number I got a voice-mail message so I left one saying I was checking to see if my email had been received and blah blah. Second person her husband answered (said she wasn’t home right then) so I told him my reason for calling and he said she had seen my email and he would let her know I had called. Couple hours later when I was sitting down for dinner, she called back. I didn’t answer the phone because I felt it would be rude of me to talk to her while shoving my dinner in my mouth lol. She apologized for not responding sooner, her computer threw up on itself and had to have a new hard drive (been there done that). She didn’t really answer any of the questions I had about if there was a spouses group, just said she was there to answer anything I needed. Well how about you just reply to my email? I haven’t called her back, still kinda hoping she bothers to answer my email questions. The other lady hasn’t replied to my email or my phone call. *sigh* Hope this isn’t some sign of things to come.

My desktop computer decided to have an issue now. This is the second time my daughter has been playing some kind of game on it only to have the computer start acting weird so I have banned her from using it ever again. Sick of the computer going down for her wanting to play some dumb click click internet crap on it. I haven’t even attempted to fix it yet. Not sure I want to even try and may just take it to the computer shop I have used for my laptop.

I managed to go walking three or four days in a row and then have been a bum for two days. I had therapy at the chiropractor today though so my shoulders are sore, but I did do a bit of exercise while there.

Neighbors seem to have discovered how to turn their stereo/TV up really loud. J has had to go over there twice to tell them it’s a bit too loud. Of course they don’t seem to learn anything and had it up a bit loud today (not nearly as bad as the first day though). I am definitely eager to not live next to them anymore. I sure hope the new neighbors at the next place are nice.

Have a great week
Lady Blue

Checked off Another Box

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, base life, daily blog, enlisted spouse, exercise, gym, key spouse, losing weight, moving, PCS, PCS nighmare, sorting and purging, Spouses group

We had our packer walk-through today. This is where they go through your house to get an idea of any special boxes they need, special packing instructions and get a general idea of how many boxes and how much packing materials to send with the crew on packing day. After we went through he said “you’ll be close” but he did NOT say he thought we would go over. I still have things to go through so hopefully this “close” wont be so close after all. Many of the large items we came here with are now gone or are being gotten rid of, such as a heavy wood loft bed from my son, an encyclopedia set and our picnic table set. We have a smaller entertainment center and even though we have larger TV’s they weigh less than the ones we had before. I’m sure the guy knows his stuff but he didn’t see what we had when we got here either. We shall see.

Today I also allowed myself to be drug out to the gym. I had mentioned yesterday to J about going because I feel like some blob. When he called me from work to see if I still was going I didn’t really want to anymore but I decided I would follow through with it and go. We walked for two miles and then went out and had salad bar lunch. Now later in the day and close to evening, my stupid foot is bothering me. *sigh* I’m so over this BS of hurting for doing practically nothing. I didn’t even walk fast! Tomorrow I have therapy and the chiropractor so I hope I’m not too sore for any of that.

I also sent off an email to the two ladies I was told are the Key Spouses for the new job. Lets see if I get a response and what exactly the unit offers for things for spouses.

Have a great week

Lady Blue

Marking Things Off

Tags

2013, Air Force Wife, daily blog, friends, housing, key spouse, military, moving, my life, PCS, scouts, sorting and purging

I feel like I accomplished a lot this week, some of it thanks to my Mom. We tackled both kids rooms and completed them! All junk, trash and outgrown things have been removed. Son’s stuff has been sorted into Rubbermaid totes for storage while he is off in college. Mom left yesterday to go back home. Her five week visit seems to have flown by. We had a wonderful time with her and this will be the last time she will see this base. Hoping to have her out to visit the new house during Christmas time. She made me promise not to put everything up so she can help me decorate my house. I don’t mean Christmas items, just pictures and regular deco lol.

Having completed the kids rooms, I moved on to the laundry-room/craft area. I stuffed each of my fabric totes as full as possible with whatever sewing things were laying around. Trying to get them as full as possible so there is no wasted space. I made a bean bag dog bed for one of my dogs from my daughter’s old beanbag chair that had a hole in it. After that I packed away my sewing machine into its carrier. Next I continued going around the craft area and packed away items into some of the photo boxes I use to organize my craft supplies. Packed those up as full as possible too. Then I swept and mopped the kids rooms and all of downstairs. Last night I was able to drop some items off to scouts and clear them out of my way too.

On our PSC checklist of things I have marked off reservations for both TLFs. (here and there & pet friendly rooms too). We also got the TMO stuff completed and secured the days we wanted for a pack-out. Strange thing was it decided they need Three days to pack us out due to the weight allowed. Hell they took two days to pack us the last two times and I know I haven’t acquired a ton of stuff since then. Oh well, I bet the spend a lot of time sitting around twiddling thumbs on that third day. Better to have one to many days than one too few and screwing up our schedule of drive time. Plus it will give us a bit more time to clean.

System they are using now is pretty stupid. Spend all your time doing your own self council then have to make an appointment at TMO for what? Apparently JUST to have him sign a few things. They made it sound like it was going to be some sit down meeting to discuss stuff with us. Now we just wait for an email telling us who the company is that will be doing the work. We also have a smooth move briefing just to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything important since its been several years since we did a move. Today is the 60th day until we leave.

Another personal checklist item I was able to do was find out who the Key Spouse will be. I was told there are two different ladies being the Key Spouse. I have not made contact with them yet, but I hope when I do I find out there is some type of spouse group for the unit he is going to. I’m sure going to miss the few ladies I have come to know well over the last three years here. That is pretty much my only regret on moving, the leaving people part 😦

Tomorrow we will be doing manual labor helping out another scout in the troop with his Eagle Project, so no yard sale. After that and this whole week, I think I’ll need a hot bath and a nice drink 🙂

Hope everyone has a wonderful productive weekend.

Lady Blue