It has been w – a – y too long since I’ve written here. Way too long. We’ve packed up from Christmas, installed new attic stairs, begun putting in an attic floor and a window between the girls’ rooms, and now we find ourselves on the road again.
Okay, that sums it up, bye now.
All right, let me do better.
You may have noticed that I didn't mention our final moving trip. Well, that's because we didn't make the trip due to Mack's getting sick. We have rescheduled everything for February. We should be going over on February 15th. If nothing else happens.
The fact it is, now that we are establishing our new retreat here in the interior of Fayetteville, North Carolina -- our family together, able to enjoy one another’s company, trying new hobbies, getting into new routines, -- now that we are finally back together, the US government is seeing fit to take us apart AGAIN.
Not that we didn’t see it coming. You see, Dave’s assignment is to Fort Bragg only primarily. He is actually considered to be Army-wide. That means world-wide. He can be sent anyplace. Now there’s new software coming out that people will need to be trained on. So, he is getting his training now, and then he will be sent to train others. The only difference from the situation when we were in Nashville is that when he is home he has a job at Bragg to go to, and he probably won’t be gone so much or for so long. Okay, definitely an advantage over being a soldier, so we won’t gripe, too much.
Speaking of soldiers, when they are practicing what used to be called maneuvers (I don’t know what they call them today) we get a lot of mortar-fire around here. Not actually shelling, of course, but we can hear what they’re doing on base. Lots of big booms and an occasional rat-a-tat-tat. Typical for an Army town, I guess.
In Nashville it was honky-tonk music out in front of Legends on Broadway, here it’s boom-booms in our back yard.
Comparisons are funny things.
In Nashville they cut – no, desecrate trees to keep them from hitting power lines. In Fayetteville they vacuum up leaves that you rake to the curb to help keep the city beautiful.
In Nashville you might find traffic re-routed so that NBC’s Today Show can broadcast from Broadway in front of the arena (whatever flavor it’s named after this month). In Fayetteville you might find traffic backed up for an Army convoy.
In Nashville you might find roadblocks set up so they can film a country music video. In Fayetteville you might find streets closed for the Dickens Festival in November, or one of the many other festivals they hold other months.
In Nashville you find people manning the phone banks to raise money for NPT. In Fayetteville you find people quilting all year long to donate lap quilts to veterans who are inpatients in the Veterans Medical Center.
In Nashville you have the Red Cross holding events and taking care of disasters. In Fayetteville you have the Red Cross taking care of disasters and holding events.
Hmm.
rjm