That is what my dad said to me earlier this morning. And it pretty much captures where my mind is at right now.
The Navy threw us a curve ball. Orders were in for an unaccompanied tour. Granted the two year old waited until his dad was completely inside the terminal, but our goodbyes were said and Seadaddy was dropped off at the airport. Turns out we have new orders.
With two small kids at home this is great news. More time with dad means getting thrown up in the air while mom gets queasy, having a parent around who can give their child a proper haircut, bedtime stories will be told with great and ridiculous voices and accents mom just can't manage. All kinds of things. Rather than miss his third summer in five years with my stepdaughter, she will get to come stay with us for our time and that is fantastic news. Being the noncustodial parent is hard enough, pcs-ing further away is even worse but extended paid government vacations can really hurt the hearts of both parent and child.
We are grateful.
But there is the flip side. The new command is pretty close to the old command, but with traffic in the area there will be a maddening commute most days if we decided to stay put where we are now. The command is small and does not have base housing or a commissary or an MTF. So we need to weigh all these things and decide if we move to their off base housing, rent in civilian land or stay put. Although staying put just means staying on post, we will hopefully take advantage of the pcs and move into a house with one more bedroom, something we decided against after our youngest was born.
So we have suddenly been thrust into pcs mode. Which, quite frankly, is not enjoyable. And all those pcs related posts Joan D'Arc and She of the Sea have been making (and the comments they received!) need to be re-read with more attention. Because I need all the help I can get.
There is one thing I am currently mourning, the thing that made my dad laugh at me and elicited the comment above. As a one car household, I was *really* looking forward to more than 365 days of driving without regard to coordinating schedules.
And when you roll around in this bad mamajama, it takes a few days to get over your loss:
