Makin' a List

Moving time is coming.  I can feel it.  Even if we have no dates yet.

What I can also feel is the panic starting to set in so easily because we live in a chaotic household.

Since we found out about Hubby's heart issues the month after we got here, we never really settled in.  Not that we planned to, since I was planning on moving up to DC for the year while he was supposed to be deployed.

But plans change.  And around here, that has become status quo.



So there are stacks of pictures in the computer room that never made it up on the walls.  Z's clothes on the table downstairs in the kitchen. More toys in the living room than anywhere else.  Books are at least on the shelves, albeit haphazardly.  And my mind?  It's as chaotic as the house we live in.

A tidy desk may reflect an organized mind, and I'd say the same for the home.  Definitely my home, at least.  I try to be organized and tidy and neat and...together.

Alas, the domestic craziness in my case does reflect the internal struggle for sanity in many ways.

And as time seems to be flying at a faster pace than I can handle, I realized for the first time that January is nearly over.  Already.

We are hoping to have a decision from the MEB sometime in February.  The paperwork is in process.  It went to the base MEB, the first step, to determine if hubby's case was serious enough for Texas.  Somewhere along the line, the paperwork was not put in the proper format and so the local MEB sent it back to the doctor to be corrected.  That's as much as I know right now.

Once the local MEB makes a decision, they send it to the local VA (also on base, thankfully) and Mike has to meet with them and I think a lawyer to sign some papers.  Not sure about the lawyer bit though.  Oh, and he has to get a letter signed by his commander (who happens to be the guy who led the group who got Osama, incidentally), which thankfully won't be a problem or cause another delay as it's already written.  Then the whole kitten caboodle gets sent to the MEB in Texas and they can take anywhere from 7-120 days to come back with a decision.  We have gotten word, though, that the board tends to reply in 7-14 days most usually.

Which means we could easily have a decision, orders, and a retirement date by the end of February.  Technically it could take only 2 weeks.

And then we fly into action - going TDY to find a job and a house for a couple of weeks, coming back here to officially sign out of the military (get medical records, other records, coordinate the movers, get insurance switched over - all the fun paperwork stuff), and then we're on terminal leave for the rest of Hubby's leave (probably 2 months) during which we will officially move into our new house that we would have found earlier.

If only things go that smoothly...

We will be doing a partial ditty move, where we move whatever will fit into our vehicles.  Stuff we don't want the movers to pack.  Stuff we will have to live off of from the time we go TDY until our stuff is delivered in our new home and gets unpacked.

I am not exactly sure why, but the task has become monumental since we got Z.  The last move was planned.  Relatively easy considering we already had a place to stay lined up.  Hubby was there every step of the way (I've moved us more often than not, by myself).  He dealt with the movers.  He handled everything for the most part.  All I had to do was pack the stuff that Z and I needed for the next week or two.

Epic Fail.

For reasons I don't myself know, I panicked.  I couldn't see straight.  I had the same exact experience I had when I walked into an American grocery store for the first time after moving back to the US for college: I became a zombie.  Everything got blurry.  I couldn't pick out individual items.  I couldn't tell anything apart.  The room started to spin.

From what I remember, I threw random clothes into suitcases, left and right.  I managed to lose every single bottle of baby wash and lotion and kept buying more, and losing what I bought.  When we finally got down here and I unpacked, we had something like 16 bottles of each.  We are still in the middle of using the stash I ended up with.

Basically, I lost my entire mind and packed all of the wrong stuff.

This time, I can feel that same panic setting in.  Especially because the length of time we have to live off of what we pack is so much greater with this move.  Potentially up to 3 months out of the suitcases we lug around with us.

You'd think that would motivate me to be better prepared.

Actually, I've been playing Solitaire on my phone in an effort to avoid the monumental task in front of me.  Classic shut down behavior for me.

I decided to get some help and explained my fears to Hubby.  Who took matters into his own hands by sitting me down and making a detailed list with me; what goes in my car, and what goes in his truck.

From there we attacked the important papers that have been collecting in the computer room.  We threw out old crap.  Got our tax papers in order.  Got our medical records together in one spot.  Re-located our agency's adoption paperwork.  And we got it all into one box with a lid on it.

In addition, I got out all of Z's 18 month clothes, took off the tags, washed and sorted them.  They will go into a suitcase as part of the Ditty move stuff, since I'm not sure how fast she's going to grow in the next few months.

Maybe those were small tasks overall.  But they took all day when done together.

And now I am breathing much easier.

We have a plan and we have a list.  And as much as our plans and lists change around here, at least it's a starting point.

One that I needed desperately.

Big sigh of relief.

I have the best Hubby ever.