This Thing We Call Life...

Life, it's HARD. Not all the time hard, but just in general hard. More nuisance than hard. Bills, doctor appointments, cost of living, eating healthy (why do fast food places have to SMELL SO GOOD when you drive by them?!?), taking care of your mental health, keeping a clean house (which would be so much easier if no one actually lived here), job stress, figuring out what to cook for dinner every. single. night...and the list goes on and on and on. Add kids into the mix, or in our case 4, and the hard becomes diamond hard.

Now that you've got your recipe for difficult days, add in a dash of the Military Flavor that has you moving every 2-3 years to different states, different coasts, or different countries. That'll put hair on your chest.

We are up for orders this summer. Which means we will most likely be moving. Or we won't as our orders could be for where we are. But we've received verbal "this is most likely where you're going" confirmation. But we were given "verbal confirmation" that we'd be moving to NC in 2020 and instead, came to CA. So, you know, I'm not holding my breath.

When it was just me and my husband, PCS-ing was hard, but doable. Finding a place to live wasn't a super big deal because as long as we could afford it, it was what it was. The biggest issue we had was when we were trying to find an apartment in CA to rent in 2010 because we weren't married yet and we knew we'd only be here for 3 months, but my husband's (then boyfriend) orders wouldn't apply to me, so I'd be stuck in the lease. We finally figured it out but it was a pain. At one point, my husband actually said we should just go to the justice of the peace to get married, but I refused to get married for convenience. No Purple Hearts storyline going on here. That was our biggest PCS "hiccup" that we'd had to deal with at that point.

Now that we have kids, we can't live just anywhere. I have to check the surrounding schools, safety of the neighborhoods, how many bedrooms can we afford in whatever area we land in, how far/close will it be to family this time, how far will my husband have to travel for work, what doctor/dentist/hospitals are in the area (because if you've read my recent blog posts, you know how my kids love ER visits)...and again, the list goes on.

Then there's the emotional baggage that comes with PCS season. Our oldest is a sophomore, which means wherever we are, he'll be starting over for his last two years of high school. That's a tough one. Our 8-year-old is adamant that he does not want to move away from his friends. He had to say goodbye to 2 very good friends on our street last year and he was distraught. He doesn't want to have to say goodbye again. Our 6-year-old does want to move because there's a good chance that we'll be much closer to our family, and she is thinking about sleep overs and get togethers. They actually got into a heated debate one night about why the other should change their mind about moving. It's a major tight rope to navigate.

I hope we know soon, so that we can tell our kids one way or the other. Once we know, we can talk about it as a family. We can plan. We can get them excited for wherever the winds of PCS season will take us. But at least it won't be a question mark for them.

Until then, I will continue to secretly look at Zillow on a daily basis for houses that we have zero intention of buying, but that I dream about, and get ideas for what I want our next home to have, while also Pinterest decorating said house that we don't own in a place that I'm not even sure that we're moving to.

Oh, the joys of being a military spouse.