Although he was notified far in advance when he was supposed to deploy, you never count on military movements to be on time (early or late--usually the latter). But, nevertheless, I allowed myself to get excited when I found out that he had actually left for the processing station in California (I left California for the mobilization processing station in Virginia, he leaves Virginia for the mobilization station in California--that is the military decision making process in action!) and told Peg the planned timeline... BAM! The third of July was a nasty surprise when he called and said he had arrived in California and processed, but was medically disqualified.... doh!
This is why military timelines for deployment (and re-deployment) are NOT a good idea.... at least not on an individual level... maybe on an army-of-liberation-level it will work.... we shall see...
Regardless, facing the Fourth of July weekend and a replacement that was non-deployable was distressing! It was a distinct possibility that either The Replacement would be a minimum of a month late or not come at all.... because they wouldn't allow him to continue on to the training at Fort Jackson--the same place I had so much fun back in January--without being medically cleared. But, lights at the end of the tunnels shine brightest in our darkest hours... or something like that. There is a waiver process that we went through, complete with about ten miles of red tape and gnashing of teeth and scratching of claws (good for cutting through the red tape). So, they--eventually--agreed to let him continue on to Fort Jackson while the waiver process wended its way through the system.
But, I KNEW something was going to happen to facilitate me going home. Because my Toe Time told me it was time to go home. Remember the sphincter of despair, the donught of misery--excel charts that people use to track their deployments... they look like this...
Well, on this deployment I decided to use a different chronometer. In the preparation for deployment (at least I think it was then, it makes for a better story, so I am sticking with that) I was moving bits around the garage, reorganizing in an attempt to make the work bench usable by Peg as a shipping/mailing center--purely selfish on my part, I like getting stuff in the mail! Anyway, during the moving about of a Heavy Object my big left toe was damaged, complete with blood blister under the nail. These things generally take about 6 months to grow out, so I thought, "Perfect! I will be ready to go home when the blood spot in my left big toenail is gone." Well, here a few picts to show its progression, but you can clearly see that as of last week it was gone! So I KNOW that it is toe TOA time!
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