Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The joys of being an Army wife

Ahhh!!! I finally got my hands of the computer long enough to post something new! Jon is taking his finals right now in accounting and marketing, so hopefully he does ok. He needs to keep his GPA up so that he can transfer to another program. Well why would Jon want to transfer to another program, you may ask, if he is getting such a good deal on tuition thanks to his wife being a UA employee? Well, we found out on Friday that he is getting deployed November/December. So he will hopefully get to finish his semester at UA, and then transfer to an online MBA program, which he will be able to work through while he is in Iraq.

I love the way he broke the news to me about his deployment. He called the lab after not getting a response by cell phone to ask me a question to help him fill out his form for the Qualified Tuition Reduction. This is how the conversation went:


Jon: "Hey, forgot to ask you this morning....are you an appointed or a classified employee?"

me: "I'm classified."

"Ok, well I'm going to fax this form off. It's only $85 up front for tuition."

"Umm.....yeah. I know....we payed the same thing last semester."

"Yeah, well we're probably going to deploy."

"Oh (long pause). Ok. When?"

"Probably November or December. We'll talk about it when you get home."

So that is how I found out. Just a little over a week before that, I found out to my frustration that Jon had Stop-Loss put on him. This is the Army's official way of saying that it doesn't matter if your time commitment is up. You are still needed and you cannot get out until such date. For Jon, that date is July 2009 (he was supposed to be out July 2008). Jon told me later that they only stop-loss people when they plan on deploying. This little bit of information would have helped! Then I wouldn't have been so shocked at the news of his deployment. I figured it would happen eventually with the way things are looking, but I was expecting it to happen next spring or summer right before he was supposed to get out. It's a hard situation to face, but what can we do, right? I'm just going to savor the rest of the time we have together before he leaves. That's another thing: standard tours of duty are now 15 months. A year was bad enough! Argh!!!!

Well, we have lots to take care of before that time comes. We are going to try to see a realtor this weekend because we are really desperate to sell the house. I will be moving up to Tucson while Jon is gone (yay no more commuting!!!!). I'll have to start looking for a house to rent up there. The market is so bad right now for sellers so we don't want the burden of buying a house in a slow market. It's going to be hard enough to sell the one we're in now. We don't plan on staying in Arizona long enough for the market to rise, so we'll just settle for renting. Here's a picture of our house. Cute isn't it? Unfortunately there are many others in our neighborhood that have been sitting on the market now for months.



So goes the story of my life. On the bright side of things:
  1. I won't have to drive 75 miles to get to work.

  2. I can focus more on work as a result of the shorter commute.

  3. I'll be able to get back into shape (Jon loves to eat out and I gained 5 lbs after he got home!)

  4. Maybe, just maybe I'll be able to meet Jon in Europe on his mid-tour R&R (I've never been!)

  5. Jon can focus on his MBA over there because once every thing is set up, he'll have plenty of time.

  6. Thought about pushing up my goal of applying to UA's acclereated BSN, but probably not. Can't leave the boss hanging!




2 comments:

Rae said...

This is exactly why I could never be an army wife! Plus, even if i was, john would be in *major* trouble over how he broke the news. Why not start your BSN program early? I'm sure once John returns home, you'd rather spend time with him then be just starting back at skool. Something to ponder....

Cheryl and Greg Morton said...

BIG HUGZ* :*(