Category Archives: PCSing
A Moving Celebration Contest!
If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?
~Vince Lombardi
Yeah, I know, I haven’t posted since I came back from DCO school this past weekend. A whole post is going to come on that. But that’s not what’s exciting right now…
*insert song and dance here* I’m going to see Huzzy in two days and a wakeup! I’m going to be living in Washington in just about 10 days!
And that, folks, deserves a treat. And since I feel guilty treating myself, I’m going to treat you. We’re gonna have a little contest.
Contest: Guess how many Wal-Mart trucks we are going to see on our trip. (Why? Because I swear you see them everywhere!)
Contest Rules: Come on down… you’re the next contestant on your guess is right! The winner will be the person who comes closest to the correct answer without going over. In the event of a tie, I will use random.org to name the winner. Sorry folks, but only one guess per entry. The contest will end at 2359PST (or 11:59pm PST for you non-Mil-Spouses) on Sunday, March 7. I will announce the winner as soon as I can… I might not Internet access for a while so be patient!
Contest Tips: We will be traveling from Southwest Michigan to the Seattle area. However, due to northern mountain pass closures, we are planning to travel there via St. Louis, Albuquerque, NM and Las Vegas (no, we are not stopping at the slots!). That comes to around 3,200 miles for our trip. So, plan for 3,200 miles of Wal-Mart truck sightings. We are also going to be driving straight through for the majority of it (stopping only once or twice to sleep in a hotel) so that may play a factor in how many we see. Makes me wonder if we’ll see more during the day when it’s easier to stay awake and during “normal” business hours or more at night when the semis have the road to themselves. Hmmm….
How to Enter: First and foremost, you MUST leave a comment on this post with your 1st guess. However, there are many other ways to increase your chances of winning:
- One (1) additional entry if you: Follow my blog and leave a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) on this post letting me know that you are following. And if you are already a follower, let me know via a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) you will automatically get an entry… uh, as long as you remind me that you are a follower.
- One (1) additional entry if you: Put me on your blog’s blogroll and leave a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) with the link to it. And if you already have me on your blog roll, leave that link in a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) on this post for your entry.
- One (1) additional entry if you: Blog about the contest on your blog and leave a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) on this post.
- One (1) additional entry per day for each day you: Tweet about this contest. While you can Tweet as many times as you want a day, only one per day will count! Don’t forget to @wifeyofasailor so I know you did it. Leave a comment (with another guess as to how many you think we’ll see) with your Twitter name, the time you Tweeted and what you said.
That’s a total of 16 chances to win if you start today!
Now, I’m sure you want to know what the prize is. And honestly, that’ll depend on the winner. See, there are just some contests that I don’t enter because I’m not the biggest fan of what is being given away.
So, for my contest the winner will get a $25 gift certificate to his/her choice of whatever I can purchase or buy online (without huge shipping charges). Meaning, I know that the area I’m moving to has gift cards I can purchase for Target, Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, malls, Qdoba, iTunes, etc. Now, if you have a local store/food place that is just in your area, chances are I can’t get a gift card to there. But, I’ll try. So, as long as I can get one, you’ll win a $25 gift card of your choice to what you want!
Good luck!
Found a Home Sweet Home
Where thou art – that – is Home.
~Emily Dickinson
–updated with yard and kitchen photos!–
Well, we found a house to rent. It’s a bit farther away from everything than we’d like (I’d have at least an 75 minute
Back of the house
commute to Seattle) but we think the house is worth it.
We put a listing on Craigslist advertising ourselves. With three large dogs, it’s hard to find someone who will rent to us. I find that mildly amusing and highly annoying since a family with three kids (or even one or two!) have the potential to make as much or more mess than the dogs. Our dogs won’t be spilling grape juice on the carpet or writing on the wall with a magic marker 
Anyway, we were contacted by a couple that have a 2,300 sq ft 3-4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home that sits on nearly two acres, half of which is fenced with a brand new 6ft privacy fence. It has a two car garage, a storage shed in the fenced in area, central heat and air (yeah, air conditioning in Washington, ya’ll… the fuzzy dog will appreciate it), a monitored alarm system, a 5-piece master bath with jetted tub, a 6′x6′ master bedroom walk-in closet and what my husband calls a “gorgeous” kitchen.
This is all for $150-$200 less than our BAH per month. So sweet. They had been asking $650 more a month for it and didn’t get any takers, so they dropped it to way less than they should for us. Why? Because we are a military family and they were BOTH previously in the military. How awesome is that? Plus, they are only asking for a $500 damage deposit and a $300 pet deposit. Seriously. No last month’s rent or deposit equal to a month’s rent. And even the pet deposit is refundable if we don’t kill the house (which we won’t, of course).
Deck being built
The family has told me that they will pay for garbage and for the alarm system. WOOT! Also, they will let us paint the walls as long as we paint them white before we leave. No problem!
So here are some photos. There aren’t any of the kitchen because I was never given them. Boo! And none of the “yard” shot, just things in the yard (like the brand new deck and the new storage shed). And while I do have one of the front of the house, for PERSEC reasons (Personal Security), I won’t ever show the front of any house we live in. Just in case any of you want to try to stalk me
(Actually, this is a good idea, especially for those with kids… you don’t want someone to drive by and recognize your house and have your kid(s) be called by their name or be told that it’s okay to come with a stranger since s/he knows x, y & z about him/her– thanks to the information from your blog).
New Shed
Guest bedroom
Master Bedroom... but only part of it... it's huge
Part of the master bathroom
Other side of the master bathroom
I *think* this is the guest/ 2nd bathroom
Hallway. That much I can figure out. HA!
The backyard. They plan to put grass in this spring after the winter rain stops
More backyard. Looks like there's a screen door for the summer. Yay!
Uh, it's gonna be muddy until the grass is put in!
The kitchen. It even has the same stove I have in my current house! Yay, I love that stove and now won't have to miss it!
It’s Time!
“The future is always beginning now.”
~Mark Strand, Reasons for Moving
For those of you who follow me on Twitter (wifeyofasailor… but if you aren’t a MilSpouse or somehow connected to the military, I’ll probably block you if you don’t message me to let me know who you are!), you know I’ve been hinting at a secret that I was about to reveal. Well, it’s time to do that. Since I let my boss know at work yesterday.
I purchased Huzzy a ticket to come here to Michigan to visit me at the end of February. A one-way ticket.
No, he’s not going AWOL and running away from the Navy. He’s coming here and driving me back to Washington, ya’ll. That’s right. I’m moving. At that point, we’ll have been married just a few weeks shy of one year and spent only 7 1/2 weeks of that. Many of you who have gone through deployment will be like, “Yeah, my deployment was 14 months, what of it?” And those who aren’t MilSpouses may say, “That’s what you signed up for when you married him.” (HINT: NEVER tell a MilSpouse that’s what he/she signed up for. That’s a 0-60 bad reaction waiting to happen).
Well, yeah, I signed up for deployments and dealing with them. But I DIDN’T sign up for being away from my husband because the economy sucks and I can’t sell my house. Only a few months of that time we’ve been apart has been due to deployment.
Of course, he’ll deploy a few short weeks from the time I arrive in Washington, but that’s another topic later. But at least I’ll get to spend a few weeks with him before I won’t see him until mid-to-late-summer. A few weeks is better than nothing, eh?
And for those who are excited that I’ve finally sold my house or got a job… uh, no. We just can’t do this anymore. So I’m going to go on unemployment (Michigan allows MilSpouses to do this if their spouse is PCSed to another region) and try to find one in Washington. I know it’ll be sooo much easier to find one when I’m actually living in the area.
As for the house… well, that’s a very sore subject that I don’t want to write about in this VERY happy post. I’ll do it another time.
So in just seven weeks (funny, the amount of time we’ve lived together during our marriage), I’ll be living with my husband again.
*do a little dance… sing a little song*
Can you tell how freakin’ happy I am? OMG, I can’t even stand it.
The Dawn of Understanding and Stupid Mistakes
Money is the root of all evil… and man needs roots!
~Unknown
Well, we now know why we are being docked the money. Or at least have a base understanding. Are you ready to hear what might be the biggest cluster @*#$ of the year?
Looks like my husband isn’t married. Or at least, not in the Navy’s eye. Or rather, he isn’t in the pay side, but he is on the DEERS side.
Apparently, when Huzzy checked into his command, someone forgot to pass on the copy of our marriage license that Huzzy gave them. And since, in truth, he had been married for two months at the time, he claimed married on the PCS move. So when they decided he “wasn’t married” because there was no proof of it, they decided to take that money back.
But that’s not all.
Since he just started the other month actually getting married BAH, they decided they needed to take that back too. Since he wasn’t married, you see.
Oh, but wait.
It seems as though the farther the Yeoman looked into why his pay was screwed up, the more he found out how much MORE screwed up it was.
Apparently, besides being “single,” he apparently is living in the barracks (in reality, he’s not!) so they have been taking nearly $300 out of his paycheck for galley food expenses. Also, they still haven’t paid us back the $300-$500 of travel claims that he submitted in June. And there may be more that is screwed up, but the YN couldn’t figure it all out in one sitting.
So when Huzzy asked for a breakdown of everything that was wrong with his paycheck and what the Navy was going to owe us, the YN said that it was so screwed up that he couldn’t even give him an answer at the time.
Suffice to say, nothing is our fault. This is a total cluster you-know-what on the Navy’s part. The YN also told Huzzy that if we could get a copy of our marriage license by Monday that we might be able to get a “hardship” check of the back BAH (and what they took back on the last paycheck of BAH that they shouldn’t have) by next Friday. He said the rest would be given to us on the 1st. Now, the back BAH still won’t be what Huzzy’s normal check is, but it will at least help.
And it helps to know that we will see the money eventually even though it will totally make us miss bills this month. And not only that, but we will be getting MORE THAN our normal paychecks due to all the back BAH, the money they’ve been taking out for his “living in the barracks expenses” and travel claims. Money that we never expected or knew was coming.
Do I dare hope… could this be… is our luck starting to change?
Guess What! The Bad Luck Streak…
Bad is never good until worse happens.
~Danish Proverb
Woo-hoo… that bad luck streak I talked about in my last post? Well…
…it just got worse.
Huzzy called me last night after finally being able to access MyPay. Apparently it’s not $800-$1,000 that is coming out… it’s $1,100. Pretty much his entire base pay for the paycheck.
<Announcer> And that’s not all, folks. Tell them what else they’ve won!
<Show Host> Well, for being such good patriotic citizens who both serve their country, who work four jobs between them and who are newlyweds that have seen each other for less than half their marriage and are about to go through their first deployment, we have an extra special treat for them. They get… to have the same amount taken out of their NEXT paycheck.
<Crowd> *Intense clapping and cheering*
<Announcer> Congratulations to the newlywed couple. We hope you’ll enjoy this treat for years to come.
Aren’t we just so special? I feel so… so… honored. Yes, that’s the word. Apparently The Powers That Be (whether that’s God or the Navy) have decided that we are so incredibly strong and so ready to take on anything, that we can be given just this one more thing to handle. Yeah, honored.
I’m waiting to hear from Huzzy tonight. He’s going to talk to the Yeoman today and see what’s up since it’s the middle of the month and he can’t see his LES to see what’s going on. However, we figured out that this is exactly half of what they gave us for our final payment for the PCS (okay, not really, supposedly they still owe us $300-$500 for travel claims according to Huzzy) in June. You know, a week before they told us “oops, we overpaid you $800 and we need that back by the end of the month or we’ll garnish your wages.” That stuff we paid by the end of the month.
So there are two options:
- They shouldn’t have paid us anything in June and even though we asked them about it and they said we hadn’t been paid everything, they were wrong and are now yanking it (which begs the question… what about that $800 we already paid… do we get that back or is that on top of the $2,200?).
- They erred and we should get it all back since we were entitled to that. Which means we might be lucky to receive it by Christmas… the one I might be spending alone for the first time in my life with no family near me. Hopefully I’ll make friends by then and they’ll take pity on me and invite me over at least the day before or the day after Christmas.
Of course, there’s always the Navy’s option of Option #3… none of the above and nothing we can understand.
Dear God and Mr. Navy Wo/Man in the Sky… I’ve had enough, thank you. I’m strong and can do things on my own. I’ve proven it. Can I please have a break? Pretty please? Just a little one?
