Well ladies, I'm literally days away from saying adios to Kandahar (Afghanistan) and coming home... To an empty house.

See, both DH and SD17 (yes, you saw that right) have moved 3000 miles away, and are waiting for me to hurry up and get out there.

Some back story - I've been a member for something like four years, and 99% of my problems have been with BM, other that relatively minor dumb teenager crap with SD17. BM really burns my biscuits. She is a NPD holier-than-thou train wreck.

When I deployed, we knew we were in for a rough stretch. I would get home in October, and DH would be heading out in February to come shut this place down, so we'd be separated most of two years.

Well, it didn't work out that way. In April, the army told DH, "congratulations, you have been selected as the senior NCO of a battalion in Washington State. Your report date is in September." Well, okay, we could work with this. In May, BM calls him and tells him, "I can't handle SD17 any more. You need to take her." Whaaat??? This is the woman who told her daughter that she would rather go bankrupt than see her come to us. Needless to say, this was quite a shock. If I got into the ways BM has fucked with us and with SD17, this would be a novel, and I would miss work in three hours.

So, DH made BM do up the paperwork through a lawyer, picked up SD17, moved across the country, and started the most stressful job of his career. He's working 13 hours a day, and doesn't see SD17 until 8pm most week days.

Of COURSE the tension is sky high - I'm stuck playing mediator from half the planet away. DH needs to not let himself get wound up like he does, and SD17 needs to get her mouth out of auto-argue mode, and start figuring out things for herself. Of course, I'm chomping at the bit to get out there, but I know what's going to happen the second I get there. DH told me a funny story, and said, "see what I have to do, parenting a teenaged girl?". I told him that I knew damn well that the second I arrived, he would dump her on me. The bastard didn't even try to deny it. He fell back on his usual bullshit, "but she really looks up to you." meaning, he's going to drop everything to do with her, because Trish will take care of it.

Oh boy, there will be therapy for EVERYBODY.