Annoyed With The Army

Dear President Obama,

I love my husband.  I love being an Army Wife.  But there are a lot of things I don't love about this life right now.

My husband just called me to inform me that OCS (officer candidate school) is no longer an option.  I'm pissed.  This has been his dream since he enlisted 4.5 years ago with his bachelor's degree.

When he was stationed in Korea he started his OCS packet.  That was 3.5 years ago.  The Army told him he had to wait a bit.  He didn't want to wait. 

After Korea he got stationed here.  He told his command that he wanted to go to OCS.  They said its not going to happen because of the upcoming deployment.  Again he had to wait.

He deploys and finds out that he can still get all the paperwork together while deployed.  He worked his butt off over in Iraq to get his physical and papers signed.  He gets home and is told he has to wait.  He waited as a good soldier ought to.

He waits.  His references expired.  So he got new references.  He was told again this summer to wait because of the next deployment.  He waited.

He then gets told that they are going to have a board in July before the mini deployment but that the folks at the board won't be ready for him.  He is told to wait until after the mini deployment is done.  He waits.

He gets back and tries to get his packet submitted yet again.  This time he is told that things are changing and there won't be another board this year.  He is told to wait until today for the seminar.  He waits. 

He goes to today's seminar.  He is now told he is too old.  They now have a cut off of 28 for OCS unless he was part of the reserve component.  He isn't reserves.  The Army killed his dream.

Is this how our Vets are being treated?  Why are their dreams being killed?

He listened to them and waited.  He did as he was told.  He went off to war.  He waited again as was told.  Now they are telling him its too late. OCS is the reason why my husband went into the Army to begin with.  He was given a promise that with his education the Army would be foolish to waste him on anything but being an officer.

Sincerely,
R

(Oh and I so did email this to him at the White House.  I am angry.)

Crafting My LIfe Away

Photo by me of my latest creation.  The other day my bestie, S, and I went to Shipwreck Beads where I purchased the components for J and a few beads for myself.

See I get lonely and listless which then if left unchecked will lead to depression.  I'm not a drinker, an impulse shopper, or an impulse eater so I fidget when J is away.  Maybe the fidgeting is helping me to lose weight as it is still coming off.

So with my spare time when I'm not cleaning or watering the lawn and garden I create.  Sometimes its food creations which I would share with my neighbors.  Most of my neighbors who were good friends are now gone.  Now I have to turn my creativity to other pursuits.  Back to beading, sewing, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, needlepoint and so on.  There isn't much I can't do and if I don't know how I'll learn.

Better view of the necklace, well I think.  The large drop stone is an Afghanistan Stone, with the blue sea quartz above it and Thai silver daisy beads in between the two large stones.  The main necklaces is composed of silver tubes, silver open work beads and taupe freshwater pearls.

I rather like this creation.  The large Afghanistan stone caught my eye and I just have to have it.  The stone has nice layers where over time it was compressed from the various sediment.  Life has layers, some good some bad and it rather suits me and the Army life.  I chose the Afghanistan stone because it was the only stone they had representing the Middle East that would meet my needs. Sure a ruby, emerald or even lapis lazuli could have worked too but this was the stone I chose.
 
The sea blue quartz is for the water that always has separated us each time he has gone.

The 12 taupe pearls represent the 12 moons he is normally gone.  12 months of tears.  12 months of trials.  Pearls are worn to shun evil influences.  They are also a symbol of purity and my love for him is pure.

Libya, The Third War

Tonight President Obama will be trying to decide if we are to intervene in the Libyan war.  It all comes down to humanitarian issues, pretty much domestic violence, and what Obama promised before he was elected President of the United States.

Mind you I didn't vote for Obama and I was a registered Democrat at the time.  Since then I've changed my political party to more suit, though not perfectly, my views.

Do we really need the added expensive of another war?  We aren't even fully out of Iraq, we are full force fighting in Afghanistan and our economy can't handle the drain of helping yet another country find its freedom.  Freedom is far from free when our own populous has to go without because gas prices are sky rocketing in the oil obsessed countries.

They are oil obsessed.  Most of them are fighting over control of their own oil fields.  Their civil unrest is now costing us more at the pump and I'd rather it not start costing us the lives of our American citizens.

I'm not a "liberal hippie" by any means.  I believe that at times war is the necessary decision.  But I don't like the thought that we are going to have to sacrifice more of our military, money, and resources on a doomed humanitarian issue that is called the Libyan war.  Let them fight it out amongst themselves, it went fairly well in Egypt a month ago.  If we go into Libya with guns blazing we'll have to fund a rebuild of their country when we can barely afford to keep our own government afloat.

We don't need foreign oil.  We have the Alaskan pipeline.  We have alternative fuel sources that are being back burnered just because our own government has deals on the table with foreign countries to buy their oil supplies.  How about we fund the alternative fuel projects with the funds that we were going to spend on helping Libya out?

Better yet how about we stop buying from China and buy more American made products.  Sure right now American made products are expensive but isn't buying quality worth it?  Why buy junk from a foreign country when you know its just going to get recalled or fall apart?  Eventually, given that Americans will decide to buy domestic products, our prices will drop and our economy will reach back to the top where it was two decades ago before we started farming out our jobs to foreign countries.

Libya, good luck on your war.  I don't want my country being a part of your domestic violence issues. 

WE ARENT THE WORLD'S POLICE!

Dealing With Tech Support

There are days that I just want to crawl back into bed.  Today happens to be one of them.

I know I mentioned a few days ago that I was going to take 30 days for myself.  Well so far that really hasn't happened.  Everyone deserves a vacation and I'm still waiting to get mine.

For the past several days I've been doing laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning and paying the bills.  I'm trying to make life that much easier on my soldier.  My back is killing me along with my feet and just yesterday my right hip popped out of socket.  It popped back in then back out and back in repeatedly for a few hours.  Not a pleasant feeling mind you.  So I guess I'll only get to the cooking of the pork loin roast today with the trimmings.  I was going to do more laundry.

My main task today was calling three tech support places about my husband's computer.  Its a Toshiba laptop.  While he was deployed to Iraq, Toshiba in conjunction with Microsoft was offering free upgrades to Windows 7.  However each time my husband tried to file for his free upgrade there was a glitch.  He never got his free copy of Windows 7. 

So this brings me to the next point of the problem.  J's laptop stopped reading DVDs and CDs.  It refused to operate properly and would act like it had PMS.  After sending the computer out for repairs to his extended warranty company they install a new hard drive and DVD/CDROM-RW.  He gets it back and now the main screen is a C prompt.  GREAT!

J calls up the company that just repaired it, gets put on hold and disconnected. I call them back as well.  I then called up Microsoft and they said they couldn't do a thing about it.  The old hard drive had a partition in it that would prevent the OS from being deleted.  Well and good but we don't have the old hard drive now.  I was instructed to call Toshiba.  They wanted to charge me to even talk to a tech because the first warranty with them had expired.  I asked for the Tech Manager. 

It all comes down to this, no one cares if the darn restore disks don't work.  No one cares that there is no longer an OS installed.  J now has to pay out of pocket to get their restore discs or have his computer sent away for another month to have them install another Windows Vista to his laptop. 

This is wrong on so many levels.  First off Toshiba and Microsoft owe him the free upgrade.  Secondly had they fulfilled his request when he requested it numerous times during the offer period we wouldn't be needing a restore disk for his OS we'd have a copy, an actual disc on hand.  I tried to explain this to both companies.  They don't care if he was deployed and couldn't call tech support from Iraq.

So the best I can now offer my spouse when he comes out of the field is the offer that the Tech Manager gave me of two options, pay out or send the computer back with the hopes that they can fix the issue.  If this can't be fixed we have one expensive paperweight.  I just would like to know why the repair company who installed a new hard drive didn't install an OS.  Why?

Fear Of The Unknown

Fear of the unknown is ever present in my life and in the lives of my friends and family.  Feed a fear and go into a panic.  Starve a fear and overcome it.  Well that is something I say at least but I'm not always sure it is true nor am I sure it always works and for all situations.

Just today a friend of mine who is in her twenty-seventh week of pregnancy started bleeding.  I fear that she will have a preterm baby like the last one.   Can I do anything to prevent it?  No.  The only thing that I can do is make myself available to her via phone and web to help her cope with the stress levels.

I have a fear that yet again I won't be pregnant.  I have only two cycles left in which to conceive and then I'm done.  Yes I'll be done.  At forty-one years of age the military doctors don't like to have a woman keep trying to conceive.  If I was thirty-one things would be a bit different.  If I feed this fear that I'll never get pregnant I'll become depressed.  If I starve this fear I might do something foolish and risky that might accidentally terminate a pregnancy if indeed I am pregnant.  No exercising, no heavy lifting either with the round ligament pain I have right now.  I have to be cautious and its driving me nuts.  Sunday I should be able to test at home.  If its negative yet again I have to wait even longer before I can go get the blood work so I can start my next round of clomiphene citrate.

My spouse is going through his own fears of the unknown.  He has a lot of choices he has to make with only about two years of active duty left on this contract.  Does he stay in and pursue the career he always wanted as an officer, warrant or go the NCO route?  Does he get out and try to find a job in the economy?  Jobs are scarce and he told me just last night he doesn't want to get out.  He has his OCS packet all ready to go but others are telling him to hold off on submitting it until he makes one more rank.  Do they realize that would mean he'd have to start from scratch again on this packet?  It has taken him the better part of a year to get this packet ready since he started it when he was deployed to Iraq.  While references were easy enough to gather together the physical wasn't that easy to get with his busy schedule.  Last time he tried to get the physical he had to wait on chopper flights to the nearest MTF (military treatment facility) in Iraq.

I'm guessing his fear is of rejection.  He would make a great leader.   But if he continues to second guess what those around him are thinking about him he'll never try to excel.  Would you keep trying to better yourself if you felt as though the folks you work with have no confidence in your abilities?  They haven't told him they have no confidence and most likely he is just fearful of the unknown and looking for that reason to lose hope.  We've all been in those situations before.  Just like when a guy proposes to a girl the fear of rejection is there even if he believes its a sure thing he doesn't know what her answer will be but just has to hope.  However if the workplace situation isn't conducive to mental growth a person will not feel as though they are worthy enough to apply their skills and succeed.  Just as if a child were brought up in an abusive family that child would feel worthless and continue to harbor those feelings of self loathing through adulthood until assured differently that they are indeed worthy. 

The Army has changed greatly since when my dad was a soldier.  Back in his day, the 1960's, a guy could easily elevate himself through the ranks.  One day he'd be a sergeant and get into a fight lose his rank but within a month he'd have his rank back again.  Usually a soldier back then would make sergeant in under three years in the service but not now.  Now they have the points system.  Now a soldier who has the capabilities to excel is held back because he or she doesn't have enough points to warrant that extra stripe or brass marker.  What happened to be being judged as worthy? 

With two wars going on simultaneously one would think that attaining rank would be that much easier, but its not.  Now many soldiers are leaving the service after just four years and they are leaving as specialist.  Sure they leave with the GI bill for college but they didn't have the time that the recruiters assured them they would have to take classes while in the Army.  Benefits have been cut so deeply for the soldiers that not only are they receiving less money for housing, they don't get the computers for college they were promised, and now the MWR (morale welfare recreation) programs are on the chopping block too.  The MWR is what runs our commissary (grocery store) and exchange along with the wonderful discounted trip programs.  Why should our soldiers of all ranks care about helping the other guy get ahead and assuage his fears when they are feeling the economic pinch?  Not all NCO's (non commissioned officers ) are out for themselves but quite a few of them are from what I've seen.  "So lets feed the fears of the junior enlisted and make sure they stay where they are" is what I get from this system that is straight out of the feudal period.  Oh haven't you noticed that its quite close to the feudal system?  Right down to what the people are allowed to wear, eat and where they are housed.  Yes its a broken system but I don't see where it can be fixed. 

Sorry about the rant.  Back to where I was before it now.

Its just too easy for me to tell my friend to relax and for me to tell my husband to just go ahead and submit the paperwork for OCS (officer candidate school).  I'm not in their situations.  I'm not the one facing their fears.  I have enough fears of my own, self-inflicted fears, to face.  I made my own decisions in life that got me thus far and had to face my own share of fears.  All I can do is just be there for my friends and family with open arms and an open mind.  I just hope they do the same for me when I have to face my own fears.

Finally Friday

I'm wearing red today because its Friday.  Some of you may recall why folks wear red on Friday, others might have no idea at all.  I'm not exactly sure how long ago the tradition of wearing red on Friday started but I think it started when we went to war.  I will try to remember to wear red on each Friday until all our troops come home.

Yes we are still at war.  We might have ended the sending of comabt troops to Iraq for now but it doesn't mean we stopped sending our military over there.  We still have a war going on in Afghanistan.  We are still fighting the war on terrorism.

The work week is coming to a close which means I'll get some much needed time with my spouse.  A year ago I couldn't say the same.  A year ago my spouse was one of many deployed to the Middle East.

Friday reminds me to be thankful for all the freedoms that I enjoy and often take for granted.  I am thankful for my dwelling no matter how humble it might be because it is not a CHU (containerized housing unit) that leaks when the rain comes down hard.  I am thankful for the food I have to eat because I can just go to my refrigerator or cabinets and select a decent meal that hasn't been mass produced as in an MRE or sitting in warming trays drying out.  I am thankful that I can go to a restaurant to eat a meal and be able to complain if the service is not to my satisfaction.  I am thankful that I can get up in the middle of the night without having to don boots and camouflage clothing  just to go use the bathroom.  Heck, if I get the munchies in the middle of the darn night I can get in my suv,  drive the 0.9 miles to the nearest convenience store, then walk through isles of junk food selecting the perfect snack to settle a craving.  Most of those deployed don't have options I get to enjoy at a whim. When the tiny AAFES at their location does have options they go quickly.

Yes, I realize we have an all volunteer Army.  I am thankful that these men and women did volunteer so that I can exercise my freedom.  I like being able to say what I want.   I like being able to own a gun.  I like being able to worship any god any way I want.

So today I'm wearing red.  It doesn't matter if anyone notices, I'm not here to be noticed.  I'm doing it to say thank you and that I value the sacrifices our military has made with the hope that they will come home soon.

THANK YOU

Serenity and no its not the Sci Fi tv show

 The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

 The above prayer is the one my mother would often recite to herself when things just didn't go as she had planned.  I chuckle now seeing the actual words written out above and how they can apply quite well to the life of an Army wife.  I'm not the religious sort, more of the spiritual type leaning away from any organized religion.

The Army life brings with it many challenges.  Just yesterday I get a phone call from my husband, after 1700 hrs, stating that he wasn't sure what time he'd be home.  Our routine is forming.  Before he deployed to Iraq last year he was home all of six months and we had barely had time to form any routine.  Before Iraq he was in Korea for a year and before that he was in BCT and AIT which took up eight months.  I'm still adjusting to Army life with my spouse actually being home.  For the better part of three years I've been living alone, eating alone and in general going about my own daily routine without interruptions with the exception of doctor appointments.  Now I'm learning about sharing my time with a guy that has a very busy lifestyle.


Before Army life my spouse was an outdoorsy type of man.  He would teach snowboarding at a NY ski center.  I tried snowboarding once and had lots of fun falling.  No seriously I laughed when I'd fall and try to get back up.  During the warmer months he'd work as a journeyman landscaper.  He loves being in the outdoors.  So it should have come as no big shock to me that when he got home from Iraq he started digging holes in the yard.  Not just one hole to enlarge a garden but several holes.  He has now installed a drip edge and filled in the low spots in the lawn, front and back!

So as I roll up his laundry into the style he has become accustomed to since learning it in BCT I'll roll this up as well for today.  I'm learning to accept this new lifestyle and all that it brings to me with friends and new experiences. Tomorrow is a new days with its own challenges that I'll learn to accept as they come my way and hopefully not complain too much about but that is still to be seen.

To those of you that read my blog, many thanks!