My Own Private Hell; or, Tedium and Minutiae

Last spring I set to filling out the paperwork for my our first paid tickets back to visit family, a perk and reward of fulfilling the first full year of my contract.

Many weeks of swapping emails with people in the States, many hours of phone calls on hold (paying 10 cents a minute), many hand-wringing moments later, I had our orders and tickets to go back home. The actual email confirmation came less than 48 hours before we were set to travel. Talk about nerve wracking!

And now I am paying the price for those lovely tickets back home in the form of The Travel Voucher, also known as My Own Private Hell.

In all fairness, it's not just my private hell. Oh no, it's the hell all civilians navigating the World's Largest Bureaucracy get the pleasure to go through.

As a military wife and dependent, I had no idea what goes into travel. And most military people don't have to go through the craziness us civilians go through, either. When you are in the military, you make an appointment and someone types up your orders for you. Your travel arrangements are made through a travel office. You don't have to worry about keeping up with a stack of receipts and exact records in order to get reimbursed for portions of the travel.

And there are the forms---dear God, the forms are killing me. Codes for everything, lots of scary blanks, and a very vague set of directions to guide you.

Remember that obnoxious commercial for a credit card that went something like this:

•           4 round trip tickets =  $1000 
•           1 rental car for 3 weeks = $600
•           Seeing your family for the first time in over a year? Priceless

Oh, if it were just that easy. . . 

Know what else is priceless? Knowing "your" from "you're." Seriously. . . 

There is a definite cost to travel back, with so much that is not reimbursable. That which is requires you to fill out the form EXACTLY how they want. It's almost a joke because you know it's going to get kicked back to you at least twice before you get any of your expenses reimbursed. 

I'm not usually a conspiracy junkie, but I really do think the whole purpose of this experience is so you give up, thus letting the government keep those nickels and dimes for themselves. 

The travel voucher is technically supposed to be filled out within five days of our return, but like most of my coworkers, I've put it off because I know I have five years to fill it out. I've started and stopped the process several times since I returned in early August, and although I'd love to have that money in my pocket, the thought of filling out this form three times (once for every leg of the trip---an extra bonus for traveling separately for parts of the trip) makes me put off today what I can do tomorrow. In fact, I'm still trying to get reimbursed for portions of our Oct. 2012 move here. 

I complained to a coworker last year that we don't have anyone guiding us through the process like our military personnel have. 

He chuckled and unsympathetically said, "Um, we all have degrees, and most of us have at least one master's degree. I think they figure we can fill out a form without assistance." 

Maybe so, but I disagree. I don't have a Master in Tedium and Minutiae Degree, and although I like to think I'm a details person (I love writing library catalog records, filling out accounting forms, and working formulas in spreadsheets), I can't for the life of me figure out how to get these forms right the first time. 

After three hours tonight, I think the government won this round. However, I'm up for another fight, another round of filling out forms from hell, and hopefully I won't be two years getting my nickels and dimes this time around. 

Lessons Learned (and other lingo); or, Roots and Vines

Between my background in education and my present location on a military base, I am well versed in jargon. Education changes every few years---let's just repackage and recycle (and sell for big, big bucks) a new trend, and watch everyone learn the lingo: if you are meeting in your professional learning community while engaging in standards based mapping, all while covering constructivism (or is it metacognition?), I feel your pain. Oops, there goes another paradigm shift! You must learn new lingo.

At least with the military, an acronym is usually around forever, and the jargon doesn't really change with whichever way the wind blows. If it were FUBAR in 1970, well, it's still FUBAR today. And if you are familiar with OPSEC, that holds true here---thus no names and pictures of my family or several places on the base on my blog.

So this morning, upon realizing that I wanted to write about "lessons learned," I felt the need to jab a pencil in my eyeball. What has happened to me? I used to snicker at the term that is really, really overused in the military, and now I'm using it.

That being said, I've reflected on some lessons of recent times and had an epiphany or two that I'd like to share:

ONE: My youngest is really, REALLY allergic to the skin and sap of mangoes.
One trip to the pediatrician, one trip to the ER, and a frustrating trip to the NEX later, we are going to have to go with homemade remedies since Benadryl and Caladryl are all we have here (and are not getting the job done). I mentioned this before, but the same chemical in poison ivy is in the sap of mangoes.
I'm up for any suggestions. I am very ignorant of what to do since I'm not allergic to anything, dermatologically speaking (but pretty much all antibiotics---I would trade, trust me).

TWO: One trip really can change your life forever.
I went to Cuernavaca, Mexico, for a summer abroad studying at Cemanahuac Language Institute while an undergrad, and I met a group of people who have forever changed my life. Two of the group were BRATS---as in a Military (AF) Brat, and an Aramco Brat. Hearing their stories about traveling and seeing the world at a young age, and seeing the amount of freedom they had---all while living in a close-knit community---is something that I believe led me here today.  From that point on I have had a sense of needing to do more than just settle in one place---especially when there is a huge world out there to explore and see and places where you can do this and raise kids at the same time.
Another of the group was a little older than the rest of us, so I looked to her for advice---and when I found myself going through a difficult time and more or less homeless (by my own doing and choice), she helped me see there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Then there there was my Mexico roommate who said, "My sister is looking for someone to split her rent, let me give her a call." And just like that, a total stranger became my roommate (and friend), and those sisters and their family really took me in. Best thing about their mom? She lived close by and grew up in New Orleans---and like most New Orleans ladies, she can COOK---so it wasn't anything to have the doorbell ring and her show up with a big pan of jambalaya because "I just thought you kids might be hungry."

Although I didn't get a pan of jambalaya at my doorstep, I did get a couple of very nice care packages from the same lady recently. I can't even tell you how flattered and humbled I am that she thought about me,  and she was generous beyond measure. Let's just say that she, also, has changed my life for the better.  I am thankful that she has also remained a part of my life.

One more tidbit from that trip---the AF Brat is now my husband of almost 20 years.  Not too shabby, considering that was the last thing I was looking for when we all became friends.



And like that butterfly causing a hurricane in chaos theory,  one short semester with strangers 23 years ago caused a lifetime of connections and consequences that continue to this very day. You never know what roots and vines are going to spring from one place you all hold dear in your heart.

THREE: I hate the word "staycation." Like all education jargon, some military phrases, and the words "puce," "goiter," "mucus," "gullet," and the phrase "fair and balanced," it should be struck from the English language. Forever.

So instead I'm going to describe my Spring Break as a stay-at-home-vacation. The grandparents came to visit! We were very happy to host our first visitors, my parents, to our tiny little slice of this lovely island. We did pottery. We collected sea glass and sea shells. We gathered seeds (if you think I'm a gatherer, you need to meet my mama). We ate at most of the base restaurants (that would be six of the eight). We went bowling. We drove around and took lots of pictures of the ocean, the kids, the kids in front of the ocean, the kids in the ocean, etc. We visited and chilled out and had a wonderful time. They are travelers and adventurers, so they didn't scoff when I suggested going out at night and looking for hutias as a form of fun family entertainment (actually, it was my mom's idea).

They were also there when our oldest officially became a certified SCUBA diver!!! Yay! We had a wonderful time, and I am eternally grateful for my parents who made the tremendous effort to visit. Two sets of forms, two sets of tickets, the run-around from everyone, a ridiculous expense, and dealing with military bureaucracy and military rules (and jargon) as a civilian are all not easy tasks.

It was a wonderful Spring Break, indeed. And now. . . the downhill slide until summer break. No furloughs this school year, so we are looking at approximately nine weeks until we are on real vacation (not just living-in-paradise-and-working vacation).

1 bomb + 2 boys + 3 days; or, Hail, hail, the gang's all here

October 30, the day before the guys made it in, we had yet another little distraction. An unexploded ordnance was found on the beach at the ferry landing, so it was announced that we'd be taking u-boats instead of the ferry to and from the airport on the leeward side of the bay to the landing on the windward side.

This caused me much stress, as although I'm not 100% sure what an unexploded ordnance is, I'm relatively positive that it's fancy Navy talk for some sort of bomb. Or explosive. Or something probably dangerous.

Ended up it was inert, and I am much relieved. Not just for safety reasons, but because I really thought we were going to be taking a German sub across the bay. "U boat" is more fancy Navy talk for a utility boat.

Additionally, the Goat Locker, found on all Navy bases, is also not an actual locker, or a place for goats. Ask an active duty sailor or veteran if you don't know what it is.

Home, finally! 

The boys were here just in time for Halloween, Gitmo style. There were dozens of kids walking around the neighborhood, dressed in fancy store-bought get-ups, cute homemade creations, and everything in between. We got more trick-or-treaters in one night than we had the entire ten years we lived in Texas, and we ran out of candy before the official lights-out. That's what happens when you go from living in a neighborhood mostly full of empty nesters and senior citizens to one chock full of families. Our little zombie had as much fun passing out candy as he did trick or treating. It's crazy being the newbie and everyone says, "Welcome to the island!" as soon as you walk up to their door. It's like Cheers. Everyone knows your name. Well, except they all aren't drinking.(And your name isn't Norm).  

Insert generic Gitmo picture here.

I'm hesitant to post any pictures of the area until I'm sure what I can post. Usually I'm all "question authority!" "fight the man!" (unless it's my children, and in that case, they should love and mind authority and the (wo)man). But there are legitimate security concerns, and therefore restrictions on photography, so it's a no-brainer until I know for sure. In the meanwhile, here is a generic picture of some generic hills on the base. Does this look like what you pictured Cuba looking like? It's a lot like the California desert, or western Texas. Cacti, brush, and when there hasn't been a torrential downpour thanks to a hurricane, it's rather brown. We are either steppe or desert climate. Not what I pictured for Cuba.

And yet, just a short distance down the road, you'll find beaches and beautiful blue water. There's usually a wide dichotomy between beach and desert climates---but yet they come together to create this place. It is weird. And it is beautiful.

If you are, indeed, Jonesing for more Gitmo pics, there is a facebook page with lots of pictures and info about here---Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A couple of beaches are FINALLY open tomorrow for beachcombing. Still no swimming or shore diving---we're still cleaning up from Sandy. Kids are so disappointed in not being able to go to the beach, I'm thinking a day of beachcombing beats a day of NEX trips and cartoons any day.