I'm not an EMT anymore. I let my license expire and I have no intention of renewing it. It was great fun whilst it lasted, but it's time for me to move on to something else.
So, I'm going to be a pharmacy tech. I started CPhT classes last week. It seems to be the perfect combination for me; I get to utilize the knowledge I have and I still get patient contact hours, just without having to lift and move bodies and people around all the time.
So, I'm not Ninja Medic anymore, and it doesn't feel right to continue to use the moniker when I'm not doing the job. Instead, I'm toying with the idea of Ninja Pharmer as my ID.
In other news, I nearly shot my husband this morning. He left the house before it was light to go to the gym. I heard him leave, then dozed off again...and an undetermined time later, I heard the front door open again. Nobody called out, so I flew out of bed, got my pistol and slid into the bedroom doorway to see who was in my house. Apparently the sound of a round being chambered made Hubs realize what I was doing and he walked from the kitchen into the hallway with his hands in the air.
He says that in the future he's going to yell "IT'S ME!!!" and wake the whole house. Honestly, I'd prefer he do that....it's a horrible feeling, realizing that you could have done your spouse some serious harm and I'd rather be woken up than feel like that again.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, November 22, 2010
Kansas
I moved. Everything came together the way it should, and we're settling into our new home nicely. We did a door to door move; we hired a Penske truck, spent two days loading it up, outprocessed housing in Illinois then hopped in and drove to Kansas.
There have been a couple of flies in the ointment, however. The house we're renting was occupied by the home owners until September. We are the first tenants; renting is a new experience for them and it showed. Within the first 24 hours we had to have a plumber out because the bathtub leaked, one toilet wouldn't flush and the other shower didn't get hot water; a HVAC guy because there was a heat pump thermostat on the wall when we don't have a heat pump and it caused the A/C unit to run constantly, and a refrigeration man because the fridge wasn't getting cold. The house was also dirty, so dirty that I felt I had to clean the shower before I could use it. The oven was the filthiest I have ever seen, and I had to replace the drip pans underneath the electric burners of the stove because the old ones were so dirty and rusty. I was more than a little disappointed that I had just got done cleaning one house to inspection standards and here I was, less than 12 hours later, cleaning another home.
The second, and more significant problem happened the week after we moved in. It started with a dimming of the sight in my right eye. Colors were muted and things just looked fuzzy. I waited a couple of days to see if it would go away, and when it didn't (and in fact got worse) I went to see my doctor. An hour later I was in an opthamologists chair, being diagnosed with central retinal vein occlusion. I won't regain any of the sight I've lost and there's a 50% chance I'll go blind in the affected eye. It's put my plans to go back to work on the back burner and I'm still trying to get used to not being able to see properly.
The boys are settling in nicely, and Hubs has started work. We're having one of the single soldiers he works with over for Thanksgiving dinner - he'll be the first guest in our new home.
I have to say that I like Kansas thus far. The town is small, but it has everything we need and the people are some of the friendliest I've ever met. The neighborhood we live in is wonderful; I can drive down the street without worrrying about unattended toddlers running out in front of me and when we go to bed at night we're not disturbed by other people's music pounding until 4am.
That alone made the move worthwhile!
There have been a couple of flies in the ointment, however. The house we're renting was occupied by the home owners until September. We are the first tenants; renting is a new experience for them and it showed. Within the first 24 hours we had to have a plumber out because the bathtub leaked, one toilet wouldn't flush and the other shower didn't get hot water; a HVAC guy because there was a heat pump thermostat on the wall when we don't have a heat pump and it caused the A/C unit to run constantly, and a refrigeration man because the fridge wasn't getting cold. The house was also dirty, so dirty that I felt I had to clean the shower before I could use it. The oven was the filthiest I have ever seen, and I had to replace the drip pans underneath the electric burners of the stove because the old ones were so dirty and rusty. I was more than a little disappointed that I had just got done cleaning one house to inspection standards and here I was, less than 12 hours later, cleaning another home.
The second, and more significant problem happened the week after we moved in. It started with a dimming of the sight in my right eye. Colors were muted and things just looked fuzzy. I waited a couple of days to see if it would go away, and when it didn't (and in fact got worse) I went to see my doctor. An hour later I was in an opthamologists chair, being diagnosed with central retinal vein occlusion. I won't regain any of the sight I've lost and there's a 50% chance I'll go blind in the affected eye. It's put my plans to go back to work on the back burner and I'm still trying to get used to not being able to see properly.
The boys are settling in nicely, and Hubs has started work. We're having one of the single soldiers he works with over for Thanksgiving dinner - he'll be the first guest in our new home.
I have to say that I like Kansas thus far. The town is small, but it has everything we need and the people are some of the friendliest I've ever met. The neighborhood we live in is wonderful; I can drive down the street without worrrying about unattended toddlers running out in front of me and when we go to bed at night we're not disturbed by other people's music pounding until 4am.
That alone made the move worthwhile!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Dear Doctor
Dear Doc B,
I'm writing this in the hope that you remember me. I think that you might; you considered me a thorn in your side for a while.
I want you to know that I don't hold anything against you personally. You're probably a very nice person to interact with outside of the doctor/patient relationship. My issue is with your professionalism. Not your skill as a physician, exactly, but your listening skills.
I have a lot of respect for the education you've received. My hat's off to anyone who can make it through medical school and residency. Nursing school opened my eyes to the kind of rigors physicians are put through; those of you who make the grade do so because you're tough. My issue isn't with your level of intelligence, however; it's with your listening skills. Your HEARING skills, to be more precise.
Doc, you may have thought that you listened to me, but I don't think you HEARD me. You didn't take me seriously. You wrote me off, you told me that you didn't know why I was so ill intermittently but that I should just learn to live with it. You labelled me - not only in your own mind, but to other providers, too - as a hystrionic hypochondriac and also as a drug seeker. It didn't seem to matter to you that I wasn't asking for narcotics and that I made myself ill taking NSAIDs, you ignored the fact that I came to you asking for a medically managed withdrawl from narcotics after a car accident and subsequent surgery, you just saw me coming in complaining of pain and you made up your mind that that's what I was after. You even wrote it in my medical records. You ignored the times when I refused narcotic medications from yourself and from other providers, you ignored that I asked for you every single time I was seen because I wanted continuity of care....you ignored those things and you got a tunnel vision. Do you know how difficult it is to have something like that written in your chart, Doc? Every physician I've seen since you wrote that has initially looked at me with suspicion.
You're probably wondering why I'm writing to you now, years after we last met. I'll tell you why: I have Crohn's disease. I've HAD Crohn's disease for years, even way back when I was your patient. It's not only attacked my gut, it's attacked my joints and my kidneys, too. All that joint pain I kept complaining about? It was real. The belly pain and constant diarrhea I came to you with? That was real. The fatigue, the hair loss and weight loss and the depression that came and went? The recurring kidney stones and reflux, the gall stones and billiary colic? ALL OF IT WAS REAL AND HAD AN ORGANIC CAUSE.
It wasn't all in my head. It wasn't something I was making up. It was real, doc, and had you not been so determined to prove that there was nothing wrong with me, you might have seen the signs and symptoms that, according to my gastroenterologist, were 'blaringly obvious to anyone who cared to look' and you might have ordered the right tests and come up with a diagnosis.
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found a physician who was able to put aside the bias you placed in my chart (based on a falsehood, I might add) and see me as a sick person desperate for help. Instead of taking the preliminary negative results of a colonoscopy and endoscopy as a firm indictation that nothing was wrong, he decided to investigate further. "There's another 1/3 of your gut that I haven't seen yet" he said. "Don't worry, we'll figure this out" he said. Those words were like a ray of light in the darkness, and they made me cry. It felt like finally, someone was validating the way I was feeling.
He took me at my word, Doc. He went and looked further, and he saw that the 1/3 of my gut he hadn't seen yet was eroded and ulcerated. He looked at the abnormal blood tests, at my lack of renal function, at my swollen and painful joints, at my weight loss, at my malnutrition. He took the time to figure it out instead of dismissing me the way you did. He took the time, and he got an answer.
I'm not saying that he is a better physician than you, or even a better person than you. I'm simply saying that you might want to re-think your bias; that you may want to try to put aside your cynicism a little more often when confronted with a patient who keeps coming back with the same symptoms, telling you that something is wrong. Perhaps if you had done that with me, I'd have better renal function than I do now and I wouldn't have been as ill as I was...I wouldn't have thought I was dying. I can't say with any certainty that your lack of concern led to my kidneys only working at roughly 30% of their original capacity, but I can say that they're damaged because of the effects of undiagnosed Crohn's disease that I had for YEARS. I can say that had you NOT insisted on seeing me as the pain in the ass patient you might have been able to help me.
I know how easy it is to become cynical when confronted with patients; I've experienced it first-hand. I've also had the cynicism come back to bite me in the ass. I hope that this letter and my diagnosis is YOUR bite in the ass, Doc. I hope that you don't just blow this off as sour grapes on my part; I hope that you take it seriously and that you use it as an opportunity to reassess the way you look at patients. I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through, and I don't want you to treat anyone else the way you treated me.
Now that I have a diagnosis and am being treated adequately for this disease, I'm doing really quite well. It wasn't until I started to feel better that I realized just how awful I had been feeling for so long. I know that it may not seem like it, but I harbor no animosity towards you. If you were still practicing in my area I wouldn't be telling other patients that you're a horrible physician, and I won't be campaigning for the AMA to revoke your license or penalize you. I simply want my case, my illness, to be a wake up call for you. I want you to learn from it, to learn from me.
Much love and many regards,
NM
I'm writing this in the hope that you remember me. I think that you might; you considered me a thorn in your side for a while.
I want you to know that I don't hold anything against you personally. You're probably a very nice person to interact with outside of the doctor/patient relationship. My issue is with your professionalism. Not your skill as a physician, exactly, but your listening skills.
I have a lot of respect for the education you've received. My hat's off to anyone who can make it through medical school and residency. Nursing school opened my eyes to the kind of rigors physicians are put through; those of you who make the grade do so because you're tough. My issue isn't with your level of intelligence, however; it's with your listening skills. Your HEARING skills, to be more precise.
Doc, you may have thought that you listened to me, but I don't think you HEARD me. You didn't take me seriously. You wrote me off, you told me that you didn't know why I was so ill intermittently but that I should just learn to live with it. You labelled me - not only in your own mind, but to other providers, too - as a hystrionic hypochondriac and also as a drug seeker. It didn't seem to matter to you that I wasn't asking for narcotics and that I made myself ill taking NSAIDs, you ignored the fact that I came to you asking for a medically managed withdrawl from narcotics after a car accident and subsequent surgery, you just saw me coming in complaining of pain and you made up your mind that that's what I was after. You even wrote it in my medical records. You ignored the times when I refused narcotic medications from yourself and from other providers, you ignored that I asked for you every single time I was seen because I wanted continuity of care....you ignored those things and you got a tunnel vision. Do you know how difficult it is to have something like that written in your chart, Doc? Every physician I've seen since you wrote that has initially looked at me with suspicion.
You're probably wondering why I'm writing to you now, years after we last met. I'll tell you why: I have Crohn's disease. I've HAD Crohn's disease for years, even way back when I was your patient. It's not only attacked my gut, it's attacked my joints and my kidneys, too. All that joint pain I kept complaining about? It was real. The belly pain and constant diarrhea I came to you with? That was real. The fatigue, the hair loss and weight loss and the depression that came and went? The recurring kidney stones and reflux, the gall stones and billiary colic? ALL OF IT WAS REAL AND HAD AN ORGANIC CAUSE.
It wasn't all in my head. It wasn't something I was making up. It was real, doc, and had you not been so determined to prove that there was nothing wrong with me, you might have seen the signs and symptoms that, according to my gastroenterologist, were 'blaringly obvious to anyone who cared to look' and you might have ordered the right tests and come up with a diagnosis.
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found a physician who was able to put aside the bias you placed in my chart (based on a falsehood, I might add) and see me as a sick person desperate for help. Instead of taking the preliminary negative results of a colonoscopy and endoscopy as a firm indictation that nothing was wrong, he decided to investigate further. "There's another 1/3 of your gut that I haven't seen yet" he said. "Don't worry, we'll figure this out" he said. Those words were like a ray of light in the darkness, and they made me cry. It felt like finally, someone was validating the way I was feeling.
He took me at my word, Doc. He went and looked further, and he saw that the 1/3 of my gut he hadn't seen yet was eroded and ulcerated. He looked at the abnormal blood tests, at my lack of renal function, at my swollen and painful joints, at my weight loss, at my malnutrition. He took the time to figure it out instead of dismissing me the way you did. He took the time, and he got an answer.
I'm not saying that he is a better physician than you, or even a better person than you. I'm simply saying that you might want to re-think your bias; that you may want to try to put aside your cynicism a little more often when confronted with a patient who keeps coming back with the same symptoms, telling you that something is wrong. Perhaps if you had done that with me, I'd have better renal function than I do now and I wouldn't have been as ill as I was...I wouldn't have thought I was dying. I can't say with any certainty that your lack of concern led to my kidneys only working at roughly 30% of their original capacity, but I can say that they're damaged because of the effects of undiagnosed Crohn's disease that I had for YEARS. I can say that had you NOT insisted on seeing me as the pain in the ass patient you might have been able to help me.
I know how easy it is to become cynical when confronted with patients; I've experienced it first-hand. I've also had the cynicism come back to bite me in the ass. I hope that this letter and my diagnosis is YOUR bite in the ass, Doc. I hope that you don't just blow this off as sour grapes on my part; I hope that you take it seriously and that you use it as an opportunity to reassess the way you look at patients. I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through, and I don't want you to treat anyone else the way you treated me.
Now that I have a diagnosis and am being treated adequately for this disease, I'm doing really quite well. It wasn't until I started to feel better that I realized just how awful I had been feeling for so long. I know that it may not seem like it, but I harbor no animosity towards you. If you were still practicing in my area I wouldn't be telling other patients that you're a horrible physician, and I won't be campaigning for the AMA to revoke your license or penalize you. I simply want my case, my illness, to be a wake up call for you. I want you to learn from it, to learn from me.
Much love and many regards,
NM
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Contrast
Thursday, 5pm. There's a knock at the door; Hubs answers it and standing on the other side of the screen door is D, the little boy who lives in the other half of the duplex we inhabit.
Hubs: Hey, D! What's up, Buddy?
D: Mister F, I'm real sorry but my brother threw his ball in your yard. Can I please have it back?
Hubs: Of course you can. The dogs are inside, so just go on in and grab it. And D? Thank you for asking.
- - - - - - - - - -
Saturday, 5pm
Our house sits almost at the end of a cul-de-sac. There's about 15' of grass between the duplex we share with the neighbors and the house preceeding ours - where the family that likes to party a lot lives. I don't know how many children live there exactly, but today there are 7 of them outside. To the front are my flower beds, our driveway and a patch of grass that we call out 'front yard'. It's not fenced in, but it's our responsibility to maintain. I worked hard on my flower beds this summer; I have roses, azeleas, rhododendrons and a lilac bush, pansies, alyssum, violas and snapdragons. The centerpiece is a Queen Elizabeth rose I planted in memory of my dad, a lush, spicy smelling rose with red petals and dark green leathery foliage. To the back of our houses are baseball diamonds and soccer pitches, big wide open spaces of grass for kids to run and play on.
But they don't play there. At least, the ones that live next door to me don't. They choose instead to play on the strip of grass that separates the houses and they choose to play in my front yard. They're playing soccer there this afternoon, and I tried not to mind the ball hitting the side of the house; I tried not to mind them traipsing all over my lawn. I tried to ignore the ball landing in my flower beds three, four and five times, and I tried even harder to not mind them walking over my bedding plants to fetch it - without even asking or letting me know that's what they were going to do.
When they hit my dad's rose, though...that's when I couldn't ignore it any more. I opened the screen door and told them they needed to take their game elsewhere now. They all stood still, all seven of them, stared at me with open mouths. They didn't say anything - not a single word. I know better than to expect an apology, so I closed the door and came back inside.
I give it half an hour before they're back out there with their ball in my flower beds again. I also expect there to be some retribution from their parents; there will likely be snide comments made in my direction or loud music played until the wee hours of tomorrow morning.
It's quite a contrast.
Hubs: Hey, D! What's up, Buddy?
D: Mister F, I'm real sorry but my brother threw his ball in your yard. Can I please have it back?
Hubs: Of course you can. The dogs are inside, so just go on in and grab it. And D? Thank you for asking.
- - - - - - - - - -
Saturday, 5pm
Our house sits almost at the end of a cul-de-sac. There's about 15' of grass between the duplex we share with the neighbors and the house preceeding ours - where the family that likes to party a lot lives. I don't know how many children live there exactly, but today there are 7 of them outside. To the front are my flower beds, our driveway and a patch of grass that we call out 'front yard'. It's not fenced in, but it's our responsibility to maintain. I worked hard on my flower beds this summer; I have roses, azeleas, rhododendrons and a lilac bush, pansies, alyssum, violas and snapdragons. The centerpiece is a Queen Elizabeth rose I planted in memory of my dad, a lush, spicy smelling rose with red petals and dark green leathery foliage. To the back of our houses are baseball diamonds and soccer pitches, big wide open spaces of grass for kids to run and play on.
But they don't play there. At least, the ones that live next door to me don't. They choose instead to play on the strip of grass that separates the houses and they choose to play in my front yard. They're playing soccer there this afternoon, and I tried not to mind the ball hitting the side of the house; I tried not to mind them traipsing all over my lawn. I tried to ignore the ball landing in my flower beds three, four and five times, and I tried even harder to not mind them walking over my bedding plants to fetch it - without even asking or letting me know that's what they were going to do.
When they hit my dad's rose, though...that's when I couldn't ignore it any more. I opened the screen door and told them they needed to take their game elsewhere now. They all stood still, all seven of them, stared at me with open mouths. They didn't say anything - not a single word. I know better than to expect an apology, so I closed the door and came back inside.
I give it half an hour before they're back out there with their ball in my flower beds again. I also expect there to be some retribution from their parents; there will likely be snide comments made in my direction or loud music played until the wee hours of tomorrow morning.
It's quite a contrast.
Taking it back from whom, and to when?
The Tea Party wants 'America back'. The problem that I have with that statement is that it wasn't ever theirs - white, conservative Christians - to begin with. Unless I have my history all screwed up, Native America peoples were here long before us caucasian Europeans came and took their land from them (which much force and great celebration, I might add). How can you 'take back' something that never really belonged to you in the first place?
Exactly what do they want back, anyway? What era is so attractive to them that they feel we need to turn back the clock? How many years? 4 years - back to when we had a President who wasn't a Democrat and a person of color and we were sending our young men and women to Iraq to die for a cause that was tantamount to a lie? How about 20 years, to the grand old era of Reganomics when cocaine from Latin America was king? Do they want to go back the era of McCarthy-ism, when the threat of Communism caused such paranoia in the country that we actually had an 'Un-American Activities' committee? How about the 30's, before the New Deal, where everyone had to fend for themselves their entire lives and if you were too old/ill to work, you starved or died? What time do they want to go back to, and what exactly are they trying to regain?
The Tea Party also wants you to believe that illegal immigrants are the source of all the problems in America today. Those dang Mexicans are sneaking across our border in the middle of the night, taking jobs away from hardworking Americans, getting free healthcare, dropping 'anchor babies' willy nilly and generally using up all kinds of resources whilst contributing very little to the community. Tea Party members seem to forget that unless they're Native American, they're descended from immigrants, too.
Then again, perhaps they don't. Perhaps they don't forget that; perhaps it's not so much about immigration as it is skin color, language and different culture. It's easier to use someone who looks very different from yourself as a scapegoat (which is why organizations such as the Arayan Brotherhood and KKK have lasted so long) than it is to turn against someone who's caucasian, just like you.
I'm an immigrant. I'm a Permanent Resident Alien in this grand melting pot of States. I've dropped three anchor babies here. I've worked here, gained an education here, used resources here....I have done all of the things that the Tea Party members are complaining about. However, I have blonde hair and blue eyes and fair skin and I speak English with an American accent. I'm not so obvious; I don't stand out in a crowd.
I can't say for sure that this is about race or skin color or religion or culture because I'm not a member of the Tea Party and I don't know what's going on inside their heads. From an outsider's perspective, though, it sure seems like it.
Exactly what do they want back, anyway? What era is so attractive to them that they feel we need to turn back the clock? How many years? 4 years - back to when we had a President who wasn't a Democrat and a person of color and we were sending our young men and women to Iraq to die for a cause that was tantamount to a lie? How about 20 years, to the grand old era of Reganomics when cocaine from Latin America was king? Do they want to go back the era of McCarthy-ism, when the threat of Communism caused such paranoia in the country that we actually had an 'Un-American Activities' committee? How about the 30's, before the New Deal, where everyone had to fend for themselves their entire lives and if you were too old/ill to work, you starved or died? What time do they want to go back to, and what exactly are they trying to regain?
The Tea Party also wants you to believe that illegal immigrants are the source of all the problems in America today. Those dang Mexicans are sneaking across our border in the middle of the night, taking jobs away from hardworking Americans, getting free healthcare, dropping 'anchor babies' willy nilly and generally using up all kinds of resources whilst contributing very little to the community. Tea Party members seem to forget that unless they're Native American, they're descended from immigrants, too.
Then again, perhaps they don't. Perhaps they don't forget that; perhaps it's not so much about immigration as it is skin color, language and different culture. It's easier to use someone who looks very different from yourself as a scapegoat (which is why organizations such as the Arayan Brotherhood and KKK have lasted so long) than it is to turn against someone who's caucasian, just like you.
I'm an immigrant. I'm a Permanent Resident Alien in this grand melting pot of States. I've dropped three anchor babies here. I've worked here, gained an education here, used resources here....I have done all of the things that the Tea Party members are complaining about. However, I have blonde hair and blue eyes and fair skin and I speak English with an American accent. I'm not so obvious; I don't stand out in a crowd.
I can't say for sure that this is about race or skin color or religion or culture because I'm not a member of the Tea Party and I don't know what's going on inside their heads. From an outsider's perspective, though, it sure seems like it.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The final step to adulthood.
Hubs and I are considering taking the final step to adulthood (at the grand old ages of 41 and 38) and buying a home.
Leavenworth is likely our last duty station. We had plans to retire to South Dakota, but I think that Hubs skill set might be more suited to life in the Leavenworth area (he's been a Raven, a patrol cop, a detective and Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge of 2 military jail facilities, and by the time he retires from the AF he'll have a graduate degree in criminal justice). Leavenworth has 3 prisons in the locality...enough said, I think.
We also qualify for a VA mortgage loan. I looked at the interest rates and payment calculators yesterday and even at the highest interest rate (if we do this, we're going with a fixed rate. None of this fluctuating crap) over 20 years (instead of 30) we'd be paying LESS per month than we could for a rented property.
With that in mind....anyone got any advice for us? We've never bought a home before.
Thanks!
Leavenworth is likely our last duty station. We had plans to retire to South Dakota, but I think that Hubs skill set might be more suited to life in the Leavenworth area (he's been a Raven, a patrol cop, a detective and Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge of 2 military jail facilities, and by the time he retires from the AF he'll have a graduate degree in criminal justice). Leavenworth has 3 prisons in the locality...enough said, I think.
We also qualify for a VA mortgage loan. I looked at the interest rates and payment calculators yesterday and even at the highest interest rate (if we do this, we're going with a fixed rate. None of this fluctuating crap) over 20 years (instead of 30) we'd be paying LESS per month than we could for a rented property.
With that in mind....anyone got any advice for us? We've never bought a home before.
Thanks!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
On the move.
We have PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders. We're going to Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. My husband will be the AF liason at the military prison, and we will be the minority Air Force family on an Army post.
We're also tired of living on base, so we're looking at either renting or possibly buying a home off-post once we get there. Lansing and Leavenworth are smaller cities with lower crime rates than our current location - they seem like decent places for us to finish raising our kids and this will probably be our last duty location before Hubs retires.
Speaking of kids, our eldest will not be coming with us. She'll be 18 before we leave and is in her last year of high school and is incredibly reluctant to leave. So, we're making arrangements for her to live with her friend and the friend's mom. It hurts that she's not going to be with us, but I was going to lose her to college next year anyway (that's what I'm telling myself, at least).
I had to withdraw from college; we're moving on Nov 1st which would have precluded my finishing the semester. I see no point in starting something I can't finish, so I withdrew, got a refund, and will try to enroll in classes at a college close to our new duty station.
Holy cow....there's a lot to do!
We're also tired of living on base, so we're looking at either renting or possibly buying a home off-post once we get there. Lansing and Leavenworth are smaller cities with lower crime rates than our current location - they seem like decent places for us to finish raising our kids and this will probably be our last duty location before Hubs retires.
Speaking of kids, our eldest will not be coming with us. She'll be 18 before we leave and is in her last year of high school and is incredibly reluctant to leave. So, we're making arrangements for her to live with her friend and the friend's mom. It hurts that she's not going to be with us, but I was going to lose her to college next year anyway (that's what I'm telling myself, at least).
I had to withdraw from college; we're moving on Nov 1st which would have precluded my finishing the semester. I see no point in starting something I can't finish, so I withdrew, got a refund, and will try to enroll in classes at a college close to our new duty station.
Holy cow....there's a lot to do!
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