Hurry Up and Wait

Ugh, I hate that statement from the Army but so often it's true.

We are waiting for housing. It is a tortured experience. We are here, physically here waiting to get assigned a house on post, but anyone can walk in, have a leave date earlier then us and bump us. That is what happened to us today. We only have this nice pet cottage for 12 more days or so and then we have to find other living arrangements. When we signed into housing, they told us it would be about a 2-6 week wait, now they say a 4-6 month wait. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle of that.

I feel blessed to have the temporary arrangments we do but the fact that we have no house to move into at the end of our stay in 10 days does stress me some. We have it in the Lord's hands and we know that He will take care of us.

I'm a little off center here, I'm growing weary of not having our own stuff. It's hard to be motivated when you are in limbo.

I went into the AFTB office here and they were nice enough, it's different though, I miss my Hood peeps. It's a smaller installation so they have different problems.

On a good note, while visiting the AFTB office, we met Kevin's brigade commander's wife and the brigade XO's wife. There is something to be said about networking! And I already like the brigade commander's wife. Kevin hasn't signed into his unit but already one of his superiors wants to help us out anyway he can. That is a step in a different direction for us considering the crap we left behind at Hood.

On a fun note, yesterday was a Basic Training graduation so there were graduates and their families milling around everywhere. I wasn't really paying attention at first but after a while I would notice that many of them would be happy go lucky and then their demeanor would change. After a few minutes I realized that Kevin was wearing a pullover he had received when he was a drill sergeant at Knox that has the Drill Sergeant badge and his name embroidered on it. It was kind of amusing to watch that. We went out to lunch and a poor kid almost choked when Kevin walked by. I told Kevin his jacket would need to go into hiding.

We had a good chat though with a new CBRN graduate (Kevin is CBRN). I admit I might have been eavesdropping (well they were talking LOUDLY). The kids family was asking him what he would be doing in training. He was stumbling through an explanation so I apologized for eavesdropping and told him he could ask Kevin since he has been doing this NBC/CBRN stuff for over 20 years. We had a nice chat with the family after that. Found out that the Soldier's grandfather had done basic training back in 1954 right here at Fort Leonard Wood. He was funny because he mentioned that it pissed him off that new Soldiers get AC in their barracks! Pretty funny stuff.

So there is positive as we continue to wait...