A Holiday Weekend Away

Tomorrow we leave for Camp of the Woods over in the Adirondacks and I'm pretty excited.  Fear and loathing about having to sleep in a hotel room with the boy again has been replaced by excitement now that its finally arrived.  Camp of the Woods and Ft. Drum's Chaplaincy work together to provide these weekends for military families to spend quality time together free of charge!  Vacation!  Hotel stay!  No Cleaning!  Free!  Yay! 

The Army, however... [deep sigh], CAN NOT make anything easy.  This weekend is a FORSCOM DONSA.  FORSCOM meaning the whole military.  I don't know the actual words on that one, but basically all of the military.  DONSA = Day Of No Scheduled Activity.  Because it would kill them to say "holiday".  That's just too short, easy to say and can't be acronymed to death.  Moving on...

So one would assume that since the entire rest of the military is having their 4 day weekend Friday-Monday and going back to work on Tuesday, we would have been free and clear to go to said retreat for the weekend.  Not quite... hoops were not jumped through and stress has not been applied.  Someone said that the Army operates the way it does because War is Chaos and therefore if we naturally operate in chaos, the soldiers are already ready for it in war.  Good point, but still....

Wednesday, Jerry calls me from work.  "Honey, when are we leaving for that camp thing?"  Great... here we go.  As it turns out, our Major (in his infinite wisdom) decided that while the rest of the military takes Friday & Monday off, B Company will be taking Monday & Tuesday off.  I should have seen this one coming.  I thought it was too easy. 

"No problem, honey.  The 1st Sergeant is going to give me leave.  I just need to fill out the leave form and stuff.  They won't actually charge me a day off since its through the chapel.  They just need the paperwork filled out to prove why I'm not at work that day."  O.k. Hoop Number 1 accomplished.  [Oh and there were a few more "Honey, calm down.  Don't call and cancel it.  I'll get it worked out." conversations in there before we got to this, just so you know.]

Today, Jerry calls on his way home.  "What time are we supposed to be there?"  Crap-o-la on a stick!  What now?!  A PT test?  Really?  Why?  And why tomorrow?

My husband is getting promoted soon and believe me the hoops for that one are insurmountable in my opinion, but the first is this class called WLC.  Jerry just found out today that he begins WLC on the 23rd.  Apparently, the PT test to qualify for WLC has to be done tomorrow.  Of course it does.  What cracks me up is that Jerry is scheduled to appear before the Board for his promotion test during the time that he is now scheduled to be at WLC.  Suddenly, the Army thinks he can be in 2 places at once.  I'm fairly certain that this will be his fault. 

Tomorrow, however, he will get up and go accomplish Hoop No. 2 as soon as possible so that we can get on the road.  And then we will be on our way... hopefully.  I mean only 2 hoops has to be some kind of Army record.  So surely something else will come up.  We're not there yet! 

I have hope, though.  And I'm packing.  ;)