What We've Been Doing

Pretty much just standing outside, gaping in awe at what September feels like. I had nearly convinced myself that my fond reminiscences of glorious autumnal weather in mid-September was rose-colored revisionist memory. Yeah, it wasn't. This is some Omazing weather!

I get up in the morning, make coffee, open all the doors, grab a sweater, and then work in the chilly morning air. The kids think I am insane. I do not mind if they think that. They'd just better grab a jacket before they come down to the dining room in the morning.

We've been biking regularly. Z bikes to work in the morning and Jase and/or I join him. It's the highlight of his work days, now, and such a fun routine! We go in the evenings, too, which is really nice - head out to watch the sunset, then bike home in the dark. The other evening while we were out, Em said that it's like weather doesn't exist - the air is the perfect temperature for being in without feeling it. That's pretty much it right now, yes.

Kids are getting their school done. I'm getting work done. The house is not actively deteriorating around us, although we've pretty much come to a dead halt on progress. So this may be as good as it gets.

Z took the circular saw to our coffee table. It was just a bit too big for the living space (the couch is too big for the living space, but we're not willing to give that up). Jase and I tried a few staining tricks on it and ended up taking it in a whole different direction. We'll get the glaze on it this week and I'll post pictures -- it's different, but we like it! Also, now there's no crimp point in the living room where people have to skirt by sideways to get through. Very handy.

Today, we went to a silhouette shoot. Emily and Jason both earned pins (you have to knock down a certain amount of targets to get a pin -- I have not earned a pin, yet, LOL). When we did highs and lows tonight, though, the shoot was a universal high and the pins didn't even come up until Z's turn. Them winning their pins was one of his highs.

(Jase does have hearing protection in. It's the plugs rather than ear muffs.) Neat group, and a lot of fun. We weren't really spooled up and ready, but Z's been dying to take us since we landed almost a month ago, so we needed to do it. Honestly, I was impressed by how well everyone rolled with the chaos and helped smooth out the bumps. If we can keep that up in every aspect of life, we'll be pretty good to go!

This coming week is pretty packed, and then on Saturday we're expecting company from AL way! So we're all pretty stoked about everything in general right now.

Be encouraged!
~ Dy

John is Good To Go

Well, things never really improved with CNM. That was a shame, but it was what it was, and it turned out so much better in the end.

He did get into some classes, which was great. Ish. (The instruction was a bit of a mixed bag. It's pretty horrifying what college instructors are doing and saying in the name of being "the cool teachers". There are still those, though, even at CNM, who show intelligence and integrity while they man their post in front of a class of students. They are so appreciated.) They still hadn't bothered to look for his official scores and transcripts. It was crazy.

We had submitted the waiver for residency and his two "overt acts" for declaring intent to establish residency. (NM State law allows for students to receive in-state tuition if they have relocated here for a parent's job and are willing to declare their own intent to remain here.) What CNM doesn't tell you on their website, or in person, is that of the 11 acts that they say you need to have accomplished at least two of, what they really mean is there are only two on there that they will actually acknowledge. Good luck guessing which two! And they won't tell you until after the deadline! They denied his petition. Wee! We spoke to a supervisor. She also denied the petition. We asked to whom we could appeal, and she said no one.

Okay, then.

I went home to transfer money from savings (at this point, I was feeling rather defeated and didn't want to be an obstacle in John's path forward) and planned to pay his tuition in the morning. Except bright and early the next morning, as we sat down to take care of business, John forwarded me an email he'd just received announcing he'd been dis-enrolled for non payment. (At some point, you'd think I'd have gotten a clue that if it's THIS difficult to work with this institution, then there's probably something I'm not getting, like, I don't know, this isn't where he ought to be. But I am slow.)

I told him to go ahead and re-enroll and then I'd log in and pay right then (since the funds had transferred). The process for re-enrolling, however, is quite complicated, and not listed anywhere on the school's website. You cannot register online for a class after the registration period has ended. He contacted the one helpful person we'd found at CNM who explained to him how to get it done. You have to email each professor and ask for permission to re-enroll in their class. Then they will, at their leisure, issue a manual override to permit you to re-enroll. There is no notification process in the system letting you know when you're good to go. You just have to keep trying until it works. The instructors have no time limit in which to complete this, because they're doing you a favor, but the payment clock starts ticking the minute you get your first class re-enrolled. And you'll be dis-enrolled if you haven't wrapped it up and paid by the time that clock strikes done. Again, because they're doing you a favor.

Well then.

I asked my brother-in-law if he could help us navigate the bureaucracy, but from everyone he spoke with he really just heard, "Yeah, this is how they roll now. It stinks." :-O Wow. He suggested we go to UNM-Valencia and talk to them. We hadn't really considered the UNM system. It's HYUGE, and we thought it would be worse at a larger institution. But why not give it a try?

I emailed the contact BIL had given me. John submitted an application. He doubled checked his Bag of Holding to make sure he still had everything. (ACT score report, unofficial transcripts from both high school and college, high school diploma, NREMT certification, BLS certification, etc. - all the same material he had brought with him to CNM) I submitted all the official requests that fall to the parent to request (or, more accurately, pay for). Mid-morning, I received an email reply, "I'll be here until 4. Come on by any time!" So down we went.

Y'all. We walked in there cold and walked out an hour and a half later with a graduation plan, a contact for who will evaluate his EMS credits, a full fall schedule, fully registered, with books, a parking pass, a student ID, a map of the campus, and the assurance that he will be coded as an in-state resident for tuition purposes once he turns in one form. (Also of note: he turned it in the next day and they issued him a bill for the in-state tuition. I paid it that day!) We could not get that far in six weeks of diligent effort at the community college here.

And now, he has money left over to buy a commuter car. He has a four-year plan once again. He knows where he stands, what he needs, and what he will need to accomplish in order to reach his goals. This was crazy hard to navigate, and he kept his cool, made sure he did the right thing at every step, kept communicating. I am gobsmacked.

Of course, because of the runaround at the community college, we wasted a lot of time extending good faith to them, and so he's starting the semester a week behind in his hardest subject. Again, what a difference growing up makes! He's been on it every day since he got home from registering, and he's nearly caught up to where the class will be next week.

The End of the Adrenaline

We've been beasts this week! Go, go, go! Lift, load, shift, hang! Go back for more! Beat that garage back!

Get it done! Get it out! Make the calls! Visit the places! Corner the people! Make it feel like Home!

There has been little rest outside those glorious sunrise coffee-on-the-porch sessions (which may have been what kept me going - those are really nice!)

But I found the end of the adrenaline on Saturday night -- at 9PM, the biggest wall you've ever not seen coming hit me square in the face and I was done. I haven't been that done in ages. Oof. And on that note, I had to pull an executive veto on Sunday's plans.

The day started with an update from Granny (Z's Mom), who had called from the hospital on Friday. She's been on chemo and was feeling pretty puny, punier than seemed right, so her sister called an EMT neighbor to come take a look at her (perks of small town life). He suggested she call her doc or pop on over to Lubbock. She figured her doc would send her to Lubbock, anyway (downside to small town life - it all balances out), so off they went. Yep, her white blood cell count was way too low. They signed her in for a weekend at the spa, complete with complementary gown, fresh IV, and all the tests.

Turned out she had appendicitis! So they got her into surgery Saturday and squared away. She is doing well and her white blood cell count is already back on the rise. That's such a praise and a relief! But it was a humdinger of a day, emotionally.

John and I headed out early that morning for Day 3 of Trying to Register for Classes in Person. (Remember, he MUST be a full-time student to live on base with us.) We spent a lot of time crossing and re-crossing the "holeway" (rather than the hallway - I love that!)

It should have been a pretty straightforward thing, and we had begun the process back in July to make it go as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately, the school hadn't processed his ACT scores (which I know I personally requested and paid for back in July), and they hadn't processed his transcripts (which I know I also paid for the beginning of August and had sent as soon as the semester grades posted), so nobody in the EMS program will talk to him or return his calls.

Since he's missing both test scores and prior learning evidence, he can't register online because he's not cleared in the system as having met the pre-requisites for anything. He can't get an appointment with an EMS advisor because they don't see that he's met any of their requirements for coordinated entry. And the whole process of transferring to another school is a brand new one! Wee! For a fairly timid, quiet young man, this is like living in Munch's Scream.

He took in his NREMT certificate, high school diploma (he's got 36 college credits and is coming in as a transfer student - I'm not sure why they needed that, but they pinged him for not having it, so he provided it), and his BLS certificate. He emailed the student ACT report directly to a counselor (it doesn't count officially, but it did give her the latitude to issue overrides for prerequisites, at least), and then he scrabbled together a full-time schedule out of whatever required courses for an Associate's still have seats available ... 48 hours before the start of the semester. It's an odd semester, and two of the classes are online and don't have times posted, but it's a schedule. And he got a bus pass, so now he can get around town. Yay! He's still hoping to get in front of an EMS faculty member Monday and start getting plugged into their Paramedic program, but at least we won't have the Feds beating down our door to evict him for not being a full-time student. That was a huge relief to have taken care of.

Jacob is still actively dying. I think he's the most sensitive to altitude changes, anyway, and with the dry air, he's having 5-10 nose bleeds a day (the Ponaris should be here Monday or Tuesday). And yet, he made it to Nutcracker auditions. He says he did poorly, and he's very disappointed in himself. I don't know how he could have done more, though, really. I'm neither sick or out of sorts and I can barely get in a shower and a load of wash every day; he's had classes every day since we've been here, made the call on a studio, AND hit auditions -- on top of all the unloading, unpacking, hefting and shifting. I don't know. I'm impressed. I hope they loved him.

We ran down to BIL's house to get some things for the shoot and got to see the vineyard. These are the Sangiovese cuttings - the wee sticks they planted last fall - in the ground and growing! They're so pretty!

On the way home, I checked my phone and saw the reminder for the Regency Ball. D'oh! Noooo! I texted the boys, "Are you ready for the dance? We'll be there in 20!" (They weren't. They, too, had forgotten about it.) But they were ready to roll by the time we got home. We switched vehicles and I drove the boys while Z unloaded the Suburban.

It was sometime on the drive back from dropping them off that I hit the wall. Perhaps it was when the Suburban driver's window wouldn't roll back up after I went through the gate. Perhaps it was when I saw that something had leaked on the front porch. Perhaps it was when I walked in and Z said we had to run back down to BIL's that night because he'd forgotten something we'd need for the shoot. I don't know. I just know that that's when I realized we were going to come apart at the seams if we didn't slow down, if only for a day. And I used my veto power on leaving the house Sunday.

We NEED rest. We NEED to put the house together. We NEED to find the school books. School, co-op, dance, everything starts Monday in earnest, and after that it'll be Life As Usual with little time for the things we really need to have squared away going into it.

Bless Z, he offered to retrieve the boys. I went to bed.

Sunday, we rest. Because you really can't do it all.

Be encouraged!
~ Dy

The Good!

I mentioned that there has been so much good, and there has!

One, the weather. Z had suspected that loading a U-haul in Alabama August and unloading in New Mexico August might help soothe the souls of the uprooted. He was right. It's been absolutely gorgeous here, with light breezes and bright skies.

Bunnies! There are cottontails all around the housing areas and in the desert. They're about half the size of the ones the kids are accustomed to, and they are exponentially higher in population. If it's possible for a little girl to die from squealing in delight and tipping over every time she sees a bunny, Em may not be long for this world.

Co-op! Okay, this hasn't started yet, but the leader of the co-op has been in constant (gentle, not-pushy) communication throughout the move. She has offered help, offered prayers, and just really done such an amazing job of walking that line between keeping you in the loop and pushing so hard that you wish you'd never signed up. I cannot wait to meet this incredible woman and give her a great big, space-invading hug!

Schole! We're going to be discussing Pride & Prejudice after co-op. How's that for fabulous Mother Culture?

Family time together again! This, of course, is the biggest perk. I pulled up to the house the other day and saw the Suburban parked out front. Oh, yeah! Z can come home for lunch! How cool is that?

We'll not be able to visit a church until next Sunday. Z scheduled us to go to a silhouette shoot this last Sunday of the month. He's been looking forward to that since the day he left Alabama. There's no way we could miss it! But even that's a good thing. We get to spend the day in the mountains together, enjoying the weather, the air, the company, and the shoot!

Jacob found a new ballet studio that he is excited to join! And he was offered an apprenticeship with their Company, which thrilled his uprooted heart no end!

Parks and trails and neighbors (not the adjacent one, I don't think, but the others all seem kind).

I'm sure there's more, but the kids could hear me typing and now they're all in here, talking around me and I can't think in complete sentences. So I'm going to go listen to them chatter and ponder the many good things we have today. Together.

Be encouraged!
~ Dy

Move In Day!

We had opted to live on Base for the first year. It seemed like a good idea. We'd had such a great experience with Hunt Property Management through the Army, and we thought that going from post to base would make the adjustment easier on the Littles. We were scheduled to get the keys Monday morning at 10:30. We pulled up just in time, the weather was fine, and ...

And I'll be honest, the grossly abbreviated story that follows has soured me quite a bit. I'm working on it, because nobody wants to live with a soured heart, but I'm not there yet. (Honestly, I tried to convince Z to jettison the entire idea and go with something different in town. We could not come to an agreement, and it's really challenging for everyone to negotiate plans remotely, so we powered through on this one.)

There had been some confusion earlier (starting in July) with our application, as John turned 18 over the summer, and they wanted to know that he was a full-time student in order to allow him to live with us. A letter of acceptance for the fall term at the local college didn't count. They insisted on a verification of enrollment form showing a current schedule of registered classes totaling 15 hours (which the lady claimed is "full time" in New Mexico - heads up, it's not, it's 12 hours, just like every other public school in the lower 48 - and it's six hours for Summer Term, but she knows what she knows).  Of course, most kids don't take summer classes between high school graduation and Freshman year of college, but John took 14 hours over the summer, so *whew*! He sent a verification of enrollment from Calhoun, showing full-time status in good standing. There, done.

Nope. They insisted that that wasn't full-time (???Freaks.), and even if it was, it wasn't at UNM (nothing in the rules states that the student must be at any specific institution), and we just really need to understand the rules and since he's not a student (by what metric, we couldn't discern, but they insisted), he can't live with us. Maybe we can re-apply when he's actually a student and we understand the rules. And finally,

"Oh, yeah, that's a new policy we haven't fully implemented yet. It doesn't apply to him, He doesn't have to be in school. He just needs permission from the Base Commander for an exception to policy to allow him to live with you."

So we filed that. And there was more, so much more. They wouldn't give us a lease without base IDs for everyone (but, of course, you can't get a base ID without a reason for being on base, and if your reason for being on base is that you live in base housing, you need a lease...) All of this, however, was supposedly squared away before we ever left Alabama.

We pulled up Monday morning and were told John can't live with us because (wait for it)... he's not a full-time student. (Ah, you caught us! He is not, in fact, actively taking classes BETWEEN SEMESTERS!) They lost our background checks. We have to file a new Exception to Policy form. Oh, and the policy that wasn't implemented three weeks ago was fully implemented while we were on the road, so we DO need all that paperwork, after all. But they tossed the ones we'd submitted before.

Ah, but I have photos of each of them! (Because I do catch on, eventually.)

Oh, so sorry. We have new forms, now. So you'll need to re-do those, as well. No, you cannot move in until all of that is done over. It'll only take 3-5 days, but don't worry because it's a process. Trust us. We're the government, and we're here to help!

We have spent hours each day this week getting this sorted. There was some kind of act of benevolence that allowed someone to recognize what a cluster this whole thing is and issue an order to allow us to move in by using the 30-day grace period they have (that. no. one. thought. to. mention. before...) Today is Friday, and he is finally on the lease as of 4:30 yesterday afternoon.

Of course, the badge system is down, so none of us has base IDs yet. We had to get extended temporary passes yesterday morning before Z left TDY because we can't renew without him, and ours were set to expire five hours after the office closed on Friday and one hour after he returned from his trip. So that could have been an awkward impromptu night in a hotel! Bless, bless, BLESS the kind airman who laminated our temporary passes for us so that they'll last the month! Truly, he has been the absolute highlight of the move-in process, and I hope he has a long and fruitful career in the Air Force. He's my favorite!

In the meantime, I'm playing heck establishing John's NM identity! You can't get a library card or NM driver's license without proof of residency. You can't apply for EMS licensure in the State without proof that you live here. And you can't apply for a tuition residency waiver without a NM license and proof of residency. (All sane requirements. Normally, it's not this blessed difficult to get a kid put on a lease!) But that's okay, because we still haven't been able to get him registered for classes, which start Monday.

So this particular part of the move hasn't been a hoot, I'll be upfront about that.

However, there has also been so much good! I'll fill you in on that tomorrow!

Be encouraged!
~ Dy

The Move, Days 3, 4

We were going to go to Amarillo and stay the night before heading to Uncle Bo's place on Sunday. Sometime Friday evening, though, Uncle Bo called to say it really wasn't that far from OKC to his place and that we were welcome to come on ahead and stay a couple of nights with him. So that's what we did. We pulled up at the ranch, poured out, and enjoyed two very beautiful, pastoral, comforting days with Uncle Bo.

There was so much to see and do while we were there. Em and Jase thoroughly enjoyed being able to be outside and be comfortable - they threw rocks, experimented with levers and cantilevers, roamed and wandered. We looked for arrowheads (actually, they get distracted easily, so they mostly just looked for pretty rocks, of which they found plenty, so it was a successful outing).

We walked very cautiously past the cows and the bull. We sat and enjoyed the dry air, the cool breeze, the magnificent lightning storms all around us. The kids' biggest surprise was the intensity of the sun! Although it wasn't hot out, the sun was so bright and so piercing that it caught them off guard. They rolled with it pretty well, though.

Uncle Bo shared stories and fed us pretty well, also, which we all appreciated and enjoyed. By the time we loaded up Monday morning for that last leg, we were refreshed and ready to get "home"!

Be encouraged!

~ Dy