The Reserve Situation

 I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.

-Soldier's Creed

We had hoped for the best with this new Army Reserve situation. Turns out, "the best" wasn't exactly in the cards...(If you're new to the blog, you can read the last few posts in {history} to catch up.)

After sitting down with Sky and filling out even more paperwork, he was told he'll have to do the much shorter Reserve school. In fact, it will only be 8 weeks long. Even worse, it will be broken up into 2 week increments, and spread out through months- this means we'll have to worry about the lag from civilian to military paychecks the way we did during the flooding last spring- only this time, we'll have to worry four times over. His first school won't even start until the summertime (and the following dates, through months of the fall), which means the promotion that had been discussed won't happen for at least a year, because he can't get promoted until he's MOS qualified- he was infantry in the National Guard, but the Reserves don't have infantry.

The huge, mean kicker in the whole thing? We just found out the Guard is making Sky pay back the remainder of his enlistment bonus (paid to him years ago, of course)- thousands of dollars that will be taken out of his drill pay, AT pay, school pay, and quite probably, our income tax refunds (and they're probably doing the same to most of his unit, whom they also decided to let go). The whole thing has me wondering why I placed any hope in the military- it's pretty laughable, really. Bad luck has taken on a whole new meaning.

It means a lot of things for us. Obviously, no longer school means no bigger paycheck. That means our debts will stick around (and like I mentioned, we now have a substantial new one), and it means big decisions on everything from paying for my root canal, to having a second baby, to just about everything, really. Of course, the bright side of it is that Sky will only be gone for short amounts of time- we've done 2 weeks apart several times in the past. And then again, there's a deployment ahead that he hopes to volunteer for because the money isn't coming from the school. I keep going back and forth on pros and cons, and it's a bit dizzying.

For now, things will be mostly the same as they have been. Sky will drill once a month and work his civilian job. I will be home with Millie, mothering and doing the household chores. I'll heat up his lunches every day and we'll peek in the dim room of our sweet, sleeping girl every night. We'll continue to live carefully, frugally, and hope that if 2012 isn't our year, maybe 2013 or 2014 will be. Time has a way of making sense backwards, and maybe this will down the road, or maybe it never will at all. Wherever we're destined to go in this roller-coaster life, I know we'll get there.

Eventually, we'll get there.