The first of many rants I’m sure…

As a newly minted Army-wife, I don’t think the ink is dry yet on the marriage certificate, I have a ton of questions. So I went to last week’s Battalion TownHall expecting to get a few answered, meet some people, shake hands, and maybe find out where to get the rest of my questions answered.

And once I got over my fear of crowds and the sickening feeling I get at the mention of Iraq (it’s rapidly becoming a dirty word at my house), I did those things. There is a fairly long list of things to get done before he deploys, and I walked out with a packet to help get me and him ready for deployment. Along with a really cute doll and a specialized keychain, but that’s beside the point.

The Battalion Commander spent quite a bit of time going over the calendar, what to expect, when to expect it, and what he expects of us, the families. He explained why there is not 15 days of block leave, and just 10, which is the hot issue. After all this talk, the first two questions during Q&A were 1) Why can’t we have 30 days of block leave like Ft. Bliss does, and 2)Why are the soldiers not getting all the time off they feel they should.

I had the urge to throttle the girls asking these questions. If they’d shut up and gotten off their god d^%$&*ed cell phones, they wouldn’t have had to look like idiots in front of the rest of it. The amount of time a soldier gets off is indirectly proportional to the amount of work he has done, and needs to do. It’s a simple equation really, if you don’t get your job done, then you can’t have extra time off. I played this game in the civilian world, at work; if everything was done for the day, and we had no patients, it was never a big deal if we left a half hour/hour early. But if we had patients, or there was a ton of stuff to do, then we stayed for the full shift.

Does it suck that I’ll have just 10 days of no-Army time to spend with him before he deploys? Yes, it does suck. It’s also part of life, things happen that you don’t want to happen, plans change and you’re forced to change along. So instead of whining about something I cannot change, I am instead grateful for the time I have with him. It could be worse.

And of course, the questions were brought up about cell phones at NTC, and then later on, in Iraq (there’s that d&^%$ed word again). And why can’t they have cell phones at NTC, because it’s just training, and it’s not fair. At this point in time, I found myself resisting the urge to slip out of my chair, and throttle the wife/girlfriend asking this question. The answer, as I understand it, is simple. NTC is meant to simulate the conditions they will face in over there (not saying it this time). And there are security reasons for no cell phones, which is a fairly big deal. I don’t want anyone we’re fighting against hearing anything I have to say, about my family, about my life, about my dogs, about the fire ant hill emerging in the back yard, or anything else. And then, it’s about focus. I don’t want Carl to spend one second worrying about what is going on back home. If he is focused on me, he won’t be focused on the enemy in front of him, and I want him home in one piece, safe and sound. So if that means I don’t get to text him 15 million times a day about inane things, or send him <3 five times in a row, then I’ll have to deal with it. I’d rather not hear from him that often, and get him home, than hear from him all day long, and lose him because he was distracted. And I don’t want him to be a distraction to the soldier’s around him, because he’s wrapped up in some petty drama back home. Against the backdrop of war, who does laundry how, who didn’t do dishes last, who said what about who, when they said it and how mean it was, really doesn’t matter. All the insignificant crap is just that, insignificant crap, measured against the reality of what he and I are facing, that he’s leaving for war.

So, after all was said and done… I am grateful for the time I have with him, grateful for the information I got, and still just as intimidated by the prospect of deployment as I was before. And tempted to strangle some of my fellow Army wives, just for being stupid.

~Jennifer