I am trying as hard as I can to figure out when the fuck we acquired so much shit and for the life of me I just cannot figure out where the hell 10,500 pounds of crap came from. Two moving trucks completely full of all the shit that makes up the Thornburg household times one month in a hotel equals on seriously pissed-the-fuck-off Kate. God, I fucking HATE PCSing.
And why does PCSing suck balls, you may ask. This time it was a "simply" DITY move from Hohenfels to Pfullendorf, just a three hour jaunt from one post in Germany to another and not the leap across the pond back to the states that it could have been. What could be so awful about a relatively (in Army terms anyway) short move? Well, here's the list.
1. We packed our shit ourselves, which is always a delightful time. My husband is really helpful the first day or two and then he turns into asshole hubby, making demands about what gets packed next and watching me pack boxes. He helps load stuff into the truck, but I swear that it feels like he spends more time standing around waiting for a box to load than he actually works.
2. The Army has this new automated system for all the finance bullshit now, so you get paid for the move. . . eventually. Usually after you've forked out a couple of thousand dollars to pay for the trucks and the boxes and the hotel and the meals and the and the. . . And the finance office in Hohenfels is as useless as tits on a bull about helping with any of this, so if you happen to be there for any reason, take my advice and be prepared to scream "FUCK!" a few million times at, to or about the lazy mother fuckers who work in that office.
3. Clearing housing with asshole hubby is fun, too. You have to clean the place to "clear" it, and he is one OCD bastard. I don't clean or anything on a regular basis--it's OK to have children and live in squalor, you know. OCD bastard makes me want to suck start a pistol, but only after I feed him a bullet or two.
4. Moving from government quarters to living strictly on the economy in a German rental is a fine idea, until you try to find a German home that is big enough for a family of seven and that doesn't cost $2500 a month to rent. Now further limit yourself to a specific ten square kilometer area to find a house in just to make sure that you aren't driving 3-4 hours a day driving your kid back and forth to the one English speaking school in the vicinity. Hahahahahaha! Fuck that. B is getting homeschooled and we will take the house that fits our family and budget.
5. Now that you have found a house, you have to wait a month to move in so you'll be living in a hotel room with 5 kids. And keep in mind that one of those children is the infamous E, whose greatest joys in life are to never stop talking, never sleep, and to find new and creative ways to injure himself--in the course of that month he will endure 2 split lips, 1 face plant on concrete, more bruises from falling than I can count, 1 scraped knee for each day there, 1 rubber ball to the nose, 1 tumble down a flight of marble stairs headfirst, 1 head bashed into a window sill, 1 torn toenail, 1 nosebleed from headbutting his brother, multiple incidents of scraping his hands on gravel, and one black eye.
6. And finally, there are the boxes. More boxes than you ever thought was possible to need to pack up your tiny government quarters. More boxes than the Queen of England needs to pack up Buckingham Palace. More boxes than God could ever use. And to add to the mayhem, let's just forget to label some of those boxes so you are completely fucked when you try to figure out which room in a four story house a particular box needs to go to. Then throw in asshole husband who wants everything done yesterday, four kids who want their shit unpacked and set up right fucking now and are not shy about saying so, mountains of paper, and a fifteen month old who is wearing a diaper full of the most nauseating shit ever evacuated from a human being and which is slowly reaching the level of vomit inducing stench because he's had it on for 10 or 12 hours because Mom has been neglecting him because she's so fucking busy trying to unpack! Fuck it all! This time I was a little slower than usual unpacking, but it still only took four days to finish unpacking everything and now the house is HOME. I do not know or understand how anyone can live out of boxes for months on end. No one can beat this bitch when it comes to getting this moving shit done.
Now, on a positive note, we are moved into the most amazing, gorgeous, huge house we have ever lived in, the kids are happy, and all the boxes are fucking GONE! But, by far, the best news is that my pants once again fit on my ass!! I am back to my pre-pregnancy size and all it took to achieve it was a month in a hotel, suicidal level stress, and lifting and shifting more than 10,000 pounds of household shit.
