Top 10 signs you may not be cut out for a life in (or married to) the military...

One of my New years resolutions for 2012 is to a better Key Spouse for my husband's unit, so tonight in preparation for NYE I decided to start researching "what makes a good military spouse"  I came across this list in another spouses blog and wanted to share this with the people I have reading mine as well. Enjoy...

 

Ojo’s Top 10 signs you may not be cut out for a life in (or married to) the military…

10. If you can’t bear with the thought of not seeing your spouse for longer than a 9-5 shift, you may not be cut out for the military.
9. If you can’t go more than a week without sex without being a witch, you may not be cut out for the military.
8. If you think having kids will get you a better schedule, get you out of a deployment, or get priority for R&R, you may not be cut out for the military.
7. If you can’t handle always being the last to know, you may not be cut out for the military.
6. If you can’t come to terms with the military being top priority and your marriage being second priority, you may not be cut out for the military.
5. Hurry up and wait. Submit a leave request six months in advance, only to find out 3 days before your sister’s wedding that the leave request has been denied because someone effed up a report. Pack your house up, you got orders! Oh nevermind, paperwork got routed wrong. If you can’t adapt to those (constant) annoyances, you may not be cut out for the military.
4. If you can’t handle moving away from family and friends often, possibly every year or two for ten to twenty years, you may not be cut out for the military.
3. If you cannot respect rank, you definitely aren’t cut out for the military.
2. If you cannot support the Commander In Chief because of his political party, you may not be cut out for the military.
And finally…
The top sign you may not be cut out for the military…
You think AF and CG members are mean


I have to say I agree with most of this list (of course excluding the comment that AF members are mean).

I think Iam going to do a blog on each one of these topics over the next few weeks or months depending on how long it takes me to explain or "vent" however you want to look at it.


I do want to remind you all that this blog is primarily my opinion and I dont require you guys to read or like it, isn't that afterall the joys of blogs is to be able to get your opinion out there?  Maybe it's not but I do tend to feel alot better after I post a blog.  I hope you guys all had a wonderful Christmas and it is followed by an incrediable New Year and remember al military spouses everything you have planned for the new year... don't hold your breath lol

Home is where the heart is... Or is it where the orders state?

This weekend as I clean my house and start packing for our Christmas vacation back at "home",  I start wondering.  We are raised with they saying "Home is where the heart is" it is told to us as kids, hung on our walls and embroidered into throw pillows, but it is really?  When we are honest yes we miss our families and friends but is that really our "home"? I know when we were back in Kansas (our first home) last, it seems like we spent the entire time running, and going to see everyone, I remember thinking at night when I would lay down I can't wait to get home and relax.  When I got back to South Carolina it was nice to just  be able to do nothing.  I started to feel guilty.  Because I felt like I was somehow betraying where we came from, don't get me wrong Kansas sucks but our families are truly amazing.  Is it possible that we are... growing up?  Can we really have two homes? As military spouses how many homes do we truly have?  I mean the friends we make at our different bases become a whole new kind of family, we depend on them to listen to us, give us advice, and give us shoulder when we cry.  Why does our heart have to have one home?  Can I have a heart in Kansas and a heart in South Carolina?  I miss our families but I don't miss Kansas yes it is where we came from and it is where we were made into the people we are now but South Carolina is making us into these 2 new people I didn't even know we could be.  For me it was a very strange realization to come to when I was so extremely excited to go back "home" for our first visit, to spend the last half of the trip excited to get back home.  When I got back to South Carolina I got to thinking is that a sign of a true military wife feeling torn like that?  Or is it a sign of growing up?  Or could it be both?  The conclusion I came to was it was both, we enlisted to help ourselves get on our feet after Josh got laid-off, so we embark on this adventure that takes us 22 hours and 1,000 mile from home, and this is what we have to show for it, we have grown up and decided to make our own "home" for our kids, who knows how many "homes" or "family" members they will have I just hope they don't hate us too much when they get older lol, so no home is not where my heart is because as you know as a military wife half of my heart deploys ALOT,  Home is where and who you make it.  With every base we mature alittle more but the one thing that will remain the same no matter where we get stationed, is that we love our families and respect them for the advice they have given us along the way, but for now my home is where Josh's orders tell us it is and I am strangely yet happily okay with that. 

"The money tree"

Ok I know this an already preached on subject but I really feel the need to jump on the band wagon.  So in a conversation the other day I was telling a family member how much I missed the money Josh and I made before we enlisted (mind you Josh was working in the Aircraft Industry and I was working for the Veterans Administration), to which my aunt told me "if you were looking to get rich you chose the wrong career".  To that I should have replied "you are not kidding"
What so many people don't understand is no one in the military wishes to get rich, because to us we are already rich just not in the monetary way, as a spouse I have the privilege of not just falling in love with my husband once but falling in love with my hero every single time he leaves, whether he is leaving for work, a TDY, or a deployment, see I understand what it is like to feel my heart break every time he leaves and then I get to experience the butterflies that I got the first time he called me or on our first date.  I may not have Donald Trumps money or Kim Kardashian's wardrobe but I do have the love of a man that is willing to sacrifice the first months of his babies life or his son's first soccer game so that Americans, even the Americans that feel he gets paid too much can continue to live their lives the only way they know how to live...free.  Does he like it, not particularly but he does it, does he miss us, you better believe he does, but somehow he finds the strength to do it anyway.  As a military wife I have learned to live everyday like he is leaving tomorrow, because while most Americans stand at the stove and fix dinner knowing that tomorrow they will be doing it all over again, I stand at the stove fixing dinner wondering if he will get deployment orders tomorrow and if so how many more nights am I going to get to enjoy a family dinner. 
Then there is the "money" issue.  Do we, as service members make too much money?  how about I give you a look at our finances and you tell me.  Including the bills we pay our bills monthly come to approximately $1,000 a month, my husbands base pay is $1729.80.  So with that remaining $729.80, we have to put gas in our cars, groceries in the cabinets, clothes for us and the kids, diapers for the baby and then on top of that God forbid one of the cars have a problem.  Maybe we do have a little money after all of that but I assure you that things go wrong in a military household just like they do in a civilian household.  So you tell me if the service members make too much money why is it that there are so many Active duty members on government programs such as WIC and food stamps, or if we make too much money why is ti that there is a need for the Soldiers and Sailors Act forcing creditors to reduce AD members interest rates to 6%.  In the town we are stationed at many of the families here make it a habit to frequent the dinning facilities that offer military discounts not just because we appreciate it or because it makes us feel special to pull that ID out but mainly because 10% here and there add up real quick and like most Americans we don't always feel like cooking either we want to dine out once in awhile as well.
Had you asked me when we enlisted if I thought we were going to be rich I would have told you "nothing in my life is that simple" and I would have meant it, There is no way I would have believed you had you told me that we would be on food stamps or that we would be counting down the days until payday, hoping that we had enough gas to get from base to housing to my husbands unit everyday until then. Not only does military not get paid enough but when you take into account that most of our husbands go from being deployed for 6 months and then return to 2 weeks off, to go straight back to working 12 hours shift because the base is under exercises again.  You tell me how much you would get paid in 2 weeks if you worked 12 hours a day 5 days a week and then usually pulled at least one day every weekend?

We don't want to "get rich" we just want to "get by"

One of the many things I fail to understand...

This seems to be a rough start to my new blog but given recent events I just can't  help but find the need to voice the irritation that has come into  my life.
 When Josh and I started looking into joining the military there were the obvious fears, you know fear of the unknown, the fear of starting all over, and the fear of leaving our families.  But the over positive people that we try to be we decided to make a point of finding the silver lining rather then dwelling on the negatives that the fears would bring.  Given that I had been blessed with having the same friends since I was in middle school I had always considered myself a decent friend.  My friends knew that if they ever needed anything no matter the time of the day or night I would be the first to answer the call and because of the integrity I was always given the same respect.  I was always taught you don't change who you are or where you came from for anything.  So after 17 moths, a lot of jumping through hoops, BMT and Tech school we embarked on our exciting and scary adventure called military life.  We have been here at Shaw for a little over a year now and it almost seems like there a fewer and fewer people here that remember the value of making and keeping friends in this always unstable lifestyle.  I mean don't get me wrong I wasn't ignorant, I didn't believe for a minute that you could put this many spouses in one location and not expect drama but what I did expect was a closer family feeling.  Families don't all get along all the time but at least they give it some effort.  I have met so many spouses that have told me that they had friends but they got "burnt" so now they just stay to themselves.  Which makes total sense in a normal life where you are surrounded by your family and friends but when you are surrounded by young couples who have given up everything that they hold dear in their lives so that their husbands just like yours can deploy more often then they are home, locking yourself in your house because you got your feelings hurt seems rather self-centered to me.  You cant put this many females in one place and expect them all to get along all the time but really I think it's time that we as military wives put our big girl panties on and stop being so self centered.  This life is a great life full of many sacrifices, we have sacrificed the friends and family that we grew up with, why does being a military wife mean you that you should have to sacrifice the prospect of having new great friends simply because they ones of us that are here are too "scared" to make life easier on the new comers?
Now I am writing this because I too have recently been burned and it completely sucks and the only thing that keeps me from staying home is the fact that there are people out there that need help.  Our husbands are demanded to live with integrity, how can we consider ourselves decent military spouses if we can't live with the same level of integrity that is expected of our husbands.  It makes me so happy to know that when my husband deploys he has an entire unit willing to have if back if a situation were to ever call for it but as a spouse it makes me so very sad to think that as spouses we consider ourselves lucky if we have one good friend to have our backs.  Lets be honest yes as military wives people see us and think they really have their act together they can handle it by themselves but just getting my husband home from his first deployment most of the things that needed to be done I could have handled it by myself but honestly that fast trip to Wal-Mart was made alot faster and easier when a friend offered to watch the boys so I could go and after all isn't that what a family or support system is about, not doing everything for you but making it easier for you when you do have t do it.  To me if our husband are selfless enough to give up time with their family that they can not get back then there is absolutely no excuse good enough not to show a few fellow spouses that same attitude.  It's called integrity either live by it or stop pretending to be the "proud military wife" it's giving the rest of us a bad name.