I Promised No Pictures

This morning is a big morning around our house.  It is actually the first of two big mornings in a row.  Right now, as I type, My Husband is off taking the written test to apply for the San Diego Sheriff's Department.  Yikes!  It is a little scary and very nerve wracking.  We have been leading up to this for a while.  He has applied to seven different agencies in three different states, all in the hopes of landing a law enforcement job somewhere.  This is the first test he will take out of all of them.
Even though yesterday was tax day, and I spent a great deal of time working on three sets of taxes for other family members, we also spent a good portion of the day getting him ready for today, mostly by buying him clothes.  He had none.  The proper dress for this test is business casual.  When you have been in the military for 20 years, you don't necessarily have business casual clothes. The clothes he did have, he likes to wear baggy, and they wouldn't be appropriate for this.  When we started thinking about it, we probably haven't bought him any nice clothes since his sister got married years ago.  In fact, he may have even had the clothes before that.  I think it has been 10 years since we last bought him nice dress shoes, slacks, or anything like that.  I know that sounds crazy, but when you wear a uniform of some sort every single day, you just don't have to deal with other business attire, and you only want super casual clothes for your days off.
So, last night, we went out in search of the right look.  As I don't buy men's clothes on a regular basis, either, I wasn't totally on the ball with everything either.  Thankfully, I had a life line.  I have a fabulous friend that I simply texted "Fashion help!" to, and she came to the rescue with clothing advice and business casual rules.  I love her.   I should have just taken her shopping with us.  My Husband would have come out looking hella fabulous.  As it is, I think we did pretty good.  I tired to take a picture to post of him, but he "politely" request that I nowt.  I think he looked great when he walked out the door this morning.   Good enough that I was trying to get some extra kisses in.  He wasn't having it, though.  His nerves were getting the better of him.  The test was at 8:00am.  The place is 3 miles from our house.  He was told to be there thirty minutes before the start.  He left at 6:50am.  Can you feel the nervous energy?
This test may determine the rest of our lives.   We will seriously take the first place that accepts him, and offers him a job.  So, where we live, or don't live, may in part be determined this morning.  I
am hoping for the best.  I have faith in him.  I know he can do well on this test, and every other step of the process.  Now, I'm going to go get dressed for the day, and find something to do to calm my nerves while we wait a little more.

Hurry Up and Wait

Being a military spouse, I would say that I have spent a great deal of time playing the waiting game.  In between trying to get orders, deployments, moving, and everything else we do, it seems like waiting is what we do most.  I really thought that when we started to transition over to civilian life, that would change, but in fact, it seems to be at its worst.
My husband has decided to go into law enforcement.  He wants to be a police officer.  I totally support him in this.  I think this is a great career move for him.  He is totally dedicated to the idea, and having spent the last decade as a military family, I think the lifestyle will be more like what we already know.
Since he was deployed until close to the end of February, we have been working on getting him a job since he came home.  The problem is, everything from here on out is a waiting game.  There are a lot of steps that you much go through to get a law enforcement job, much more than a normal job.  We do one little piece, then wait.  Something else, then wait.  You get it. First, we built his resume.  Then we needed references.  Pretty much all the people he works with were on leave.  So, we waited until everyone came back to work to ask to use them as references, or at least until we could actually get in touch with them since so many were traveling.  We submitted his application, and then found out we needed his diploma and things like that.  We waited for it to come in the mail.  We sent that off, and waited for an email confirmation from each city.  After that, we did some secondary tests.  Some cities we are still waiting for that step on, more than a month later.  We are finally onto the written in house tests for a few places that he must go to each location for, and in one city past that, but the wait after those is excruciating.  It takes weeks to get your test results back, and find out if you passed with a high enough score to move on.  Each an every step has a wait in between and the waits can be a week, a month, or more.

We have very little time left.  He has just under one month before we go on what is called terminal leave.  That basically means he saved up a lot of vacation days and gets to use them all at the end of his final enlistment to give us time to move and get settled in.  Of course, when you don't know where you are going, that time doesn't do you much good.  We have only three and a half months total before he is totally out of the military.  That's it.   All done.  Three and a half months is nothing when it takes up to a year to get a law enforcement job.  WE would have started earlier, but its nearly impossible when deployed.
Then, on top of all that, we have one of the largest bureaucratic oversights ever made to deal with.  When you want to apply for any job, and that job gives veterans preference, the job requires a copy of your DD214, the form military members are given when they get out.  Problem is, you don't get it until you get out.  That actually changed recently, and you can get the form, for the purposes of getting  job, a little bit before you get out.  My Husband will get his in May.  Again, we need it before May.  Each time he applies somewhere, we have to explain he is military, but active duty.  So, he doesn't have the form.  Then, he may or may not be eligible to claim veterans preference, based on the sole discretion and understanding of whomever answers that phone.  Some places have accepted a letter from the command stating that he will retire with an honorable discharge.  Some have not.  So, we wait.  Longer and longer, making it harder an harder to find a job, let alone the right job.
This all blows my mind.  You would think that being in the military, already having his government clearance, and being exactly the kind of person that any law enforcement agency would want with all the training he already has, that this would go fast, but that simply isn't true.  So, I sit here this morning, waiting, to see what we can do next.  I'm tired of waiting.  I'm over it.   I want to be able to tell my children where we are going to live in a couple of month.  I want to start looking for a house, and not just dreaming about a house.  I want to move on with my life.  Hopefully soon, because seriously, I can't wait.