Reunited and it Feels so Good

Back to real life eh?  There's a lot of compromise in married life that I seemed to have forgotten about.  Like how I keep the A/C at 80 (I'm all eco-friendly like that!) and he likes it at 72 or something crazy like that.  There's extra laundry and the idea of actually making a dinner (other than popcorn) on a daily basis.

The amazing part though is that my kids have their Daddy back.  And I took a trip to the commissary on my own!  Gunnar made it home just in time for our son's 4th birthday so we spent the day in Raleigh and had a great time.  His work schedule has been amazingly light since he came back.  He is usually home for the day before noon and will have the entire month of October off.

The transiting for the kids having their dad back has gone amazingly smoothly.  I know that aside from everything else in life, I am their constant.  Everything else has come and gone and come back again but me?  I'm 100% always here with them.  So adding Gunnar back into the mix at home really went great for them.  It has taken Gus a bit of time to get used to being yelled at disciplined by anyone besides me.  And the kids generally prefer me to put them in bed at night, but other than those minor details, things are going really well.

Now for some Army nonsense (I know you all knew this was coming).  So, I mentioned Gunnar is "working" half days since he's returned from Afghanistan.  Well, what I really mean by that is he goes and stands around and waits for most of every morning and then they send him home.  It's complete and total ridiculousness.  I've never seen any business or company more disorganized than the Army, or the 82nd Airborne Div, specifically.  Heck maybe the 82nd is awesome and it's just the 4th Brigade Combat team that's nuts.  I don't know where the breakdown between the smart guys and the dumb guys is exactly, but it's somewhere close to Gunnar's chain of command. 

For example:  They report to duty in the morning at say, 6:15am (a time in the morning I have not seen in many, many moons!) and go stand around in a parking lot and wait till 8:30am when the place is actually open for business.  No, really.  That's the crap they do.  They have had a lot of re-integration type things to do, they all had to go to the dentist, and health screenings, and probably fill out millions of pieces of paperwork.  The Army is generally anti-computer.  They like to have them fill out form after form after form.  I've never seen anything like it!!

Gunnar has some additional workups to have completed when he gets back to work in November.  He has the entire month of October off for his post deployment block leave.  He has a lot of the symptoms of a mild traumatic brain injury (or TBI for short) due to some injuries he had in Afghanistan.  I've heard a lot about these when soldiers return to the states, and I'm interested to see what sort of care he receives.  I don't think it's reasonable to wait 2 months after redeploying to get medical attention, but we're working on the Army's timeline here.  Likely, he also has a stress fracture in his foot.  But again, no x-rays till November.

We're (of course) going to be spending a few weeks up in Ohio to see everyone.  I can't wait!  Autumn in Ohio is spectacular, and any reason to get the hell out of Fort Bragg, is a good one for me!