Last Weeks in Nebraska
Sometimes life comes at you swiftly — One day you’re commissioning as an officer in the Navy, then you’re embarking on your first, second, and third PCS move, reporting to your first boat, reporting for shore tour…. Next thing you know, you’re in your final weeks and preparing for your transition into civilian life. That big decision, the post-military life that seemed so far away that it might as well not be real… all of a sudden, it’s here, and I’m not quite sure how that happened!
There are a lot of endings and beginnings happening in our lives right now, but this post will specifically focus on two of those endings: The end of Curtis’ shore tour, and the end of our time living in Nebraska. I always enjoy looking back at the first and last weeks of living in a new place. The first weeks are always filled with the excitement of discovering a new place and the challenges of learning new routines and finding our way around. One big aspect of military life is that in both the job that Curtis is performing and in the place we’re living, we’re always being reminded of how temporary each assignment is, and there’s always a part of our minds that is looking ahead to the next move and the next step in his career. But in the first weeks of a new assignment, the thought of moving again is temporarily pushed to the back of our minds and we’re able to focus on the present and fully appreciate where we are.
The last weeks are usually a little more emotional as we prepare to leave a place we’ve become familiar with and have made many memories. What made this move different than all the others was that for the first time, no one was telling us what to do — we were the ones making the decisions. And while we had made some major decisions at this point, there were a lot of details still up in the air, some of them rather big. That made it harder to grasp that we really were in our last weeks of living in Nebraska. On top of that, since Omaha is so close to “home” in Iowa and right along I-80, we knew it wouldn’t be our last time ever here — in fact, we can drive through or visit as frequently as we want, unlike our other old home states that are pretty far spaced out around the country, or like Hawaii where we’d deliberately have to decide to fly there if we ever wanted to go back. So really, we were feeling less melancholy this time and more anxious about all the changes.
Most of the time during our final weeks was spent decluttering, packing, and cleaning the apartment. Curtis also had to take care of all the logistics on the military side and finish up his last weeks of work. Besides that, we managed to visit 3 of our favorite walking spots around the city — Walnut Creek, Shadow Lake, and Chalco Hills. Curtis spent several afternoons at the Loess Hills Makerspace in Glenwood finishing up some projects — this will be the part of living in Bellevue that he’ll miss the most, as he’s immensely enjoyed working there. We also attended one last board game night with friends, playing one last round of Betrayal.
Because we weren’t 100% sure of where we were going to move at this time, we made the decision to use PODS again instead of renting a truck. They make it very convenient to both move and store things for any length of time. I was just thankful we were allowed to move ourselves and not use the military movers again, and that Curtis could be present for the entire move! (Not sure if Curtis fully agrees with that considering he carried 99% of our things down two flights of stairs…)
During this time, we also had to make the decision of what to do with the time we had between leaving Nebraska and Curtis starting his new job. We threw around lots of fun trip ideas, planned several different potential itineraries, and at almost the last minute finally picked the one that was the simplest, flexible if we had any other last-minute changes, had optimal weather for camping, and most importantly that we knew we’d enjoy. It took a lot for me to wrap my mind around taking a trip when so many details of our future were uncertain, but knowing we wouldn’t get this time back made me push through those anxious feelings and agree to go for it. More on that is coming up in future posts, of course!
At the end of each day, we would make one of our favorite meals, watch an episode of New Girl for the feel-good comforting vibes, and take Charlotte on a walk around the block to our nearby parks. These are the little things I really want to remember, the best parts of our normal routine in Nebraska.
Our last full day in Bellevue had a rough start, with our car battery dying twice and getting a terrible night’s sleep. Charlotte was also acting stressed, which took the form of her eating more than usual and was constantly wanting to be by our side. But a friend stepped in and helped with jumping the car, we had a very productive day, and I took Char on several walks to help her relax and have a little fun amid the chaos. The night ended with one more walk, unsuccessfully trying to catch up on blogging because the wifi was shut off early, baking cookies with leftover ingredients I needed to use (and using minimal utensils since most were already packed), and sleeping on the futon mattress on the ground in the front room.
And that summarizes our last few weeks in Nebraska — a little chaotic, but doing our best to enjoy our last days, and trying to be confident moving forward with our decisions even though we weren’t sure how they’d all play out. There wasn’t as much sadness during this time as I would’ve expected — we loved living in Bellevue, our apartment, the amount of time we got to spend together, the trips we took, and the adventures we had around Nebraska and Iowa. But I guess we just knew it was time to move on, and we have become experts at detaching ourselves from places we’ve lived when the time comes to move, while still embracing all the things we learned and the good memories we made while living there. And we knew this wasn’t really our last week ever in Nebraska — because one of the big things we’ve learned from our last two years living and traveling on the Mainland, it’s that we’ll always return to places we love.
…Oh yeah, for anyone out there who’s still doubting, we can now confidently proclaim that we DID enjoy living in Nebraska MUCH more than Hawaii. There you have it!
