The Saga of Permanent Orders

What is the craziest thing you've ever done for love?

It's a pretty loaded question isn't it. Without bragging, because I haven't over thrown a country or doomed thousands to their deaths for love, I have packed up my stuff and hopped in the van for a 13 hour trip down to Texas half an hour after my husband called me. I'm a pretty big coward about driving places I haven't been, especially for long stretches. The longest I had ever driven in one stretch was 6 hours on highways I knew. Before this trip I had never booked a hotel room for myself, let alone stay in one alone. I was sleepless that night waiting for creepers to break in the door.

Here's the story from the beginning. Ian was supposed to graduate on Wednesday. I would drive down and pick him up and we would leave immediately to see our family out east. Sounds simple right? There are always wrenches to be thrown in the works.

We were waiting on his permanent orders so he could get leave to get out of Texas. And they weren't coming, and they weren't coming. I was trying to contact the people that were processing my medical paperwork to figure out if that was the reason this was going so slow. I called this lady like 5 times a day and I couldn't get an answering machine or a busy signal, let alone a person. In the mean time, we were making contingency plans. I would just come down and stay in TX for a while. We could at least see each other. Then we got the news that some airmen got caught for underage drinking and they were going to punish the entire squad by making them have to do mandatory PT all weekend. This meant that I wouldn't get to see Ian, he couldn't get a hotel pass to stay with me...basically it just made us very cranky and it sucked to high hell. So we made another contingency plan that I would drive down today and get there tomorrow and we would still hang out with each other.

This was all last weekend. On Monday I finally got in contact with the lady about the medical paperwork. That got things rolling in a big way - Ian started having meetings and getting paperwork to get us to Japan. We still didn't expect him to be able to get out of there till the next Monday. I just happen to pick up my phone on Wednesday afternoon. I'm really surprised but I figured he had gotten the afternoon off or something because he had graduated. Then he says he has good and bad news. The good news that he graduated the top in his class...the bad news, I had to pack immediately and get to TX as soon as possible. He needed to be able to leave base on either Friday or Saturday. I was so surprised and I immediately went into packing/emergency mode. I tore my room apart, packing like the devil was on my heels. I left Cheyenne half an hour after I got the call. I was quite impressed with how quickly I was ready.

The rest of it was just the long slog through lots of sun parched small towns in the middle of no where. Though I have to admit that it was so wonderful to see him again. I was beginning to forget that he even existed physically. Like all he was was a voice on the phone, a facebook page. Now we just have to navigate the craziness of going out east, and moving to a new country. We are leaving for Japan July 16th - That's not much time at all.