Option #2: Go Alone

You can avoid having to deal with leave issues by planning to attend things without your spouse. When I asked for and was granted days off from my civilian employers, those days weren't taken back. I always knew I could make plans for myself and they wouldn't fall through.

Going without your spouse poses its own dilemmas. Just today I met with an old high school friend and her family and it was just me. I felt the way I often do in these situations, like I had to somehow prove the existence of my happy marriage or my comfortable life. That was probably unnecessary. While struggling to catch up on our lives over the last 12 years and trying to corral toddlers and pre-schoolers, we didn't need to wast time justifying our family choices at all.

I am happy with my husband and hope that I can express that without him there. It's not easy to be alone. He may be having a tougher time missing celebrations than we have celebrating without him. I don't deign to speak for someone else.

Things to consider when going alone: will the expenditure for the solo trip affect your family's bottom line, can you cope with your kids for specified period without your partner, will your partner starve to death without you there. These are the important questions to answer, not "how do I show my happy marriage without my happy spouse."

The Budget

Yesterday I said I didn't want to be political. Today I'm backtracking. I think I just don't want to do anything that's not in my own interests.

I'm afraid of what elected officials might choose to do with the budget that might affect my lifestyle. I want to be able to live comfortably, have my own car, stay home with my children, earn my own income and have nice shoes. These can be really tough goals for an enlisted family.

I said that I think the pay gap between senior enlisted and officers should be smaller. This opinion is in my own interest. I see guys like my husband who will remain enlisted no matter how much education they finish. It makes it tough for a wife to look at another woman with the same education and background and not resent that she can more comfortably afford nicer shoes.

The raises approved by congress this year are the same percentage across the board. If we're talking percentages, that means that the raise is higher for people making more money in the first place. In some cases that's really justifiable, but some guys are just filling space and making more money. That seems inequitable. A guy making $30,000 getting a 3% raise gets a mere $900 more, a guy making $60,000 gets $1800 more and one that makes $120,000 gets $3600. Those numbers seem like a pittance in print to me, but I wonder if more merit pay would inspire guys to earn those raises. Maybe they do earn them through merit promotions.

I am a wife, I should probably continue to deal with my home budget and leave the military budget to people who hopefully know better. My vote is my power, though, and I'm thinking about it.

Politics for the Wife

One friend asked me a political question about how military members feel about the current administration.

I cannot, in all honesty, answer for the military. I can't even say I have a good sample for which to speak.

I have come to realize, in my contemplation, that honoring the sitting president has nothing to do with blindly following your leader or respecting the Commander-in-Chief, so much that it's a matter of respect. It would be inappropriate for me to bad mouth my husband in public. It is immature to speak poorly of our employers to others. It would be a bad show for someone to speak out publicly about touchy and highly nuanced subjects such as military involvement in the current administration.

I am not a politician, nor would I wish to be. Politicians have to make awful decisions. Sometimes they have to sacrifice their own values for some greater good that even they cannot see. My values are pretty strong and I don't think I could make those sacrifices. I wouldn't say that many politicians are good at making decisions properly, but they do make decisions. They have to see black and white where there's gray, lavender and blue.

Would you ask Laura Bush to speak publicly against her husband? Do you think Hillary Clinton should denounce political things Bill did? I don't.

In The Real World

Last year, on an impromptu trip to Illinois, I bumped into an old classmate. She said several things that stuck with me. One of them was, "make sure your husband knows what he wants to do in the real world, when he gets out of the Air Force."

Mind you, her perception of the military is something you do when you're 18 and "don't have anything better to do". When you're done with an enlistment, you should get out and get on with a so-called normal life. This is a preposterous assumption.

First, in order for our military to function properly, we need people who stay active for twenty years or more. Second, not everyone who enlists does so fresh out of high school. Third, I don't know if she even knew if my husband was enlisted or officer, but that fact remains irrelevant.

It seems antiquated to me to assume that people who are enlisted must be less educated or less worthy. The disparity in pay between senior NCOs and officers should be diminishing. The perception of class based assumptions just perpetuates all those old stereotypes of the enlisted, white trash contingent of the military family.

Gossip on Base

I could speak to the obvious, but I'll just say that I probably won't live on base ever again. That said, I'm not talking about malicious personal gossip.
Often, when working, living and socializing with the same people, rumors start. They are not all bad. Some are filled with hope, like "the new base housing will be ready in six months," or "they're going to let all children, even those on Tricare Prime, see off base pediatricians." There are the bad ones, such as "the base is closing and our airmen will have to retrain or separate." All of these rumors have bad consequences. They make people scramble or set up unreasonable expectations.
Unfortunately, I've had to learn that I'll believe things when I see them. There is information that the military just isn't going to disclose with the civilians attached. The reasons for the closed mouths are reasonable and I've accepted that. More people are going to need to for tranquility on base to take hold. Do you think we can have peace on one little corner of the military world like base housing?

A New Direction

I haven't gotten a lot of feedback. Admittedly, I haven't posted nearly what I need to be successful. I would appreciate any feedback telling me what my readers are interested in knowing. I was going to just give bullet points and step by step instructions on the PCS, but I'm finding people aren't nearly as interested in the subject as I am.

I'm really going to try to post every day this week.

The Day You Have Orders

The day your spouse tells you he or she has orders your brain goes ten directions at once, or you freeze dead in your tracks. Where to begin the planning and moving? The answer is long and varied, but the Airman and Family Support Center is where I began. They didn't have all the answers. They pointed me to a few books, apologized that they weren't currently running any sort of relocation seminars and wished me good luck. I left with the pamphlet sized books and a web address in my hand. I headed from there to Finance to find out some specifics about the money involved in our move.
I have heard rumors of people manipulating the system and making money, others manipulating the system and getting caught, while still others play it by whatever is on the books at the time of their PCS. The rules change regularly. If you don't want to worry about getting into trouble, ask to see the written regulation.
I found out that no matter where we went between our current duty station and the coming one, we received the current duty station's housing allowance until we checked into the new place. That was interesting to me only because I had heard fairytales of living with family, collecting higher housing rates, and reuniting with your spouse with a full bank account. From what I read in print, these stories can only be urban myths. The government hasn't left many loopholes for us to accumulate extra money.
Now, everyone should know that until the physical orders are in the military member's hands, there isn't much anyone can do to plan the move. Thus, despite the fact that you may know you're moving in 8 months, until they cut those orders, you're at your current base. Keep both feet planted there until you know your leaving. Things change without much reason sometimes.