[Solumina]

I've only dealt with the VA, and even that was pretty much just when everything was going on with my dad, we didn't really take advantage of them when Erik and I were growing up (my parents figured our family was doing fine so why use up resources that could be better used helping others). I have some extended family who were in the military, an uncle and cousin who are both retired, and another cousin who is currently in Iraq, but we don't really talk about it much, I have been talking a bit with the wife of the cousin who is in (but he is an Army reservist so things are a bit different for him). Jake's dad is retired Navy, so he grew up surrounded by the military and sometimes he forgets that I didn't (mainly because when he met me I was dealing with all of the crap from the VA and it took him a while to understand that, even though I had learned all of the ins and outs of my particular situation, I really didn't know much about anything related to being in the military.

It seems kind of strange that the stuff I'm all anxious about isn't really about what he will be doing or the thought of him going off and getting shot at, I'm more anxious about benefits, leave time, deployment schedules, and stuff like that because Jake already knows it so the recruiter isn’t really making it a priority to explain. It isn’t like he isn’t willing to go over it with me, in fact today he went over the loan repayment program with me (something that Jake and I had been looking at as most of he debt is from student loans) and he went over how with our level of debt and what Jake will be doing (his first choice is CTI, judging by the practice tests he seems more than qualified, and his back up is nuke) it really didn’t make sense as the loan repayment program alters potential reenlistment bonuses (which I hadn't seen anywhere, I just knew that you had to pick that or the GI bill). I’m just the type of person that wants to know everything there is to know and I’m still getting tripped up on some of the acronyms and such, it just all makes me feel a out of place.

I’m also freaking out a bit as this is something he has been talking about for a long time but he didn’t really start to pursue it until recently and things are coming together a lot faster than either of us thought it would.

Sorry I kind of rambled a bit there.