A couple more

My interview went well, of course they are looking for someone to jump in the class next week, which isnt gonna happen in my case. But I got some great ideas about the county/district, suggestions on schools for the girls and great advice for how to get a job for next year "if" I wasnt offered this one. I feel bad because the call forwarding on the house phone didnt go through and they called to reschedule/confirm and I didnt answer of course. But I wouldnt have been able to do the reschedule anyway since they wanted to change it to Friday. The principal did say that that her secretary misunderstood and she wanted to meet today, and wanted her to reschedule the one that was on Friday to today. At that point I didn't know anything about it, and didnt realize that the call forwarding wasnt working. I checked the house messages after the interview.

We explored yesterday morning, went all over the county, the base and into Macon to the mall. (Cant tell I have a teenager can ya?) Then came back to the hotel to relax and get ready for my interview. Then the kids and I went to the Mouse Place (Chuck E. Cheese) for supper. It was a first for all of them, well the girls have been before but they were 3 yo and 4 days old, since we went last for Kelsey's third birthday.

The drive up there wasnt too bad, right at 5 hours. Not sure that Google had us come the easiest way, definately the scenic route, that would have been beautiful if it was in the day not at night. Going home I used the navigator on my Verizon phone. I discovered the joys of it yesterday, and fell in love with it. Cant see subscribing to the service for it all the time since Crestview doesnt have Verizon service and it wont work, but trips like this where you have NO CLUE where you are makes it nice to have. (wish I would have known when we were in LA).

DJ makes me laugh, he thinks all hotels mean Grandma and papa are going to be there. And then the area around here look a lot like Mississippi where Jerry's mom lives so he kept asking when we were going to get to her house today, and if Lisa would let him ride the horse when we got there.

Ok now what everyone has been waiting for pictures! ;)

What a long week! And for me it keeps going until Tuesday. I went back to work on Sunday at Lowes, and it has been great to be back. I missed the people, and I missed the work.

But I have worked 9 hours every day except Wednesday, and now I am I have been helping the HR manager out all week because not only is he training the orientation group that I am in this time, but he is also training the group from the new store that they are building in Pace. Both groups are abnormally big, which means finagling testing and responsiblities. Plus he has not had an assistant in a couple of months, so he was behind on all of the little things that he has to keep up with, that don't make the store run, but that fall under his job title. I think we have managed to get him caught up on all of that.

Now, Tomorrow I AM THE MAN. LOL The HR's family is coming into town, but we still have orientation stuff that has to get done. So he is taking tomorrow off to see the family and I have a page long to do list, and POWER. Man I could get power hungry doing this let me tell you! Dont get me wrong there are things that I cant do, and things that even if I could do they don't pay me enough to have me do, but I am going to have a hard time going to work at the cash register next week and just sitting there next week. Ah well it was fun while it lasted.

I work Sunday and Monday as well, but the HR will be back so I wont be doing it all myself, actually I think Monday I am in my real job .

Monday when I get off work and the kids get home from school we are taking off to Georgia. I got a phone call this week from a school up there for an interview. I did explain that the kids and I were still down here and that we would not be up there until November/December but they still want to meet with me. So since I don't have to work Tuesday and Wednesday we are going to take off and go up.

It is a two fold process, it lets us check out the area, and it gets my foot in the door at a school up there. Its an interview, but it will also be a chance for me to ask questions about the area, from my peers, so in turn people that I "trust" just because I know that they have some of the same background as I do (in education at least).

Since I have no idea really what the schools are like, I want and need to get an idea for myself before moving the kids up there. I guess you could say that is the stressful thing about this move. Not knowing what I am getting the kids into school wise. At least our other moves it has not been a huge concern. When we first moved here in 95, school was still 3 years off for Kelsey, so I knew we had time to figure it out. When we moved to England, I had friends that had been there with school age kids, that told me about both the British schools and the base schools, plus I had friends growing up that had gone through DoDDS schools. When we moved back here, I had done my student teaching here, and I knew people here so I knew what the schools were like (both the good and the bad). We personally don't know anyone in the Warner Robins area, so I don't have anyone this time that I can ask. That being said, of course Mr. D is up in Peach Tree City, so I can call him tomorrow or Sunday and see what he says about going to the school on base to meet with his friend there, who he said would be a good source of information.

I am not sure yet where we will be staying. When I tried calling base lodging they only do reservations during the day, when I am at work. I am hoping that a gal from the area that is on one of my message boards will have suggestions as to where to stay, she has been helpful with information on schools and housing so far. Hopefully this isnt a weekend when she goes without checking the board. LOL. We will arrive late evening on Monday night, explore Tuesday during the morning and afternoon, then late Tuesday afternoon I have my interview. We will stay Tuesday night and come home on Wednesday some time.

The girls will miss school, but it can't be helped. There is no one here that I feel comfortable asking to keep them during the week, and no matter what I have to take DJ with me, and I need someone to watch him while I am in my interview. I sent notes with the girls today letting the teachers know that they would be gone (which Natalie forgot to give out today, but I just sent them all an email), so hopefully they will get work to bring with them.

I only expect to have one teacher give me a hard time about pulling Natalie out of school, and that teacher has been giving me a hard time about everything, plus calling Natalie's class little devils to her other classes. I have had 3 of her friends tell me that they have heard her say it, in two different classes. I am not very impressed, to say the least, and I should call and talk to the principal about it, but I figure he will blow off my concerns the same way he did a couple of years ago over Kelsey's math teacher. I will wait until we return from Georgia and see how that goes before reacting.

One last plug:
IF YOU ARE IN THE LOS ANGLES AREA!
Check out my brother's band tomorrow night!
Hosted By: NOTSANE henderson

When: Saturday Sep 15, 2007

at 8:00 PM

Where: Di Piazza’s

5204 E. Los Altos Plaza

Long Beach, CA 90815

United States

Description:

NOTSANE henderson



Click Here To View Event This is my brother's band. If you are in the LA area you need to check them out!

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from Kelsey's chorus concert the other night.

I know lazy mom that I am it took me 2 days.

Then tonight we went down to Ft. Walton to Nate and Natalie's and visited with Tree and Tex. Tree is in town tdy for the week, and Tex is well Tex. Those of you in the know, well know. ;) It was nice to see them all, and to know that somethings never change. (Like how tall Tree is for instance)

Oh and a picture of the flowers Matt and Angu sent for my birthday:

And one of Natalie and DJ running in the sprinkler this weekend.

Happy Birthday to MEEEEEEEEEEE
Oh wow I just admitted that aloud, its my birthday. Actually after the day I have had today there is no denying it. LOL


I got flowers with candy and a teddy bear yesterday from my brother and SIL .

Then today I got a very nice text message singing happy birthday from SIL.

Plus I got sang to at Lowes during my orientation training (I did tell you all that I went back to work at Lowes, right?)

I have also talked to both of my parents seperately because my mom wasnt home at the time when I called the house.

The kids convinced me that we had to have cake as dessert tonight to celebrate, and who am I to argue with them? Well I have had to argue with DJ that it is MY birthday and not his. But he is only 3 so that is to be expected of him. LOL

All in all it has been a pretty decent day.

Carnal Bliss at Di Piazza's in Long Beach!


Hosted By: NOTSANE henderson
When: Saturday Sep 15, 2007
at 8:00 PM
Where: Di Piazza’s
5204 E. Los Altos Plaza
Long Beach, CA 90815
United States
Description:
NOTSANE henderson

Click Here To View Event

This is my brother's band. If you are in the LA area you need to check them out!

Life is funny in a way.

As worried as I am about this upcoming move, it isn't turning out to be that much more stressful than any of the other 3 moves we have done. Yes I admitted it aloud, in 15 years (well almost) that Jerry has been in the Air Force we have only had to completely up and move 3 other times.
Jerry and I met after he was done with his initial training and he was at his first base, Luke AFB in Phoenix. When we met, he already knew that he was going to have to move soon, as his planes would no longer be at Luke, after April of 95. We got engaged Christmas of 94, and married July of 95, two months after he left for Eglin. That was a stressful move for me, because I was uprooting myself and my daughter and moving across the country to Florida.
Then in September 96, Jerry found out he had orders to move to Lakenheath England. Of course he found that out less than a week before he went on his one and only (so far) tour to the great big sandbox. This was an excitting move for me, because I HATED Florida with a passion. LOL. Stressful because we would be so far away from home, but excitting.
I got a great job teaching at the American High School over in England and we stayed, and stayed and stayed. Until the Air Force had enough of us staying, and said ok you have to go now. We tried to get Jerry to be able to do his remote to Korea for a year, so the kids and I could stay, it didnt work. ;)
I was even more upset when we found out we were moving back to Eglin. Land of the huricanes (we had 2 big storms within the first 3 months that we lived here in 95), land of no teaching jobs unless you knew someone who knew someone. I came to Florida and did a couple of interviews over spring break and felt that we would be ok. Jerry found a guy at work who had a house here we could rent for a year, since the housing market was so wacky thanks to hurricane Ivan. I took the first job I interviewed for and was offered (which turned out to be a mistake, but you live and learn). The house wasn't all it was cracked up to be, mostly due to the above ground pool collapsing with the kids in it the weekend Hurricane Katrina hit, and the real estate agent in charge of the property doing nothing to help us out. If we called her with any problems with the house it took her days to return the call, most times after we had fixed the problem ourselves. The pool issue took until the following summer for her to do anything about. If we had known that she was going to have someone come in over 3 days (that took 2 weeks) and tear the pool and deck down at the end of it, we could have saved her the money and done it ourselves.
We decided we were not going to rent further because according to the Air Force and a regulation that had come out we were supposed to be here for at least 2 more years. The best laid plans, I swear...
Right after we closed on the house and had moved in we got word that Jerry had to cross train, or get out. After 14 years in (or almost) that was an easy decision, Jerry would change jobs. Here is where our lives got interesting and complicated.
I ended up writing the following to our Senator about what has happened this last year in our lives:
To the Office of Senator...

I am writing to you today with a concern that I felt needed to be brought to your attention. My husband is serving active duty in the United States Air Force, and has been since December 15, 1992. He has served his country with pride, and has done all that has been asked of him in this time.

Last August he received word that he had to cross-train into a new career field, or else get out of the Air Force. Now I am the first to admit that we were upset with this prospect, however we researched the career fields that AFPC (Air Force Personnel Command) said that were eligible for transfer into, and choose three that would be a good fit for my husband’s strengths and for our family. A few days after he submitted his choices AFPC told all of the people in his career field that the list that they had consulted (sent out by AFPC with the notification of cross training), was invalid and that he had made needed to be changed as they were not available. I understand that mistakes happen, and this was an inconvenience at worst, so again we did the research, and submitted new choices.

My husband’s choice of Air Field systems was accepted and he revised his class dates. There were problems with this step in the process as someone in the training command did not look at my husband’s previous training and take this into account when assigning him to classes. They assigned him to take a basic electronics course, which considering he has been working in F-15 electronics for the last 14 years this was unnecessary. My husband and his command had to spend many man hours preparing and filing a waiver, including finding and tracking down copies of training certificates that should be in a data base on a computer somewhere. Finally a few days before he was to be at Keesler AFB for basic electronics we were told that his waiver had been accepted, and his class date for his Air Field Systems course work would begin in April.

With this knowledge I was scheduled for a hysterectomy in January/February for a condition that could not we could not postpone the surgery. A week later we were told that Jerry's class date had been moved up to January. With the help of my husband’s current command (again after many man hours on the part of his section chief, and commander) this was changed back to April. Then they tried to change the class to March, again I was on medical hold due to complications from my surgery and a secondary surgery, so the date was changed to May 1st.

When I originally wrote your office this is where we were having issues. The training command has known since March of Jerry's class date of May 1st. Tuesday April 17th Jerry received an email stating that as of March 1st, 2007; all academic classes longer than 99 academic days no longer can be done in temporary duty status, that this is now considered a permanent change of station. Air Field Systems is a 130 academic day course, so he would be under PCS orders. Jerry went to his command and to the outbound assignments to find out what that meant for our family. After 6 phone calls while Jerry was in the office of outbound assignments , he was told that the family would stay here with full entitlements to Eglin housing allowance, and that he would go to Keesler alone and living in billeting with chow hall rights. This was an answer we could live with.

Tuesday April 24th Jerry received word that the above statement was not true. That his orders would be cut for the entire family to move to Keesler and receive Keeslers housing allowance. Jerry and his chain of command started to argue this situation and try to figure out a way around this.



Wednesday April 25th at 830 in the morning Jerry received his PCS orders to Keesler with a follow on to Warner Robins AFB in Georgia . The orders were for the entire family to move to Keesler and set up house, and then follow on to Georgia in 5 1/2 months when his training is done. Also the orders came with a report no later than date of April 26th at 10 am. I am not sure if you are aware of the time it takes to out-process a military installation but I can tell you that 26 hours is not enough time to do this, even if one were single airmen with nothing to call his own, except a dorm room.



My husband and his command were successful in getting a waiver after about 60 man hours of O-8s and E-8’s time, so that the family can stay on station here at Eglin with Eglin housing allowance. When he received the waiver he was told that he would be put up in billeting for his entire class. This is where we were at, at the time of my original email to your office.



Since I originally brought this matter to the attention of Senator McCain, and your office, some of the problems we were encountering have been resolved, however more were also encountered. Plus we have discovered that we are not the only family that encountered these problems; we have found other members of the Air Force that were force cross trained that did not have a command willing to fight for them, or to ask questions on their behalf.



Upon Jerry’s arrival at Keesler on June 12th he discovered that the base shuts down on every other Friday and his report no later date, happened to fall on such a Friday. So he had driven over to Keesler to an empty base, no one could even tell him what was going on, because anyone he found could not help him.

On June 15th when he reported for his first day of classes, he discovered that no one in the school actually had him on a rooster for that class, and they had to track down someone that knew what was going on. Then he when he in-processed into the finance at Keesler he was informed contrary to what we were told when his waiver for housing and for the family to remain in place, that he was not to be provided with billeting rights for his entire stay and that he was only entitled to the Air Force covering his billeting for the first 10 days of his stay, the rest was to come out of our pockets. If he chose to move into the dorms, like some of his counter parts have done, we would loose all rights to our housing allowance.



Paying for his billeting out of our pockets is costing us $5000 that we had not been made aware of, of course this is preferable to the almost $8000 we would loose if we loose our housing allowance. We have friends that are currently going through this exact hardship, and after Jerry hearing what the other Sergeant’s wife is going through he said no way. Not only do we not have our spouses for 6 months due to this cross-training, but we are also now short on our source of income. Then you add in the fact that someone in finance or military personnel did not enter the waiver for our family to keep Eglin’s housing allowance, which is about $100 more a month, so not only do we have to pay for Jerry’s hotel room, or find a cheap apartment for him to rent for 4 ½ months (which by the way no one in Biloxi will do a short term lease), but they lowered what they said we would be getting.



These men and women that are being force cross-trained in the Air Force are doing so because they love fighting for their country, and they love being in the United States Air Force. They are doing what is being asked of them, and they are doing it proudly. They had a chance to decide to get out of the Air Force or to cross train. However this new regulation of requiring them to completely PCS to the training base for such a short amount of time is killing the families and the morale of the airmen and their families. It is hard enough knowing that your spouse can be called at any time to go off to fight in this war, that he/she may not come home from, but even worse when you have to wonder where you are going to get the money to pay for your house, food for your table, and all of the other added expenses because of a training situation. I know in our situation the way it is right now if Jerry was to get deployed shortly after completing his school, we will be broke. As it is I am not sure how long it is going to take us to recover from loosing $5000 to put him up in a hotel for 5 months.



However one must take a minute or two and look at the costs that the Air Force is incurring in just my family alone with this change.



I figured out what the Air Force is looking at spending for each family and member of the military that they expect to under go this hardship, and it is roughly as follows:



Step one: pack up house, by movers and ship household items to Biloxi : approximately $30,000



Step two: Put family in TLF until family finds a house that they can rent for 4 months: $60 a night for at least 2 weeks



Step three: Dislocation allowance for said family: $1000 (that’s on the low side).



Step three: Find family a house for a lease of 5 or less months



Step four: rent a house in Biloxi while trying to sell our house in Fl



Step five: Move family into house in Biloxi



Four months later:



Step five: Movers come and pack up house, and ship belongings to new duty station (Robins as of right this minute): $30,000



Step six: Move family into TLF at Keesler until official move to Robins probably $60 a night for a week or two



Step seven: Move family from Keesler to Robins with probably an overnight somewhere in there, because it’s not a short drive. Pay mileage and hotel $100



Step eight: Move Family into TLF at Robin until family finds house in WR area. Again probably at least 2 weeks at $60 a night



Step nine: Receive dislocation allowance of $1000



Step ten: move family into home at Robins



How is any of this saving the Air Force money? Lets not forget the added fun of the move to Warner Robins GA , (actually that part is not bugging me too much). The Air Force just forked out at least $50,000 to move us from the United Kingdom to Florida less than 2 years ago. With the budget fight that is going on in congress right now with the pentagon they want to needlessly move us again! There are two bases here that Jerry could do his new job, within driving distance, heck the one is within bike riding distance if J had a death wish and wanted to take on HWY 85 on a bike. But when he asked about the move to Robins he was told that there was no manning room for him here. OK but you are going to shell out the money to move him, again, this soon?



My concern is this, how is the best use of Air Force money? I understand the regulation was changed regarding the tdy/pcs status because of people taking these courses, and then being sent overseas and due to the length of both TDY assignments they were going into remote status. I also understand that this change was aimed at people like my husband who is changing career fields (even if he was told either do this or get out of the Air Force.)



I appreciate you taking the time to look into this matter

Now we are waiting for Jerry to get done with this tech school. We are still paying for him to live in Mississippi, but I think we have the house situation sorted out.

Our friends Pat and Niki are moving here, there are several companies here interested in Pat going to work for them when he retires in October. Jerry and I had talked this weekend about maybe offering them to rent our house until July, so that they could take their time finding a house to buy, plus get to know the area instead of just buying over the internet.

Pat and Niki started talking about the same thing, not knowing that we were thinking it.

Niki emailed me last week about it, and we went back and forth in about 10 emails.

What I think is going to happen is:
Pat and Niki will move here in October when Pat retires, and live with us until the end of November when we will move to Warner Robins.
Then they will rent our house from us until next summer and when we are ready to put it on the market in the spring they will help show it for us.

Which means that my decision on whether to go back to Lowes or to see about the college job is easy. I am going to go back to Lowes and then transfer to the Lowes in Warner Robins in November/December.
Once we are up there then I can start subbing up there and looking for a job there.

The girls are sort of upset because they will move in the middle of the year, but it will be better for us as a family, to all be in one place, plus to get our new lives just started.
Now to figure out where we are going to live, when we get there.