My other blog...

I was just going through my other blog to find a mixology recipe I came up with a while back, and I ran across a post in which I declared my plan to write a book called Rough Love: The Bottom's Guide to Life in the Navy.

I thought at the time I was qualified. Now I think how much more qualified I am. But I'm afraid to declare that since, you know, I could get even more qualified. And that might kill me.

Egads!!!

I should be working on my thesis, and yet every time I sit down to do so today, one of my neighbors decides to "share" his music with the entire neighborhood. My kids STILL aren't napping thanks to all the damn noise, and it's almost 5:30. I'm getting really pissed.

So today I took my camcorder out for the second day in a row to get, well, evidence if you will. Just to prove I'm not insane. I don't know if the volume on the videos will prove anything, but the fact that you can hear it that well even from a distance should say something, right?

Yesterday someone rang my doorbell about five minutes after I recorded the nonsense. I don't answer the door if I'm not expecting someone, so I don't know who it was. Today, one of the guys yelled "What are you doing?" at me when I was standing on the sidewalk across the street from them. Then they proceeded to turn the volume back up and continually honk their horn. What a bunch of freaks.

When I figure out how to get the videos off the disk and onto my computer*, I'll post to YouTube or something, and I'll make sure I publicize the asshattery. The police have been ineffective. The HOA is a bunch of limp dicks. So now for some public shame. YouTube, then fliers. ;)

*I'm tech-savvy enough, but I think there's something oddball about the format the camcorder uses and what any computer will recognize... at least, the husband rants about that every time he goes to burn copies.

I Want Google to Be My Babydaddy

This rocks. Rocks so hard, the casbah is shaking.

Turn off your lights at 8pm. Let's be aware of our energy consumption. Let's support conservation, energy independence, and the environment. Even if you think the science around global warming is shite, it can't hurt to be more aware of how we treat the earth. After all, if we don't take care of this planet, what kind of world will our children and grandchildren have to live in?

Peace out.

Navy Times on the IA Issue

Over at A Work in Progress, WifeUnit points out an article in the Navy Times about the problems families are experiencing with the IA process. She argues against the idea that uprooting families for a 6- or 12- month IA would be helpful. I agree for several reasons.

As WifeUnit says, people have lives, and moving to a bigger base isn't an option for many whose kids are in school or who have jobs or businesses in their current location. I'd take it one step further: Why move to a bigger base with more IAs when there still isn't support for the IAs there? I'm in San Diego, one of the collection points they state in the article, and I can't tell you the last time I heard of an IA group or even person here. San Diego is huge and sprawling and covers the area of I believe the state of Connecticut. Do people in Connecticut drive across the state just to visit with someone for an hour or two? Not too likely. And as for being closer to military medical facilities... don't EVEN get me started. I'd much rather be seen by a civilian physician, even if it means forking over $10 each time I go. Military doctors are nearly uniformly incompetent, and the ones that are any good are chased out or penalized for being good (like the doc I met at Pendleton who was going to have her wages docked because she *dared* to buy a house in San Diego - she was awesome, but the threatened punishment for doing just what she was entitled to do meant she was going to leave the reserves and go home to doctor there once more).

Now, let's talk commissaries and exchanges. Yeah, there are some good things about each, including the tax free shopping. But anytime I try to shop for clothes at the exchange, my size is MIA (it turns out I'm the size of most of the clerks' family and friends, and they pilfer those before they're even hung on the racks). Customer service is often a joke. There's rarely any real variety or option. And OMG the traffic, parking, and lines. It's almost not worth it unless it's time for a pricey purchase and you don't mind exchanging a wasted hour for the tax savings.

I know lots of folks think the community during regular Navy deployments is hawtness, but I disagree. I've been happy with the wardroom during a single deployment in all these years, and this is the first deployment I've even heard of an FRG. Last deployment (that being the one that ended September 30), I didn't know there was an ombudsman list, much less things like halfway parties. I heard a rumor, once, but didn't get a single announcement until my husband had asked for the hundredth time for me to be added... about two months before their return. That sucked!

So yeah, the answer as to how to help out IA families isn't to feed them more Joe Navy Hoo-rah. Instead of paying for an expensive-ass move, why not allot those dollars for weekly help, babysitting or special daycare that you don't have to get on a two-year-long waiting list to take advantage of? What about a rent-a-husband/wife type who can come help out with some of the household tasks, like watching kids while repairmen are replacing the hot water heater? Or, hey, here's a thought - paying for a family member to come out and provide some live-in help, including a wee stipend to cover the income they're missing?

Deployments are hard enough. The stress of knowing your dearest is in a dangerous spot, where s/he could actually freaking die or come back seriously injured or traumatized, makes an IA a whole new animal. You can't possibly approach IA management the way you do deployment management, especially when scared, stressed, harried, overwhelmed spouses are watching the numbers of lost troops surpass 4,000 and wondering how close their loved one has come to being one of those numbers.

My Shameful Secret

I have a terrible admission I feel compelled to make. Because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to snark here for your pleasure (or pain), but also because I dig you guys, my peeps, and I want you to be able to laugh at me. Point, giggle, snort coffee onto your keyboard, etc. You know. Make fun.

Here it is. I, in a fit of who knows what, subscribed to Military Spouse Magazine.

Are you okay? Now are you? Okay. Really. That's enough.

All right already.

Enough, okay?

Fine. Be that way.

Mostly I wondered what kinds of articles might be in this magazine. I thought for a fleeting moment (okay, for a few weeks, until my first issue arrived) that it might have a few articles here and there that covered interesting topics I'd enjoy. And there have been a few with tons of potential that pulled their punches in favor of towing the "stand by your man no matter the cost" line. That's been painful to read.

But the worst articles have been in the last couple of issues. Last one was all about babies, which unfortunately sent me into gales of laughter. Once upon a time, when I was five years old, I was at the PX with my mom and little sister, and I was people watching. I turned to my mom and said, "Why are all the ladies always pregnant here?"

I can't recall what my mother answered or if I even voiced my suspicion - that the PX was where you went to acquire babies when you were in the military - but that's still a thought that crosses my mind. I often hit the commissary and wonder if I could have gotten my wee sprogs tax-free and slightly stale....

Anyway, this new issue is all about beauty. How to get your sex kitten on, how to GQ your man, how to [ahem] find your inner beauty, etc. There are a few other articles in here, too. One seemed interesting - how to stay and feel safe during deployments. That's been an issue of mine this time around thanks to some creep-fest incidents since the husband left and the ghetto we somehow managed to buy property in. So I skimmed it.

Common sense stuff. Nothing more.

I thought about two months ago that maybe I should propose an article with a little more... oh, I don't know. Substance? Worth? Depth? So I did.

No response. That's professional. Even if the turnaround time for such a small circulation magazine is ginormous, an auto-generated response a la "thanks, expect to hear back from us within 7 months" would be nice, yes?

I'm not even sure I care enough to keep trying with different article ideas. Clearly this magazine doesn't target people like me. But isn't there a mag somewhere that does? I'm not even looking for a liberal, feminist, or even Gen-X take on this kind of life. Just something with a little more substance.

Example: Issue on babies. Let's chat about Tricare options [cough, cough], post partum depression in milspouses being higher than in the general population and the dangers therein, how to find help when your spouse is deployed and you're a new mom and all your family is half a continent away, how to get on childcare lists or find/start co-ops with other new moms in the area needing a day a week to drop off sprogs, etc.

Issue on beauty. Let's not.

Issue on religion. Let's chat about the indoctrination of certain religions at... say... joints like the Air Farce Academy. Or how about the challenges of being a Christian milspouse called to witness in a Muslim country. What about those pesky "other" religions that require lay leaders to get any service from the chaplain... assuming the chaplain refuses to even speak to you on the grounds that "it's a Catholic thing"* and your religion is too repulsive to him to even consider being in your presence.

Articles, if not whole issues, covering the programs and/or groups available to help IA spouses, finding jobs or even building careers when you have to pick up and move every few years, college degrees available by non-degree-mill universities through online or low-residency programs, etc. You know, stuff with meat.

It's clear that this mag is supposed to be the Good Housekeeping for milspouses. But can't we occasionally expect something that's actually useful, even if it isn't full of pink, sparkly, fluffy, fuzzy bunnies and pixie dust?

Okay, now that my shame is out there, go ahead and whip out the snarking frenzy. I can take it. ;)

*Direct quote from a chaplain who wouldn't speak to me when I came in to the office requesting an appointment.

Oooh! A silver lining...

So the detailer has professed the orders were a "duh" moment, and a modification is coming through now to fix it. I'm confused about how fixed it will be considering he's coming back later than he was supposed to originally. But I'll take it. It means Monterey is going to happen on schedule if all continues as it should, so at least that much is settled. The detailer is also trying to get a letter of intent together so we can go ahead and get in line for housing up there. I don't know how much good that will do us, but my fingers are crossed. I've seen the available housing at the NPS website, and it's either stunningly wonderful or shockingly 1940s. If they even think of offering us the latter, I'll be leading a riot. My kids have already been poisoned with lead once before. They don't need another round plus asbestos exposure in the little shacks that pass for Navy housing.

Of course, there were a few slips in the e-mail he sent the husband that revealed his blatant lie when negotiating these orders in the first place. And no, I'm not flaming pissed about that lie. I'm not ready to pull out the voodoo doll for convincing my darling husband to take care of the IA now before the gettin' got bad... Nope. Not me. Quit looking at me like that.

So yeah. Life trudges on. There's still the IA, though not 245 days' worth of one. There's still more separation than any one family should have to deal with in a two-and-a-half-year span. And now there's a string of learning and behavioral assessments for my older son, who was born six weeks early and might be suffering the effects of that, the lead, or a combination. Life's grand sometimes, ain't it?

But I know. It could always get worse. I just have to wait a second and brace for impact, and the Navy delivers without fail. :)

How does that work, exactly?

I talked to YodaMan tonight, and it sounds like he's going to accept these orders. He's concerned that making too many waves might encourage another extension... to a year-long IA. After all, if he makes a stink about 2 weeks (and that's if he comes home on the earliest possible date detailed by the orders) to get the house sold, packed, moved, and unpacked into housing in Monterey in time for the quarter to begin, they might be tempted to move him to the next quarter. And then, gee, why not fill those three months with more IA? Oh, and by the way, your requested major doesn't start in that quarter, so you'll have to choose one that's even more useless in the civilian world.

I was too tired, too dejected to tell him I just can't do this. I don't have the energy for it. I certainly don't want to be stuck in this hellhole, with craptastic neighbors who only respond to male requests for courtesy, and with a scary school with an even more frightening report card (80% of students are "English learners" and the school's scores are consistently below district and state levels on standardized tests), with no family nearby, no support for getting to my residencies, and a handful of friends to lean on who already have their own families, their own stresses, their own obligations, and their own lives.

It's not in me anymore.

My mom offered to come get us, move us to their house in Alabama. Aside from the fact that I'd have to live in Alabama, it's tempting. Isn't that scary? I'm that bad off. Feh.

Sleep. Maybe sleep will solve this.

If the kids sleep in for once. Feh.

:thunk:

Did you hear it? That loud, clunking noise? That would be the other shoe dropping.

TEMADD, YodaMan tells me. What's that, I ask. So I google. And I determine TEMADD means temporary additional orders. In the form of an additional month plus of duty during the course of the IA. That puts the total IA orders at 245 days. It had been just slightly over 200 as I recall.

On top of that, we had been told that the orders lined him up for the typical 30 days of travel and leave associated with a PCS. These new orders look to me like it won't even mean he'd make it to NPS for the beginning of the term.

I'm not even sure what to say. Just. I'm. Yeah. Speechless.

I'm glad I didn't grab the phone in time this morning. I barely missed YodaMan's call to tell me about this special little present a la his twatwaffle of a detailer. Thank heavens - this would have made my day shitty from the word go. Instead, it just got shitty this afternoon.

I know how to feel better. I'm going to go do my japa and daily practice, and then, since today is the "holy day" in my religion, I'm going to spend some time working against this. I need to stay focused, though, since right now I want nothing more than to bind, curse, hex, and maybe even Stank Eye that !@#$% detailer.

I had been invited to a puja tonight, and I'd have loved to go. I think it would have done me a world of good. Then I was invited to go out with friends, which also would have rocked the casbah. But babysitters here are scarce (not to mention expensive when you can get them), and mine seems to set her plans for the weekend by about Tuesday of that week, so any kind of socialization - or public worship - is out for me tonight. That was a bummer yesterday. Today it seems a little tragic since I feel like throwing the kids, my books, some toys, my computer, some clothes, and my crafting supplies into the car and driving the hell away from this madness. Find a house in Colorado and hunker down while I wait out the next seven years of this bollocks the Navy seems to think constitutes a life.

Seething Hatred

There's a metric ton of bollocks I need to be doing right now, but I just got an e-mail from the YodaMan about report dates and such for this stupid fucking piece of shit IA. Oops, pardon my French... er, I mean Freedom.

Trying to dig up information on a likely outcome - when he reports to the processing center, what does that mean in terms of when he flies to SC, etc. This is such an issue right now because my residency for the next term at school ends the day before he's supposed to report. There are NO excused absences from anything at school, and the last flight of the day to get me back to San Diego is pretty early in the evening. Not an easy maneuver, to say the least. This whole thing is potentially full of pain and angst, especially if "report NLT 0730 XX Day" means he flies to SC that day.

So as I was doing the back-and-forth e-mail, which entails him throwing an unreasonably short response to a fairly complex question, and me responding with, "Okay, so what the fuck does that mean, exactly?" I got mad. Really mad. Seething, red-tinged vision, want to punch a wall angry. I got angry at this dumbass war and this asshat "president" and this lazyboy-recliner legislature that refuses to call the asshat on his bull and either make the war legal or make him get us the hell out of Iraq and concentrating our forces (and huge tracts of oily budget) on getting Bin Laden & Crew.

I know I'll feel better later, when I can tuck this sense of futility back into my brain and pretend like I fully support this country when right now I'm wondering what kind of damn rabbit hole we've fallen down and how the hell we'll ever get out of it again. Maybe our own "change of regime" will help remedy the situation. Probably not. It seems all politicians are cut of the same designer knock-off cloth. And until we put the fear of Allah into the extremist Muslims, we're not likely to see a change there, either.

Did I mention I'm mad?

Srsly. It's time to break out the voodoo dolls.

Wow. I just realized why I'm mad. I feel betrayed. I feel like the last 13 years of my life, I've given everything - freedoms, liberties, time, money, energy - to the military, and therefore to this country. I feel like I've given so much of myself, that I barely have enough left to function on now. And now's when I need all that energy back. But I've been shit on. I've been shit on by my president. I've been shit on by my representatives and senators. I've been shit on by the press who believe it's their duty to call out the BS and who've been slacking off since The Decider charmed the panties off every last one of them back in 1999. I've been shit on by the military and detailers and the citizens of this country who sit back and refuse to fight.

I've been shit on by the citizens of this country who sit back and refuse to VOTE.

I've been shit on and betrayed, and now my country is asking my family to give up even more than we had to give before. And all I've got to say to my country is this:

Kiss my patriotic ass.