the 1-2 punch

so, saturday morning i went in to pick up one of nathan's medications that had to be refilled. when they rang it up it was $61 instead of the regular $5...

uh oh.

the note from their system said that we needed a new insurance card. well, with tricare our insurance cards are our military ids. so, i pulled out my id and, of course, it had expired at the end of april.

no big deal. school was out early on monday so we made a trip to the national guard armory to get our pictures taken. after an hour and a half drive (luckily it was nap time for both kids), we waited at the armory for an hour and a half...with kids going crazy in the waiting room while both of us slowly (or maybe not so slowly) lost our own sanity trying to keep them reined in.

so, 3 hours into our ordeal we got called in. after clicking through the system the sergeant working with us said, "you aren't gonna like this." he went on to tell us that there was some number not in the system, which meant he couldn't help us out. he did everything he could to try and figure out a way to help us, even giving nathan his cell phone number just in case he couldn't get a hold of him in the office.

so, after 3 hours we headed home empty handed. we made it in time for preschool graduation, though, so i really wasn't too upset. frustrated, yeah, but that's what happens when you deal with the military, so it wasn't a big deal.

besides, we got to watch our little girl graduate from preschool, so how bad could the day be?

this morning, nathan started making phone calls. to make a still long story a bit shorter, he was eventually told that he couldn't get his id updated because--surprise!

after 5 years of getting (occasional) pay stubs that indicated he was retired, along with the uscg retiree newsletter, we were told that we couldn't get new id cards because nathan wasn't actually retired.

hmm...

i don't know what you think, but it seems to me the newsletter makes it official, right?
guess not...

in the course of all his phone calls today, nathan was told that we should have gotten something in the mail 6 months ago...which we didn't, even though our address was in the system...

apparently his retirement pay and our insurance have both been cut off, quite a blow when the pain meds he takes would run us $400 a month without insurance...
and we are already looking at a $10,000 paycut when i go from teaching to being a grad student...
and we are going to be making an 800 mile move in about 2 months...

silly me! i had this crazy thought that all of a sudden things were starting to go smoothly for us!

you would think that these last 8 years would have made me smarter than that... 


so now, everything is up in the air regarding his retirement. he's been told that a military doctor will evaluate the notes from his civilian doctors these past 5 years to decide if he needs to make a trip down to little rock for a physical (which really wouldn't do any good, seeing as how his kidney problems don't show up without a biopsy...which, to my understanding, isn't part of a typical physical...). after that evaluation is done, the coast guard will get to decide whether he is going to be retired or just basically given some sort of severance pay and told "bon voyage! don't call us; we won't call you."


just yesterday, when we were driving, nathan told me that we wouldn't know what to do if things were easy. granted, that was before we knew just how "not easy" things were going to be for us. while that's probably true, i think i would be more than willing to risk a little confusion!


until then, though, i'm going to cling to a verse that i've claimed this year:
"He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters." psalm 18:16