I am on week 6 of 12 weeks of the very LAST semester of school. Come August I will have a MBA and a MSM. Then I am all edumacated and will not do school again. Then its off to painting the house since it appears the HRC wants to move the husband in 2010.
Unitl then posts will be few and far between.
Please remember those that serve, have served and those that gave the ultimate sacrifice today.
My strife is small sitting here watching the big comfy couch for 100th time today missing my spouse. There are so many who would be forgotten without you all. So please take the time to remember.
According to the guy with an actual JD and a license I should go back to school yet again for MY JD. Jimmy's nucking futs! I've got one semester left of grad school, there's no going back....um thanks. But, my ability to write extremely well when really pissed off worked like a charm. Tuesday I was informed in writing that I was cleared of the charge and alleged crime at work. (After finals I will take the time to sanatize it and publish it, I'm really proud of it actually.)
I read the first paragraph as it contained the main premsis, stopped reading and started sobbing in the Directors office. Free at last, thank the Lord I'm free at last.
Seriously, I'd like to know what is up with the trolls on AOL? I read a very cute little puff piece about Michelle Obama taking questions of kids during 'Take your kid to work day.' (link to the article is in the title) It is a puff piece but its about little kids people lets not get crazy, okay?
I mean really, some of the posts that actually contained real words and not IM shorthand or hell just spelled correctly were horrible. There were so many references to how they are nothing but a bunch of socialists and that Bush was better. Some really made nasty comments about Michelle's appearance as well as the normal racist crap including sadly making a comment about how anyone can train a monkey to wear heels. They even called her sasquatch - who cares that she's a tall woman? Really?
I didn't agree with 90% of what Bush did or said his last term and did not vote for him in either election eventhough I am a registered Republican. I may call him a moron and that he made political choices that I truly don't agree with, but geeze some of the anti-Obama comments are just hideous.
Its just a shame that the bashing continues to be like this even after the election. I didn't like the bashing that existed during the campaign season at all. It's that stuff in general that makes it hard for me to vote (I still do because it can make a difference). I've lost a lot of faith in our deomcratic process and the horrid mud slinging like this and just outright rudeness of commentary that's not even relevant to politics makes me want to go back to "my island" if you remember the movie Braveheart where I can be queen and tell people to STFU.
**Okay back to my final I keep procrastinating.**
I've been debating about posting this since its sensitive in nature of the person I'm writing about. I have a major concern about females and the Army lately. I firmly believe in equal rights and feel that women do have a valid place in the military. What I don't get is why they are being treated with less than normal dignity when it comes to sexual assault?
Again I have to give the abridged version of this for space as well as her privacy but I'm friends with a female officer stationed here. She's been posting posts that were getting slightly and slightly more odd lately on the mil spouse board I am a part of. Then the other night she posted her whole story.
She posted how she was raped by her boyfriend's best friend with a shotgun next to her as a teen. How her parents blamed her for being raped, how her college experience included a close call with being assaulted again and then told she was worthless and shouldn't get a commission. She then recounts her time in one of the sandboxes, speaking of a fellow officer who stepped over the line with sexual comments and then proceeded to make uninvited visits to her hut in the middle of the night pounding on the door for the duration of her time downrange. When she reported the behaviors she was told to suck it up and that she was just taking it wrong. She filed an EO complaint, it was investigated and the guy was due a Art 15. Well some monkey butt down graded it to a local command letter placed in his file - yeah for attempting sexual assault of a female. Meantime the midnight door knocks continued while down range. She was alone in her room because she was the only female and they wouldn't room her with enlisted females.
Fast forward to the present and we find out that she's been trying to get through the behavioral health here only be be told that if she would just "submit" to her spouse and become a better Christian and an appropriate wife her feelings of fear and trauma from the rape, barely escaped assault, and attempted sexual assault down range would ALL go away if she'd just become the better wife and Christian. That makes me want to beat the man who told her that - I love Christians but I LOATHE zealots period. So she was basically handed three sets of pills and sent on her merry way.
Sadly the pills were the wrong thing to give and she wanted to sleep off her pain she was feeling and started mixing different pills with booze. Thankfully she figured it out, walked out of her bedroom and asked her husband to take her to the ER. They figured that if they went to the civilian hospital they might get better care - yeah uh no! The doc at the local hospital here marked her as combatant so the MPs showed up, cuffed her ass and took her to the military hospital. Here's a woman hurting due to being violated so many different ways and they cuff her as a threat of being combatant. If you'd see her you'd smack them for thinking that. She's a twig, a tiny, nasally talking twig not a combatant. When her husband spoke to her BN CO the next day she told the husband that his wife needed to "just let it go" and not take it personally that she was now being asked to work with a guy that tormented her the entire deployment. Way to go BN CO with being soo sympathetic to another female officer.
Not sure what's happening to her today other than behavioral health was supposed to follow up with her and they never did. She has her regular counseling appointment on Thursday but what if she didn't ask for help like she did? We already have the highest suicide rate in all of Army at this duty station but lets add to it by ignoring a true issue with women and the Army and their failure to address sexual assault.
You see a commerical from Time Life for Hard & Heavy, a compulation 2 disc set of hard rock music you grew up with. *sigh* I'm frickin' old now.
After 7 pages of writing, a review by an attorney in a related but different field I turned in my rebuttal. I have never felt so sick to my stomach but its done. I also tried to be professional and set up at appointment time to meet with her to answer any of her questions regarding my written reply.
I think that meeting went well. I brought up my suspicion that the guy was trying to put something in his record that he could then turn around and sue the Army for discrimination. Her follow on question to that was well would you accept the document again, I said no but I wouldn't accept the original either. I firmly believe the employee altered multiple parts of the document before handing it to my co-worker - so the thing's not authentic in the first place. I asked for a short training course from the local military personnel folks on DD214s so we don't end up in a similar place again. Overall I think it went well.
I have a weird feeling that umm she was setting this up for good cop/bad cop or to be our knight in shining armor. Right now as long as I get off with the admonishment I asked for or anything other than a suspension I will take it and run.
Now I just get to wait for the written response.
I am doing MUCH better by the way. Getting some these things out of the way, having family and friend visits to look forward to and just trying to take a step back and just enjoy the joy of a 20 month old learning new things is helping. I knew my feelings weren't a chemical issue but just too much self imposed stress. I'm still looking at resigning after I pay off the last of my school and the crappy fence after they re-do it to my liking.
Let me show you pictures and then explain....
Yeah they started this two Mondays ago. First we couldn't find the property marker so they were going to call the surveyer. I found the marker that night in the dark and marked it for them. Then we had all this crappy weather. The posts went in Tues, it rained Wed. They dropped off the rails and pickets Thursday and it rained all Friday. Saturday they did the neighbors fence first.
The next Mondy I came home to find all of what I showed you. I called and had everyone's ass. First the pickets are too far apart. Oz can fit his torso through up to his melon (thankfully its too big). I asked for 2 1/4" and got 3 3/4" instead. The salesman tried to blame me, until I showed them the email where I orginially asked for 2" but was told that 2 1/4" was standard. They are sanding off the post tops that look like crap because they use a frickin chainsaw. And they are fixing the posts where the rails have a large gap because the chainsaw weilding yahoo cut them too short. They are going to merry up the pickets at the corner posts to that the street doesn't see the 2X4s and all that where everything meets at the corner. Lastly they are fixing the picket spacing as well as using their heads and covering the seams at the posts with a frickin picket.
I was all ramped up for a fight too. I had my dad on standby on the phone to yell at them via speaker phone and I planned on contacting the local news station that does a "that's messed up" segment and I planned on reporting them to the BBB, as well as spread it through my FRG that these people take advantage of military members and deployed spouses. Luckily, he wasn't a total asshat and these things are being fixed.
Why the hell they aren't here today like he said he would be I don't effin' know but I won't call him the owner has a family and I have a fence, albeit a retarded, slappy happy POS one at the moment. They are very lucky they haven't charged my card either or I would have their heads on pikes in my front yard.
Why doesn’t anyone pay Kelly for the stuff they take from her store? Manny just asks for it and Kelly just hands it out.And for that matter, why doesn’t ANYBODY pay for anything? I mean I’ve never seen Mrs. Portillo pay for the repairs Manny makes.
Why isn’t there a husband to Manny’s sister and a father to her child?In fact why aren’t there any partners at all for Abuelito, Kelly, Manny, Manny’s Sister or the Chinese or Indian families? There’s always just one parent with a kid??
Why don’t strangers freak out when tools talk to them?
How in the hell does Manny know how to fix everything from a stove, to a fire truck light bar to an elevator? I mean seriously do you WANT him fixing the elevator – something that can plummet to the earth from several stories up?
Where does Manny live, in the back of his shop?
Where does everyone pay the bills? I’ve never seen anything but the Mayor’s office.
Do the tools co-sleep in Manny’s bed?
Has anyone ever noticed just how much of an asshat Mr. Lopart is? He's always rude to Manny yet Manny fixes his screw ups all the frickin' time!
The Tools love eating but where the hell do they poop from?
Does anybody ever get laid in Sheetrock hills?
Does Kelly ever grab Manny behind the paint shelves and ask him if he wants to “hit this?”
Yes I've lost my mind with singleparenthood............
On Thursday I hit the breaking point of a culmination of a lot of things. Mentally, physically and spiritually I have had enough and am struggling. After a lousy day at work on my way to get Oz I had to pull over and cried uncontrollably for 20 minutes. I felt so sad, overwhelmed and without hope. Throw in a few dark thoughts and I basically scared the shit out of myself. I went home that night and promised myself that if I still felt this way the next morning I'd call someone.....I did and I did.
I called my non-biological sister. She's a sister by adaption not adoption but I've become a member of her family when hers were abusive shits and she formed her own family. I knew that if I exposed it all, said it all, without abridging or editing anything that she wold not freak out. I didn't need a state of panic I needed a rock.....A Christina if you saw the last episode of Grey's.
First, just talking outloud, even the dark stuff made a thousand pound weight feel more like 20 lbs. I've taken on too much this deployment and something has got to go. I'm working fulltime, my work is trying to suspend me for taking a stupid form someone marked out the word "homosexual" on with whiteout, I've got a full course load for grad school, the husband's deployed, I'm a single parent, my kid is a toddler, my FRG is not very active and I have no family around to lean on physically. My sister wondered how it took me 5 months into the deployment before I reached my limit.
We worked out some things like she's coming to visit in May, the MIL is coming in April and I am to ask my parents or my brother to come out in June. Either they can babysit or I get a sitter and at least one night while they are here I am to go and do something, anything that I want to do. I also need to evaluate my feelings once a week and if after a few weeks or a month if I still feel sad, hopeless or overwhelmed I am to get my arse to a doc and look at being seen for depression.
I'm also setting up a time line to resign from work. After I finish writing up my response to my proposed suspension and I get what ever it is I am railroaded into I am either finding a new job or resigning. Right now my income pays for home improvements and the last of grad school. I just bought a new fence and have one last semester of school to pay for. After those two things are paid off if I haven't found a new job I'm giving a single finger salute to work and resigning. Money won't be free flowing like it is now, but we can survive with just one income.
Unfortunately I may lose my mind since I enjoy working when I don't work in an office of asshats. I like the adult conversation that I get from working with customers and such. I also worry because Oz loves it at daycare. He loves the kids, his vocab is off the charts (minus mommy teaching him the f-bomb) and really enjoys his teacher. I'm hoping to find a job somewhere else so I don't have to quit the big picture just get out of the nuthouse.
Anyways, I feel like I can at least breath now. I have a plan of attack, a plan of what to do should these feelings not go away and am reaching out to my family and friends for support which they are happy to give. I can't wait until June which is pretty much my cutoff date for leaving the nuthouse. So there is a light at the end of tunnel, thank God for my sister.
