Our Army Future

S had his senior rater counselling this afternoon. For those of you who are not familiar, while in the Army, each commander he has will give him an Officer Evaluation Review (OER). Since his current company commander is leaving and a new one is coming in, he had an OER done recently and today he went over that OER with the battalion commander (he met with the company commander this past week). They each tell him how he is doing (wonderfully), what he can do to improve (small things!), and what he can do/expect in the future.

He was looking forward to the counselling because A) he already knew he was getting extremely positive feedback on the OER (that's my hubby!) and B) because it was an opportunity to speak with the colonel about switching over to Civil Affairs. If you remember, this is something for which he has considering applying. After his meeting this afternoon, he came home and said he is pretty sure he is not going to apply.

The other people with whom he had been discussing the branch  were all incredibly positive about it. And they should be--it's what they do, and they should love what they do. Those people made us aware of the negatives, but I think the battalion commander talking about it from a different angle really highlighted some of those negatives: being stuck at Fort Bragg, NC or Fort Hood, TX for the next 14 years and lots of deployments, even during peace time.

S said he just doesn't think he is up for either (obviously, there is only so much control he has over these things, but he doesn't want to go actively seeking them), especially since he really loves what he is doing now. I can't say that I can really argue--those two issues were what was holding me back from being incredibly excited about it (from my point of view, the positives are that it is a growing branch when the rest of the Army is shrinking and that the work sounds right up S's alley). So, it looks like he is going to be sticking it out with the QM.

This is actually very good news, as it means I don't have to change my blog format for quite awhile and I don't have to change my url! However, even though this is no longer something about which I have to worry, over dinner, we did discuss making these changes:

• QuarterMisses or QuarterMrs.
• Quartermistress
• S suggested this one. I pointed out that Mrs. is a shortened version of mistress.
• I also told him I had originally considered this, but decided against it lest someone get the wrong idea.
• He thinks I should make it Quartermistress, anyway, with the tag line "no, not that kind... Get your head out of the gutter!"
• I would be lying if I said I wasn't considering it.

So, we can go back to plan A! To Virginia and beyond!