Ramblings of Lot's Wife : Part One, a.k.a #firstworldproblems

I'm going to assume that everyone reading this knows the story of Lot's wife. It's been on my mind since Sunday, as it was the focus of our Relief Society lesson. Relief Society is the women's group in the LDS church, and the third hour, yes THIRD hour, of church is when the men go to Priesthood and the women go to Relief Society. Anyway, our lesson was about Lot's wife. How appropriate for New Year's and new beginnings and looking ahead and all that good kind of stuff! But it got me thinking about our situation.
As many of you know and many of you may not, because I've been pretty quiet about it (because I realize it's not uplifting to read other peoples gripes on the Internet, and because I know my gripes are #firstworldproblems, but if I don't get them out of my head they are going to consume me), we moved from Nebraska to California in September. If you scroll down to the previous post, you'll see my little testing post. That was about a week after we got the news that we might be moving to Germany. GERMANY! Last year, at about this time, we were under the impression that we had another year and a half left in Omaha. Another year had come and gone and we were not going to have to (get to?) move when summer rolled around. I was fine with that. I really like Omaha, Papillion to be precise. Brandon, on the other hand, was mildly disappointed. Not that he doesn't like Nebraska, but he didn't join the Air Force to live in Nebraska. So, we were so excited when we got a call telling us there may be a way to get us to Germany, the assignment everyone dreams of. I had the slightest bit of panic in my heart as Brandon told me, but overall, I was excited. Excited enough to ease the sadness of having to leave.
We began the process of obtaining medical clearance. When you get assigned overseas in the Air Force, the entire family has to be medically cleared. As most of you know, Kyle has a list of specialists longer than most adults, so he is enrolled in what is known as EFMP (Exceptional Family Member Program). We knew this could pose some problems, but we had been overseas before so we were cautiously optimistic. Kyle's clearance required extensive case review by doctors on both ends of our potential move. The doctor on this end happened to be the dad of Kyle's very best friend. After the meeting with him, we were again hopeful.
But we live in California now, so you all know how this ends. Kyle was denied clearance. The rest of us were cleared. I guess we could have shipped Kyle off to live with family and had our European adventure. Kyle would probably tell you, now that we're in California, that he would have preferred that, but this momma would have missed him too much. So, we got used to the idea of staying in Nebraska again. It was a bummer, but I was okay with it. Aside from not getting to Germany, there was little to complain about.
Then we found out we still had to move. This is where it got tough. Every other move we had done since joining the Air Force had some aspect that made them tolerable if not exciting, i.e. moving to the same bases as our good friends, career advancement, ENGLAND, or returning to the states. This time we were just moving because we had to and because of Kyle's status, we knew it would only be in the States, near a bigger city with access to Pediatric specialties. That makes for a very narrow window of options. Also taking into consideration the bases where an orthodontist space was vacant left us with Travis Air Force Base, California.
I'm going to be straight up honest about this, folks, I was NOT happy when we got this news. If you are from California, or you love California so much, you may want to stop reading. I DO NOT like California. Maybe for a visit, even an extended vacation, but we lived in California before. Jake was born just up the road in Roseville. We made some great friends in Penn Valley and Grass Valley. We have wonderful memories from our time stationed at Beale AFB. But when we left, it was like, good riddance! We were so glad to leave, mostly because we were moving on. Brandon was taking the next step in his career, moving to San Antonio for Ortho training, but also because California is really, freaking expensive! And you have to drive really far to get to anything. And housing is astronomical. I can't understand why people want to live here. The cost of living is so high. Our auto insurance doubled simply because we live here now. Nebraska was so affordable. The traffic is a nightmare. Even on the worst days in Omaha, I never sat in traffic the way we do here. And we've all spent the last few years or so hearing about the drought in California, so there was that to worry about, too. Worry no more, friends! It's an El Niño year! I'm not kidding, I think it has rained more since we got here than it hasn't. That would be fine and good, great for the drought, if we didn't have to walk a hundred yards every time we go to and from our car. We had a garage in Nebraska. To be fair, we will have a garage when we move into our house. No, we haven't moved into our house yet. But, I'm guessing you could all use a break from my complaining, so we'll get to that in the next post.