Saturday, August 14, 2010

A Look at Military Life

  1. Military wives are fat, lazy, and dumb.
  2. Military wives cheat on their husbands.
  3. Military wives are gossips.
  4. Military wives have no ambition.

You know what? Those four things are true. They are also false. They can also be applied to military husbands, civilian wives, civilian husbands, and to just about anyone or no one. It’s just something to keep in mind.

One thing that really annoys me about living in base housing (I know, I know. Everything annoys me about living in base housing. I’ve said so before.) is that when I have maintenance come out, they treat me like I’m an idiot and talk down to me. I recently had them out because the igniter went out on my oven and it wouldn’t light. They pull out the stove to replace it and there was a piece of beef pot roast underneath it. Yuck, right? Well the guy hauls it out and makes a production over it. You know what? I’ve only lived here for five months and I haven’t made a pot roast of any variety in that time. It was my understanding that these places were cleaned before we moved in but I guess not.

Also, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, maintenance has knocked on my door wanting to come in to fix an upstairs screen in a window. I didn’t call them but you can see it from the street. We’ve been running the AC so I haven’t been too concerned about it. The thing is, is that they come here unexpectedly and without an appointment and just figure that any old time of the day, I’ll be available to let them in. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not available. I work during the day and when I’m on the phone with a client, I just can’t tell them to hold on while I answer the door. It’s like they just assume that I’m sitting my lazy butt on the sofa watching soap operas all day waiting for them to come and light up my life. It’s vastly irritating. So, I called maintenance today, put in requests for three different things in addition to the upstairs window and told them to be here after 2 pm tomorrow. One of the things that needs to be fixed are the vertical blinds on the sliding patio doors. They won’t open. When I described the problem, the lady asked me, “Are they all turned in the same direction?” GEEZ! Like that’s not the very first thing I tried!! I also called the main housing office and told them that I want the brush that is outside of my fence in the canyon cleared away because it is within the “100 feet of defensible space” you’re supposed to have cleared around your house for fires but outside of the area we are responsible for keeping mowed.

We’re going to look for someplace else to live when the Mister gets back from his deployment. Oh yeah. For those of you that don’t follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter, the Mister is going on his first combat deployment soon. It’s ok. I’m not freaking out. I have base housing maintenance to take care of things while he’s gone. ::snort:: Seriously though. The girls and I will manage and he’ll be running computers the whole time he’s gone. Deployments are part of the military life and we deal with them. All I ask is that people don’t try and visit me while he’s gone. It’s nothing personal. I just try and keep things as normal as possible for the kids and I can't do that with houseguests. No matter who it is or how long they stay or what the circumstances are, houseguests are stressful for me. Whatever entertaining gene that my grandmother has, it didn’t get passed down to me. I know that there are people who will take this personally but it’s all in your head. I will say no if you ask, so don’t make me be mean.

Now, I’m off to make my will. Who wants the kids?

3 comments:

  1. I'm such a twit. I don't think it fully dawned on me that you were living on a base.

    I have contractors and maintenance men treating me like an idiot every day and I am the premises manager for a bunch of colleges. I have caught more than one smug contractor out before who has "assured" me that everything has been sorted out and agree already with my security officer only for me to calmly explain that he doesn't even work for our company and if they'd like the contract then they'd better come and speak to the decision maker (i.e. me!). It never ceases to amaze me how these people think they can get away with treating women like idiots.

    It is interesting what you say about house guests. It is lovely to have them around but they can be quite exhausting!

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  2. Emm~~Yeah. We live in base housing but it's actually off base which is nice.

    And after all that unannounced knocking on my door, they showed up a day late and at the wrong time after I called to schedule an appointment. It's so irritating. I'm sorry that you deal with it too!

    House guests...I don't mind them so much once they're actually here. It's the getting ready for them to come...and them getting them to leave, lol. I'm being mean.

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  3. I sure hope you let those guys who "fixed" your oven and found the pot roast a piece of your mind! And of course they think you do nothing all day! Don't ya hate stereotypes?

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