Recruiting Hell Part I

In the summer of 2002 we found out my husband had orders for recruiting. We were a little worried, but excited we wanted to have a new "adventure". My husband attended recruiter school in November and you can give three areas where you would like to recruit. He selected Florida (where his parents lived), Kansas (where my parents live), and New England (I had no idea he had selected this area and he only did so because his parents grew up there and there were a few obscure relatives there. None of them we ever spoke to.). He had an "in" or so we thought, he knew the guy who assigned everyone and he guaranteed we'd get stationed in Orlando. We were elated.

Then on the day everyone was assigned the guy got called out on emergency leave. His wifes grandpa had died. Well he told no one else in the office of our arrangement and low and behold we are assigned to New England Battallion. I don't blame this guy one bit, emergencies can't be helped. He spent the next week trying to fix it, but because my husband spoke no spanish they wouldn't trade our orders with some one elses. Even though the guy wanted to trade for New England. Okay, whatever, we will deal.

Mistake #1) The Batallion Commander calls and asks my husband...."Are you city folk or country folk?" My husband, being from downtown Orlando says "City folk sir." And he assigns my husband to Boston Company, downtown, financial district. The other company, a small town on the coast, south of Boston. It's never good when he doesn't consult me on life decisions.

I start looking at housing and immediatly start freaking out! The cost of living is outragous and we can't live in the city because of our very large dog. At this time it's just Kale, Lilly (4), Aidan (not quite 1) and I. We look for weeks and just before we start to move we find out we can live in Wayland, the Natick Army labs have a set of 12 houses there and lucky us one is avalible. One catch though, we have to drive up there to sign for it, before we head to FL. We had taken a months leave and were spending it with Kale's parents. By now it's January 2003 and our report date is February 21.

This is how it went:
Thursday; our stuff was packed
Friday; our stuff was put on the truck and we head to KS for a weekend with my parents
Monday; we go back to KY to clear housing, then head to VA to stay with my aunt
Tuesday; Kale, dog, and I leave kids and cat with my aunt and we head to MA
Wednesday; we sign for the tiniest house in the whole town and leave some of our things there
Thursday; we head for VA to spend the night
Friday; we all head for FL, arriving late that evening
In less one weeks time we went up and down nearly the entire east coast. I was glad to stay put for one month, had I known what was coming we would have went back sooner.

To be continued.....