Baby Ghettos…LOL

Apparently some airlines are now asking parents with crying, screaming children to take them to the back of the plane and parents are whining impotently about how this is obviously exactly like being a Jew in Nazi Germany.  I’m really loving this trend that is putting a stop to preferential treatment for parents.  Of course the parents aren’t happy about it.  Privileged people are never happy to lose those privileges.  God forbid the parents have to take the necessary steps to make sure they will be seated with their children on the plane.  I’m entirely unimpressed with their complaints.  Services should be designed for the average consumer and if you have special circumstances, you do the extra work.

Other carriers suggest families should pay for seat assignments to make sure they stay together since it’s harder to get seat assignments in advance, free of charge. US Airways has no restrictions on families reserving seats in advance, but “we do encourage families to take advantage of Choice seats to ensure seating together,” a spokesman said.

You mean just like passengers without children must do if they want extra leg room or a window seat?  How dare the airlines force parents to take the very same steps other passengers must take!

Overall increased stress of travel due to luggage charges and security procedures has made travelers less tolerant of kids, some parents say.

No, actually it’s just that modern parents have no respect for the people around them.  It used to be that a parent would understand that they are inconveniencing everyone else and do what they could to minimize that inconvenience.  Parents today are entitled and people are finally getting sick of it and taking back shared, public spaces.

The most infuriating comment in the article is this though:

I feel like it’s discrimination against families.

Oh really?  Because all families are exactly the same?  All families have children, right?  My husband and I are a family of two and we’re discriminated against constantly with comments like this one that exclude us from the very idea of being a family.

I can only hope that I at least don’t have to explain why referring to this as a ghetto is absurd and offensive.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/flying-with-little-children–go-to-the-back-of-the-plane.html

So pissed right now

I’m so damn sick of this post.  Tomorrow, my husband is supposed to be taking BLS recertification, but because somebody got in an argument with the 1SG, he has to be out in the field until Thursday morning, basically as punishment.  He didn’t do anything, but he’s missing his class.  This puts us back at least a month because he can’t PCS without this and he’ll have to wait for another class.  He’s already been accepted into a uber-cool, high-speed program but people keep putting shit in his way.  He got accepted last March, but there are constant problems.  I hate this fucking place.

Wives Who Can’t Drive

Seriously, why are there so many of you? I know at least 4 soldiers whose wives cannot drive. It should be a prerequisite for being a military spouse. Hell, it should be a prerequisite for being an adult.  I can’t understand how soldiers, who know they won’t be there all the time, would choose a helpless woman and I really can’t understand why a woman, who knows she’ll be on her own for months at a time, would choose to be so helpless.

Am I missing something here?  I’ve never looked at a guy without a car and thought “Wow, he’s hot.  I’d totally love to have someone completely dependent on me.  It will be fun to have to take off of work to drive him around to doctor’s appointments.  Maybe we can even get into arguments about how I don’t always meet his needs!”  Come on, folks.  That is not a partnership.  That’s like having an adult child.  How can you go to bed with this person and not feel squicked out?  If I have to parent someone, I just can’t manage to find the desire to fuck them.

Women, go out and get a damn license!

Say what?

I just received a copy of the training schedule for my husband’s unit.  I’m not sure if I understood it correctly though.

Please note that are all training event are subject to change, the date provided are meant to give families visibility on what their Soldier will be doing during cretin weeks.  A day may be added to or taken away from the training based on training requirements.

You’ll notice immediately that someone has a problem conjugating verbs.  I’m not even sure what the first “are” is intended to mean.   Still, I was fairly sure I understood what this person (who is most likely an officer) was trying to tell me.  However, you will notice a reference to “cretin weeks.”

No matter how much I try to give this person the benefit of the doubt (spellcheck just substituted the wrong word!), I can’t help but feel like I understand what a cretin week is.   I expect these training weeks will be overflowing with stupidity.  In fact, I bet the weeks between the training weeks will be overflowing with stupidity too!  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if there are any weeks that aren’t cretin weeks.  Maybe this officer was just trying to be honest with us.  Or, ya know, he could just be a cretin…

Military Wife Scams Military Families

No big surprise here.  It’s amazing how trusting people are.

“More than 25 Fort Campbell soldiers returning from war tried to find a new home, but instead found themselves out thousand of dollars. It’s part of the largest housing scam Fort Campbell has ever seen and what’s even more shocking is who police said is behind it.

They traced the online housing scam back to someone living on post at Fort Campbell, a pregnant military wife who police said scammed her fellow military family.

Mistake #1

“We thought she was trustworthy. You know she said she was pregnant and who doesn’t believe a pregnant person?”

Seriously?  I pretty much never trust pregnant women.  They have more motivation than the average person to look after themselves regardless of what happens to anyone else.  Certainly not all, but most pregnant women are the most self-centered, self-righteous elitist people you’ll meet.  Try doing a favor for a pregnant woman sometime and just see if she doesn’t act like you were her personal servant who was obligated to help her because of her “condition.”

Mistake #2

“It’s soldiers and to think that somebody would do that to a family who lives at Fort Campbell, it was almost unbelievable.”

The assumption of solidarity.  It doesn’t exist between military families any more than it exists between women which is to say, it doesn’t exist at all.  Any experience you might have had with such solidarity is either an illusion that has managed to maintain itself due to limited contact or a freak occurrence.

 

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/15271821/police-military-families-scammed-by-military-wife

MSSN

Even though I haven’t actually logged in for awhile, I went ahead and linked to MSSN.  It’s a good forum even if it can get a little overwhelming at times.  The members there have a lot of good information and are generally supportive.  If you’re a sensitive person (why are you reading this blog?), try to keep in mind that constructive criticism is meant to help you, maybe in ways you didn’t even know you needed help.

A Theme!

Well, I finally settled on a theme!  I’m using Constructor which is very customizable.  There are still a few other changes I’d like to make to it, but I haven’t figured out how yet.  If I never figure it out, I guess it will stay just like this.  I’m calling it Gaslight6.  There were several other gaslight-spirit type designs I came up with and I liked the last one best, but I may resurrect the others if I get bored looking at this.  It reminds me of “The Unquiet Dead” episode of Doctor Who.  The brown shades in this one give it a subtle steampunk feel and blue and brown are so nice to each other.

The Nicotine Patch

So this is attempt No. 3 on the the nicotine patch.  I have to leave it on overnight or I’m crazy when I wake up in the morning.  They aren’t kidding about the dreams though!  I’ve had everything from bizarrely pleasant dreams about dark textile gods to terrifying dreams about getting shot in the back of the head with an AK47.

Last night I dreamed that my husband had a sex change and then cheated on me with an enormous and unattractive guy we knew in high school.

Overall, the nicotine works just fine in the patch.  The reason I always fail is because lighting a cigarette is so completely ingrained in me that I don’t know what to do when one isn’t there.  I feel naked.  I might even go so far as to say I feel stupid.  I don’t know what to do with my hands.  I don’t know where to put them.  Additionally, I’m one of those people that actually enjoys smoking.  I wouldn’t even try to quit if it weren’t for 1) the money and 2) the concern for my health.  If I thought I could cut back to say, 5 a day, I’d do that in a heartbeat.  I just can’t ever manage to stick with that.  Even now as I’m trying to quit, I’m secretly hoping that after I quit, I could have a smoke once in a while without falling back into a pack+ a day habit.

Welcome to Misfit Army Wife…

This is my place to vent to the world even if nobody’s listening.  Hell, I’ll probably post here because nobody’s listening.  I’ve got a lot of opinions and I would be very surprised if anyone in the world agreed with all of them.  I’m lucky my husband agrees with all the important ones and most of the rest of them.  You’ll probably read one post and nod knowingly and then curse me when you read the next post.  That’s life!  You don’t have to come back to this blog if you don’t want to and I’m not going to care either way.

I’ve tried posting on forums, but grow increasingly tired of arguing with people.  Debate can be fun, but not when it completely replaces discussion.  Sometimes we need to just express ourselves unapologetically.  It’s true that you can be that way on forums too sometimes, but not if you want to stick around.  There are rules and moderators and all of that is good for a forum, but it doesn’t always make it the best environment to just express yourself and move on with your day.

I often express myself to my husband, but sometimes he’s not in the mood for it and I understand that too.  Most of the bullshit I deal with, he’s dealing with on an even more personal basis and he’s really caught in the middle of what the Army wants, what he wants and what I want.  Sometimes expressing myself to him puts unnecessary pressure on him even though I don’t intend to do that.

Sometimes I express myself to my mother who’s awesome, but doesn’t necessarily understand my life.  Now, of course many of you might not understand my life either, but there’s no risk between us that a misunderstanding could hurt either of us.  I don’t have to worry about hurting your feelings or opening up a can of worms I don’t want to deal with.

I will be intentionally vague on this site.  Not only do I simply not need you guys to know a whole lot about who I am, I have to consider OPSEC.  Some of you might wonder which post we’re stationed at (surely to avoid it!) or what the military is really up to (since many of you will understand the media gets it wrong), but I just can’t share that with you.  Some of it would put people at risk and some of it could affect my husband’s career.  You’re not worth that much trouble so hopefully you will understand that I won’t answer certain questions.