As If I Didn’t Already Have Enough Reasons Not To Work Out…

…I got stuck in the locker room at the Air Force gym today – in a car bomb exercise. The experience felt strangely familiar, like a school tornado drill, except that I had a car parked outside and theoretically I should have been free to leave at any time. In reality, I was made to go sit in the locker room for 45 minutes and do absolutely nothing.

I had made the effort to get to the gym, warm up, and had gotten about 25 minutes or so into my strength routine when one of the trainers calmly came around and told everyone to go to their respective locker rooms. Another trainer, a woman, got on the intercom and announced (a little more forcefully) that women must go to the women's locker room and the men had to report to the men's locker room, immediately. We were not allowed to leave the gym. She also gave us some more information – there was a routine training exercise going on, and the whole base was on lockdown until a (fake) gold Chevy could be located.

I was a little confused. We hadn't had anything like that at Fort Benning, but apparently it's a way of life here in Florida. About three months ago, someone brought a pipe bomb onto the base with plans to set it off, and since then they've held training exercises every few weeks to be prepared in case of another threat. One woman told me that she'd once gotten stuck in the library for five hours. Yikes. As I looked around at the group of women forced into shower stalls to wait indefinitely with only our water bottles for entertainment, however, I began to wish that I were in the library. At least I'd be able to read a book or a magazine.

After I'd spaced out for 15 minutes or so, I came to the logical conclusion to eavesdrop on the conversations going on around me, which were actually pretty interesting: A fitness instructor was reminiscing about similar drills that were a regular occurrence while she and her husband were stationed in Japan, another was discussing her upcoming move to Cairo, and someone else was talking about going back to Germany. The travel bug is helpful in military life; there's no doubt about that – but it's a curse as well as a blessing to have the desire to travel and live overseas and not be able to decide where, when, or even if you'll go, since there are only a limited number of soldiers who get assigned abroad. I started wishing Steve were in the Air Force – it sounded like they have more opportunities for foreign assignments! As soon as I had that thought, though, several people began to talk about being stationed in Little Rock, Arkansas (about half of the women had lived there at some point or another), and just as quickly I decided I was very grateful that Steve is not in the Air Force.

After 30 minutes had elapsed, the trainer got a call from whoever was organizing the drill to inform us that a (fake) suspicious package had been found in a building somewhere on base and as soon as it was checked out we'd be free to go. (Apparently the gold Chevy wasn't important anymore, and we were never told whether or not they found it. Despite the fact that I knew the whole thing was just a "war game," as the instructor kept calling it, it still made me a little nervous to walk outside after it was over and discover that I was parked next to a gold car. Luckily, up close it was a Volkswagen.)

With sleep, television, the internet and all the other excuses and time-wasters trying to steal my motivation for hitting the gym, I hadn't seen this one coming. When the trainer was finally authorized to give the all-clear 15 minutes later, I wasn't the only one lacking motivation to continue exercising. Everyone leaving the locker room was headed toward the parking lot.

Doughnut Runs and Doggie Daycare

On moving day one, Steve was ready first and volunteered to dash out to Krispy Kreme while I finished packing my stuff. Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, or grocery store muffins – we needed to find something to feed the movers. I'd heard moving horror stories over and over again from military families, and the advice everyone gave us was have something to offer the moving guys when they come to pack and move your stuff. Not that they'd intentionally break anything, but hospitality apparently plays a role in how well they treat your things. We weren't going to take any chances.

When Steve returned with the doughnuts and coffee, I still had piles of clothes, a suitcase, a toiletries bag, the air mattress, sheets, books, and a container of dog food out on our kitchen table as I struggled to get organized. I found it difficult to pack when I had no idea how long I was packing for. It could be a day, or it might be a week or more; we hadn't been given any specifics on when the moving truck would arrive in Florida. When we asked, the answer was essentially, "whenever the driver arrives." Thanks – big help. That left me running around the apartment grabbing anything we might possibly need for the indefinite period of time we'd be without our household goods. I grabbed plates, a pot, a pan, bowls, silverware, and dishwashing soap – everything as I thought of it. Steve had set out a huge pile of things, too – he wanted to move all of his military gear himself.

Speaking of his military gear: The guestroom in our apartment was more commonly known as the "military room," given the fact that 1) half the room was taken up with huge boxes and duffel bags full of Army-issued equipment, and 2) we had few guests in Columbus, Georgia. (Interestingly enough, we already have several people already lined up to visit us in Florida. Hmmm…I wonder why that is?)

The good news is that the Army pays you for the stuff you move yourself by weight and distance, which means we'll be reimbursed for all of the things that we brought with us down to Florida. You have to get your cars weighed empty, and then again loaded down with all of the stuff you'll be moving yourself. Some friends of ours packed up their own stuff (called a full DITY move, meaning you Do IT Yourself) and drove it from Fort Richardson, AK to Fort Benning, GA and made over 20,000 dollars! We won't make anywhere near as much as our friends did, but still. Every little bit helps! So I oversaw most of the cleaning-the-apartment-for-checkout process while Steve got his car weighed twice and signed himself out of Fort Benning.

We had decided that Dixie, our beagle puppy, needed to be out of the way for the moving festivities, so she got to spend two whole days at Paws and Play daycare – I cannot tell you how much having her out of the house helped. I highly recommend it, if you're in the Fort Benning area. I took her over there around 9am, and returned to find the movers at the apartment, already enjoying doughnuts and getting down to work. Steve and I spent most of the morning feeling out-of-place – we couldn't leave, we couldn't really help, and so we stood around awkwardly. After lunch, though, there was plenty for us to do: We had to pack everything the movers wouldn't pack (including all open bottles of liquid, lighters, any alcohol, etc.), plus go around and double-check all of the rooms that were "finished." (Most weren't.) Luckily we caught the drawer full of pot lids, one entire cabinet in each bathroom, some storage shelves, and various other odds and ends that, for some reason or another, hadn't been packed.

Despite that, we had great movers this time around, very friendly and hard-working guys. We provided another round of doughnuts on the second day, as they moved things to the truck. I'm sure they have their own system of loading boxes and furniture, but next time I'll request that when they move things out, they start with one room, get everything out, and then move on to the next. That way I can clean much more efficiently, instead of half-cleaning a room and then waiting to finish it until all the rest of the boxes and furniture are gone. All in all, though, moving day two went pretty well also, and the next morning we were on the road down to Fort Walton Beach, where we're renting a home for the next two years.

Everything arrived at our new house in one piece except a lampshade, which never showed up at all. It's a small price to pay for a move that went so smoothly, however. Now my real work begins: getting all the little details in place, such as: setting up new accounts with the cable, electric and gas companies, getting new library cards, finding a new vet, a new dentist, re-enrolling in Tricare (military healthcare) for a new location and finding new places to shop - while we were waiting for the moving van to show up, we discovered that the nearest Krispy Kreme is 25 minutes away! Fortunately, the guys who unloaded the truck seemed to enjoy their Winn-Dixie muffins.