I'm not dead!!

Well, well, well. One would think I’d died, eh? Nope! Just Christmas leave to Michigan and then a PCS to Germany.

I’ll admit, I could have been better with writing, but I get lazy. Who doesn’t? And besides, most of the people who do read this blog saw me over “break”, so I’m excused. Partially, at least.

There are two options:

1. I could recount my adventures one by one, with pictures.

2. I could recount the highlights.

If I were to choose option the first, I’d have to write a few posts. So, I’m going to go with option the second.

Christmas in Michigan was pretty awesome. I always love seeing friends/family that wouldn’t/couldn’t come see us in Gerogia.

We started the journey mid-afternoon from Augusta on December 20th or so. R was driving the Mustang and I was driving the Fiesta (more on that later). About midnight and at the Kentucky/Tennessee border, R said he was tired. So, we decided to drive until we found the next La Quinta (pets stay free). Now, up until we had wanted to stop, we drove by at least one La Quinta per 5 exits.

When we finally wanted to stop, there wasn’t a La Quinta to be found. We had to drive until Richmond, Kentucky to find the next one. So, another 2 hours, give or take. Can you say suck?

As I mentioned previously, R and I took both of our cars to MI. Why would we do that? Well, we bought the Fiesta because Europe is small-car friendly (more like anti-bigger cars). Using our saved deployment pay, we paid the Mustang off completely. Now, we had an extra car on our hands. What to do…

R’s sister had recently been having some car trouble. One day, as we were Skype-ing with his parents, an idea came to me: why not give the mother of all Christmas presents to her? After clearing it with the parents, we decided to give it to Kelly.

Fast forward to Christmas.

We wrapped a Matchbox Mustang in a little box with a note that said, “I’m hanging on the tree”. R hid the key on the tree very well. Kelly needed a couple of hints. Haha.

Needless to say, she was pretty darn surprised.

Sadly, our time in Michigan came to an end. Due to Ft. Gordon’s Darling Hall (stupid travel office), we couldn’t fly out of Detroit; we had to drive back to Atlanta to fly out of there. It gets better. In order to take Penny and Dexter, they needed TWO different health certificates: one to get them on the plane (it’s only good for 10 days) and one to get them legally into Germany (good for 5 months). So, we had to return to Augusta for a vet appointment, anyway. It worked out in the end.

They both had to get micro-chipped (required by German law) and have a physical examination. Easy peasy.

*penny after vet*

After that important appointment was over, we shot on over to Atlanta to turn our car in and wait for our flight day. While R was gone turning the car in, some interesting news came up on the Weather Channel. Atlanta’s biggest snow storm ever was due the day we were flying out. Not cool, Mother Nature. As it turns out, we missed it by 24 hours. We were flying out Sunday night and the storm hit on Monday. Wow!

There’s nothing very interesting about the flight, other than the fact that it was long. Eight and a half hours long, to be exact. It seemed even longer for me because, firstly, I am terrified of flying. Like, the second the plane rocks a little, I am convinced we are going to plummet 37500 feet into the Atlanta Ocean scared. Secondly, there was a two-year-old sitting directly behind me, who was kicking the back of my seat for a good 85% of the flight. Awesome.

A nearly nine hour trans-Atlantic flight, check.

A bratty child whose parents refuse to stop the kicking, check.

A seat at the back of the plane (super turbulence/bouncing), check.

I’m surprised I survived the flight.

Once we arrived in Frankfurt, we discovered that most of the flight was military. So, we had people to stand around with until someone figured out what was going on. We had a long line of Americans pushing baggage through the (huge) international airport. Not conspicuous at all.

*walking*

Cue the horrendous waiting. There are quite a few Army posts in Germany. I can’t think of how many exactly, but there are at least ten. Obviously, not all of us were headed to the same place. So, everyone had to be split up and bussed to their final destination. Since we were headed for Wiesbaden (seriously, 30 minutes from the airport), I guess the Powers That Be decided that our group (all 5 of us) would be the last to go.

We sat on the floor of the airport for nearly as long as we were on the plane. I really, really wish I were joking. It got to the point where R and I were sleeping on the floor. A cold, hard floor.

Penny had been crated for roughly 14 hours when I decided to let her stretch her legs. So, I put her on her leash and let her walk around. She immediately squatted and began to pee. Once the puddle began to touch her paw, she stood up (still peeing) and walked a few feet (still peeing) and squatted again. I felt SO BAD for her. Lufthansa requires that you attach a water dish to their crate. I have a feeling that they watered her, she drank it, they filled it again, and she drank it. I had no idea that she could hold that much pee. Wow.

Eventually, we made it to a hotel and a bed. I was exhausted, sore, and stressed out. But I was in Germany!