The parental units are stressed. There’s no other way to start off this blog.
The packers/movers have been and gone and nothing went the way we expected it to go. Ma moved a lot growing up, and this was nothing like that. When she tried to document what was going in each box, she was told it wasn’t necessary because “Ma’am, we know what we’re doing and you’ll get a manifest.” They knew military moving, but didn’t know DOS moving, and they provided no manifest. They didn’t understand why there were three carefully curated piles of stuff… one for UAB (unaccompanied air baggage – the stuff that will be delivered relatively quickly), one for HHE (household effects – the stuff that will be put temporarily into storage and then shipped to our first post), and a third for the stuff to go into long term storage.
When she asked again, Ma was told she could get a copy of the manifest from the “PCS coordinator” — except there isn’t anyone who has that exact title, so that involved some guesswork. (Spoilers: it was the point of contact for the shipping company.)
Today is T-minus 3 days until the big move and we still don’t have correct orders. We do, finally, have our address in Northern Virginia, so that’s a start. At least we understand the information contained in those magical orders… figuring that out was a fun lesson in federal governmentese; sadly, our fluency in the southern state dialect of governmentese was completely useless. Good thing we’re fast-learning polyglots around here.
I’m going to include a word of the day when it seems appropriate… and today seems like one of those days.
Today’s word of the day is APRONYM. Apronyms are acronyms that become real words… kind of like how Pinocchio becomes a real boy, that’s how an acronym becomes a real word. My two favourites* are SNAFU (situation normal all f*cked up) and FUBAR (f*cked up beyond all recognition). They come to North American English courtesy of the military. Thank you for your service; I use the hell out of them.
*I spell like a Canadian because I am a Canadian home gnome!
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