Welcome, dear reader. I hope this blog is not too mundane for your taste, I’ll try not to make it too dull and boring for you. Nothing worse, for example, than skimming through dull, dull dull Facebook postings. What is significant to one person can be so insignificant to another. so I hope this will be interesting to at least one more person.

Let me try to catch you up on what this all about. I’m an Army wife, have been for the past 35+ years. The Army lifestyle is great, but definitely keeps you going. As do family and friends. My DH (Dear Husband) left two days ago to return to Germany for a new job with the military  and I plan to join him soon, probably after Easter. I have mixed feeling about this move.

We moved here from our last duty station, Japan, about 2 years ago, because of  DH’s new job. We (at least, I) figured that this would probably be our last move and I was happy with it. We’re in Virginia, about 3 hours from DC, a city I enjoy visiting.  We were 5 hours from DS#2 (Dear  Son #2), who had been in “the sandbox” with the Army for several tours, got out, and was earning his college degree. DS#1 was in California, struggling but getting by,  DS#3 was in Hawaii, DD (Dear Daughter) was in Philadelphia going to school. Except for DS#3, we were closer to family than we had been for a long while (the rest of our families are in New York/Connecticut). Since we had been closest to DS#3 when we were stationed in Japan and he was in Hawaii, it all seemed to work out.

We bought a house in Virginia and settled in, finally getting household goods which had been in storage in three different locations and some of which we hadn’t seen in 5 years. Unpacking took (honestly, is still taking) a long time, lots of decisions to make about just about every single item.

About 3 months after our household goods arrived, the Army announced that it was closing the department where DH worked. Not just his department, but the entire building. Surprise!

DH is an incredible hustler and quickly found several new opportunities. We decided that, since things were still in turmoil here job-wise, he would take up an offer for a one year TDY (that is, temporary) assignment overseas in Germany with the military.  The odd thing about it was that it was a one-year TDY, which I had never heard of before.

So, off he went to Germany for a year. We had never been stationed in Europe and actually, with nothing connecting me here since I was new, I looked forward to visiting him there once he got settled, probably visiting for an extended length of time. I love travel and, well, it was Europe.

Once he got over there, things started to change.