REAL TIME UPDATE: Part 4: New Adventures Ahead

In these first few non-traveling weeks, we've spent more time with family and caught up with some friends from college. Rodney was able to show some pictures and speak to a group from his home church about Navy Chaplaincy and has performed his first drill weekend, which consisted of paper work, paper work, and more paper work.

But, probably the biggest news of our time right now is Rodney got a job!! Through the course of being back home, we realized home is where we need to be. So, simply doing a Google search for “Springfield jobs” led him to a posting for a hospital chaplain. When reading the list of preferred experience, he hit every one of them, so he completed the online application right then. That Friday, he received a call setting up an interview for the following Tuesday, then, got the call for the job offer the very next morning!! It’s just a part-time position at a new orthopedic surgery clinic, but this hospital also has a Hospital Chaplain Residency Program which he is applying for. If accepted, he will be able to complete his Board Certification while working there! (He earned one of the four units during his seminary internship.) It’s a one year program, which would finish up in time for him to begin, if all goes well, the Doctorate of Audiology program here at Missouri State University!

As for me, I’m in the process of getting all the paper work, fingerprinting, and background check to beginning substitute teaching. I've learned I only need to take a 2-3 hour college course to apply to get my Missouri certificate reinstated, so that’s also on my to-do list. It can be under-grad or grad level, so I’m trying to decide what I would want to Master in and potentially start that path.

The biggest issue we’re dealing with right now is getting our household goods. See, when we set up our move, we were told since we didn't have an address, all of our belongings automatically were to go back to our home of record, which is Waco, Texas, and we would then contact the storage facility for delivery when we were ready. We asked what would happen if we didn't end up in Texas, but in Missouri. We were told it would be up to the storage facility if they would deliver to Missouri…… Okay……. So, here we are now a few months later, our Oki goods sitting safe and sound in Waco in storage being paid by the government until June 5. We were hoping to buy a house, but that’s going to need to wait for the time being, so we found a house to rent. We've paid the deposit and will sign the lease on May 1. Knowing they may need a bit of lead time to prepare for our delivery, I emailed the representative with our address and requested delivery date. Rodney’s phone rings within just a very few minutes. Turns out, this facility is only to deliver within a 50 mile radius!!!! Yep, Springfield is just a “few” miles outside that radius!! She was very helpful and understanding and did what she could to get it approved, but that didn't work. So, she put us in touch with Mr. Bill (yes, Mr. Bill!) on Ft. Hood; His comment to Rodney--- “OH! You’re in quite a predicament!” Ya, think?!?!?!? So, it turns out, it’s messed up all the way around. Seems our stuff from Oki should have simply gone to the west coast to a holding facility NOT our home of record. It then would have been delivered to us wherever/whenever we were ready with NO ISSUES!! As it stands right now, we could actually have to pay to have it delivered up here--- up to $2500!!!! I JUST WANT MY STUFF!!!! Sorry…. But, living out of suitcases for right at THREE MONTHS is really starting to get to me……… Needless to say, your PRAYERS ARE APPRECIATED!!!

Anyway, I believe that’s pretty much it up to date in a bit more than a nutshell.

Now, regarding the blog…. Here’s my plan…. I want to finish posting all of our Oki adventure pics (I’m only about a year behind!!), then our trip back and our transition. By the time I get all caught up, our new adventure should be underway. I can get my blog printed out in book form and determine at that point whether or not to actually continue blogging. So, we’ll see. But, for now---- there’s still LOTS to come!!! Hope you stick around :0)

ADDENDUM:

I had a job interview on Monday for a Head Start lead teacher/director position. I’ll either get a “yes” call later this week or a “no” letter.

Rodney has completed his second weekend of drill and has begun his job at Mercy. He’s just been doing orientations and computer training so far this week, but will be at the ortho clinic beginning tomorrow.

Still no closer to getting our household goods issue resolved…. Mr. Bill’s final word was since they’re Army, we need to talk to Navy personnel to see about getting it taken care of, only we have no idea what Navy personnel we should talk to! Rodney’s mom called her state Senator’s office today. Seems they have a guy who deals specifically with Veterans and issues such as ours, so we’ll be getting in touch with him in the meantime. I've also requested a free quote from “Two Men and a Truck” to see what they would charge to haul our stuff from Waco to here, so… we’ll see……… Again, your prayers are truly appreciated!!

I'll keep you posted as things develop..... Now…. Back to our Oki adventures!!!!

REAL TIME UPDATE: Part 3: Road-tripping American Style

On February 3, Rodney officially began his terminal leave and we loaded up the car and prepared to depart San Diego. We took a four-day ‘vacation’ road trip across southern Arizona making stops at Painted Rock Petroglyph Site, Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, Tombstone, and Chiricahua National Monument (pics will come of all that!). We made an overnight stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico, then took an all-day drive across west Texas to San Antonio. We explored the River Walk and visited the Alamo before leaving town and making our short drive on to Houston on February 8 for our first family reunion at Rodney’s sister’s house with her and their folks who had come down from Missouri. We even got to have Christmas!! Rodney picked up his brand new car we’d purchased through Overseas Military Car Sales; and we got to celebrate Rachel’s birthday with her! Following our visit there, on February 19, we made our way up to Waco. We are still legally Texas residents and my driver’s license was going to expire on my birthday and since I had already renewed it online once before, this time it had to be renewed in person. But, we were able to see and catch up with a few friends there, too!!

February 24 took us on north to Missouri for another family reunion with my brother and his family!!!! And, I got to spend my birthday with my brother for the first time in I have no idea how long!!! We then relocated, once again, and went on to Springfield to Rodney’s folks where we got to see snow!!! In March!! But, as luck would have it, Rachel had gotten her hands on some tickets to the Houston Rodeo, so, just a few days later, on March 5, we made the road trip back to Houston. We had driven my car up, so we rode back down with Roger and Elizabeth so we could drive Rodney’s car back. We went to the horse races to watch the camel and ostrich races, then, spent the following day at the rodeo! We made an overnight stop in Dallas on our way back this time to have dinner and a grand visit with Rodney’s Denominational Endorser and his wife.

So, finally, on March 12, after I-don’t-even-want-to-know-how-many-miles-and-beds our road-tripping came to an end………. We began to settle into our in-between life at Rodney’s mom and dad’s house while waiting for our next adventure to begin…………

REAL TIME UPDATE: Part 2: Jumping the Pond

January 18 was the longest day we’d had in almost ever!!! We literally watched the sun set TWICE that day, first in Tokyo, then in San Francisco!!!  From our hotel in Okinawa to our hotel in San Diego was 30 hours……. We were all D.O.N.E. My biggest concern for the actual trip was Truman. He was almost 10 and HATES being in a kennel. The biggest part of concern was the nine hour flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. When we landed in SanFran, we were sitting far enough back in the plane that when they opened the cargo door outside, we could hear Truman!!! I felt so bad he was so upset, but SO relieved he’d made the trip safely!!! Due to a broken elevator in SF,  the pets didn’t get to the designated pet pick-up location in a timely manner, so we (along with five other families!) missed our flight to San Diego, but they were able to get us on one three hours later. One positive with that was we were able to get Truman out of the kennel, take him outside, and spend some time with him. Although, that sure made it rough to put him back in for the last leg of the journey. But, he was SUCH a trooper!!! So, we finally arrived in San Diego, but, only to find out they don’t bring the pets to the luggage area like they did when we lived there!!! We needed to go to another building to pick him up!!! But, we also needed to get our rental car and all our luggage loaded!!! Thanks to a very helpful airline agent and a security guard, then a very kind Hertz rental agent, we were able to go get our rental car and Truman while the security guard literally stood watch over our bags, and get an upgrade to a vehicle big enough to carry all our luggage and Truman’s kennel all in one trip!!! And, thus, we were officially stateside!!!

Out-processing has to happen stateside and San Diego is a location that does out-processing and being that we lived there for five years, that was our requested location. Due to staffing shortage, acceptance is limited and based on one of three things: you are retiring in the area (No….), you have immediate family in the area (No….), you have personal property/vehicle stored in the area (DING-DING-DING!!! We do!!!) So, thankfully, we were approved to out-process in San Diego. That Tuesday, January 21, Rodney began his out-processing. The first day consisted of bunches of paperwork and the feeling of signing his life away, again. But, each work day after that was basically a matter of putting on his uniform, reporting for muster/check-in, then back to the hotel. That lasted about 2.5 weeks during which time we visited a few of our former haunts and got to hug some necks (but, not near as many as we’d hoped). During this time, we were also able to set foot back on a ship and Rodney took his Oath of Office for the Naval Reserves given by a Chaplain friend we met in Okinawa!!!

One of my favorite events from our time in San Diego was getting my car back out of storage!! We had done the “Cash for Clunkers” thing back in 2009 and traded in my Isuzu Rodeo for a loaded brand new Mercury Mariner. I picked it up in August, then in September Rodney got word we were penciled in for Okinawa the following September and would not be able to take a car, but, the government would pay to properly store one personal vehicle. That would mean I’d come back to a four year old car with one of miles and it would be almost paid off—Yes, please!!! But, then came the trick of making it legal to drive again. It was originally licensed in California, but we had transferred the registration to Texas (as our home of record) before we left it in storage. I first tried to renew the tags online, only to learn if they are over 30 days expired (just a bit!!) they must be renewed in person….. Well….. now how do I do that??? So, I called Waco. She gave me three options—we could trailer it from CA to TX… no, thanks; we could get a temporary registration from each state we’d be driving through… uh, no, thanks; or, we could give power of attorney to someone to renew the tags for us… yes!!! So, I called up my friend Windy, who was more than willing to help out. It took a couple of tries, but we finally had the appropriate insurance coverage and paperwork to make Texas happy to renew the tags, which she then overnighted to us in CA, which allowed me to see my baby blue once again!!!!

Funny story after we picked it up…. Rodney was driving the rental car and I’m driving mine. The windshield was kinda gross, so I pushed forward on the turn signal arm to run the wipers/fluid to wash it. But, instead of wipers, I shined my brights! “Oh, maybe I pull the arm toward me!” … Brights, again….. So, I’m thinking and thinking, then realized--- I was trying to work my wipers like on my FunCargo!! But, where are the wipers on my Mariner?!?!?!? I finally remembered something about a button on the end of the arm. Oh, yeah! So, I pushed the button and sure enough, the wipers wiped!! But…… no wiper fluid….. Wiper fluid is not a necessity fluid to be covered under government storage. Oil, yes; transmission fluid, yes; brake fluid, yes; wiper fluid…. No. Oh, well, at least I remembered where they were!!!

REAL TIME UPDATE: Part 1: Getting off the Island

I just reread my last real time update {August 18, 2013} and had to chuckle at how much of that “plan” changed! So, I’ll first update from that point--- the timeline remained the same— in August, we attended the somewhat-informative Transition Assistance (TAMP) which gave us the opportunity to update resumes and get some info for what to somewhat expect for “life after Active Duty.” Then, March 1 did mark our official separation from Active Duty military and our Oki household goods did go to Waco. But, other than that, very little of our planned road ahead came to be. But, it’s really ok, and having a road ahead at that time made things a bit easier to deal with. So, here’s what has actually happened over that last few months after receiving those papers stating in black and white “honorably discharged”…………….

(Keep in mind, there were WWWAAAAYYYY more details involved in the story than I could possibly put here, but this will give you a good idea of how things went…..)

First and foremost, we realized we had a few more Oki Bucket List items to attend to AND Rodney had some leave on the books he was going to lose if he didn’t use, SO we took a couple of off-island trips (pics will come later!!)! Our first was to mainland Japan to visit Osaka and Kyoto in October, just as the leaves were beginning to change. The Osaka stop had a dual purpose—Rodney was able to take the GRE there. He could have taken it on-island, but it was a paper/pencil test and would have taken 2-3 months to get the results, but Osaka has a testing center which allowed him to take the test online, walk out with unofficial results, and receive official scores in just a couple of weeks which really worked best with graduate school (Doctorate of Audiology) application deadlines. Our next off-island trip was a December week in Hong Kong!! Which included Hong Kong Disney and a fast ferry to Macau (again, pics WILL come)!!

We had been in a holding pattern for the previous 12 months waiting for his second chance for promotion. Once that ball dropped, it began to snowball!!!! We could not believe how quickly time started flying by; yet, our to-do list just kept growing!!! Anyway, just before Christmas we had our pack-out date scheduled—January 14. Then our departure day was booked -- January 18. Actually, if memory serves, we had a departure date BEFORE we had a pack-out date!! We knew we were looking at potentially 3-4 months of being dislocated while awaiting word on graduate school, so we needed to have clothes, etc. for that time frame, PLUS knowing we’d be in San Diego weather, then Houston weather, then Missouri weather, we needed to have a variety of items with us. Thankfully, the airlines allowed us extra baggage since we were moving, so we began our suitcase living life and moved into the hotel on base on January 14 with four footlockers and four suitcases, plus our backpack carry-ons!! We had moved Truman and his kennel to a friend’s house during our pack-out to make things a little easier on him. Then, on the said “see ya later” to our house hold goods, then  “see ya later” to our Oki friends and made the jump back over the pond…………