Rolling With Punches

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-- Caelanwolf - griffey chriss - Shakespeare's Monkeys

It's not always easy to roll with the punches thrown. Everybody (hopefully) knows that the DoD screws up paychecks now and again. On deployment there is an even higher chance of this happening.

But when it happens to you, it's always at the worst possible time. Tuition for school is due in two weeks, you have no food, the car needs major maintenance - you're counting on that extra income. Let's face it, that extra income, the deployment pay, is the only "good" thing about deployment. Not that it's enough compensation in the least, but at least it's something!

So what do you do, when you're a ten hour drive from your husband's stateside base, and at least 4 - 5 hours from the closest army base to begin with? When you know the finance department doesn't answer their phones, and will be less than helpful if they did pick up anyway?

What do you do when nobody in your husband's troop who is on rear detachment knows who you are, because he switched to a new troop after the brigade had already deployed?

You get tempted to drive ten hours just to yell at a government employee. Trust me on this. Definitely tempted.

Then you e-mail your favorite SGT (who is no longer your husband's superior, but still your friend). He tries to help, gives you great information, but gets stuck on what to do since there is no base nearby.

You e-mail the Army Emergency Relief people at your husband's old base, explaining the situation, letting them know it's not your budgeting that's at fault, it's the DoD's.

You have to be pro-active, even if it yields no results, because otherwise you just sit and stress, or cry and be useless.

Then you go take a hot bath, because you've been sick with the flu-like sickness going around at your measly job that only really pays for food and gas (maybe), and you are starting to smell.

Or, at least that's what I do.

And you try to not be frustrated that your husband keeps telling you he will call, and then doesn't. Normally this wouldn't piss you off at all, but with the last three weeks from hell (car problems, sick pets, bad paying job, paycheck woes, no way to see a doctor because once again uncle sam's delegates have screwed up, etc. etc. etc...) it's a lot harder to have patience. Even if he is working 20 hour days. I hate to say it, but if you've got 30 minutes to sit on a computer and write blogs, you've got 10 minutes to call your wife from the cellphone she knows you're in possession of. It makes her mad, it upsets her, though she understands. So if you're reading this, lovely husband of mine, at the very least I hope you call your wife (aka ME) on Wednesday, since it is, after all, our wedding anniversary.