Close Enough For Government Work

With our upcoming PCS to Alaska, we get lots of what the government refers to as "entitlements". Meaning - benefits the Army gives you to aid you in your trek to wherever they are sending you. Since Alaska is considered an overseas location, we're entitled to a lot to get us there. One of these entitlements is shipping our vehicle at government expense, so we don't have to drive it up there. Sounds good, right? Drop the car off at the port and hop on a plane, easy as pie. As my 2 year-old says, NOT. We've shipped cars through the government twice before - once on our way to Germany and once on our way back. And you thought they made doing your taxes hard? Ha.

First of all, it has to be very clean. I don't mean vacuumed and emptied of all fast food wrappers and dead french fries. I mean, CLEAN. Absolutely no dirt, whatsoever. A toothbrush would be a good investment when cleaning your car prior to shipping. The phrase "close enough for government work" does not apply in this case. Not only does it have to be sparkling clean, but your fuel level has to be at a certain level, and your tires must be clean. Difficult to manage when you have to drive around to get your gas level at the right place. In light of this, Chris decided to clean the car this weekend. When he said, "I'm going to clean the car out so you can go to the commissary later", I thought he meant he was going to take his TA-50 (Army crap) out of the back and maybe gather up all of his empty Monster cans. After about 2 hours he comes inside and says he needs my help with something - my muscles, to be specific.

Now, considering the fact that my husband's muscles alone probably equal half my body weight, I couldn't imagine what he could possibly need me for. I walked out to the garage to see all the seats in my car scattered in the driveway. Yep, he unbolted the seats from the car and took them out. He needed my help in maneuvering them so we could clean and vacuum and scrub the heck out of the carpet and the interior. It took 2 days.

So now my car is super clean. I don't think it was this clean when we bought it. The trick now is keeping it clean for the next month and a half or so until we ship it. So the kids are going to walk EVERYWHERE. :-)