You probably did the same things, and though I'm a boy, I could still play wife, and dress up to. I was a fairly open-minded young lad. You pushed around the baby carriage with the racially mixed baby to include everyone, even though half my class didn't even speak english. The teacher would drag me away from any fun I would be having. Good fun, or bad. Either it was a time stipulation, or a break in the rules causing my ejection from the 6x6 square that was my un-walled house. My refrigerator, microwave were the wood kind, and didn't work. The phone wasn't connected into the wall, and the dishes were always piled up on the sink. I thought I had escaped those boundaries with adulthood. I thought that there would no longer be anyone to mess with my time, to have unrestricted access into my home, and to have the authority to tell me all of the rules. The hindrance of all that still exists today.
The biggest is the time interference. Our job at the moment does not consist of a lot, other than the medial paperwork to be filled out. No benefit to us, just the C-Y-A of a commander and his great idea for making something 'safer.' The plan will most certainly fail every time, and the wasted trees, ink and time are made up for with this DUI, this fight or that death. And every time the leaders are covered. Little do they realize it's usually their hindrances, their interferences, their covering their own asses that leads to the problem. Trying to stop the problem only increases it. You can preach and preach not to do something. Hold people at work longer, and take away weekends, or use some duplicity to try and scare individuals to not to the wrong thing. To not drink so much, to not fight so hard. But the stresses added have a bigger effect on the every day, and the not-so every day soldier. They cope with drinking, and pushing and punching, because after all didn't you train them to do that? and then pull hard on the reigns when it came time to run.
They not only fuck with our time out of their own personal ass protection, but they also fuck with our families time. A family who has been waiting to see us for 11 months or more, and they can't get a straight answer. They get the run around like we do, and they wait all night for us to arrive, only to be told multiple times of this change or that. A 3 hour bus ride later, and then an early morning the next day, and a shorter than promised weekend (promises have not been kept), and then the grand invention of re-instituting our normal schedule of CQ, or PT and all for what? To waste our time more, and yours too. Be wary of any man with marital problems who is in charge. They like work.
I'm not saying that I don't want to do nothing, I have a job in garrison. It has to be done, but you have to wonder at what point it should start. The common sense factor, a factor not used in 2P, would determine that if your equipment is still on a boat on it's way from Iraq, and won't get here for awhile, what work, what training can be done? 24 hour guard duties on long weekends? Is that training for what a day of deployment felt like for their girlfriends or wives? I'm pretty sure they don't need any reminders. A man not being able to come home to dinner because a ridiculous time wasting institute like 24 hour duty of guarding the barracks.
The barracks, they're not all bad, except they might as well not have walls. Suite style, with two people per a bathroom and kind-of-kitchen area, that is more like the one from my preschool class. Dishes piled high in the sink with the pizza boxes on the refrigerator, and the microwave filled with aroma of Ramen Noodles. Not a real kitchen. No where to cook. So you're subject to eating on a time schedule at the Dining Facility, that's always over crowded and always changing times it opens, and you finish dinner at 5 and hungry at 9, and you wish you were old so you could just go to bed. You eat the same menu day after day, and long for one from mom's table. Or at least your best imitation.
They are always clean, but not out of discipline, or good house-keeping, more out of fear of punishment. Anyone ranked above you can come in and go through all your belongings, search your drawers and be satisfied with you cleanliness or make you pine oil one more time. You don't have any rights, and though you don't pay for your room, you would rather have the option to. It's something a civilian would call and invasion of privacy, and you wonder why your CO doesn't have to have a search warrant.
The Physical Training in the 35 degree weather with shorts and t-shirts is something I've been used to since day one of the Army. Infantry is hard, and it gets tiring. At some point it's okay not be hard every day. You don't have to prove that you are a bad ass by exercising cold, or staying at work late or going in god awfully early. I don't buy into it, especially with the wasted efforts. All that we do, our early morning wake ups and the 5 mornings we have ran till we puked the night befores wine, beer, or whiskey up, is not going to matter come January 13th. We have 30 days approximately of doing nothing but kickin' back at home, tippin' up beers and get fat on all the foods that our mom's can cook. The fish you're going to reminisce about to buddies that your aunt can make is going to negate all the efforts we are putting in this morning and tomorrow. Worthless really, and it's amazing that something so clear isn't perceived that way. So we run our 5 miles and 100 push-ups and freeze in the process, all so we can get fat and bloated on Christmas turkey and New Years champagne.
This might sound like some kind of sob story, or a complaint about work. I don't mind doing what I need to do here. PT is whatever, and I've never had a problem, even after a long night of drinking. But it's this sense that it matters, that we should be hard and not miss our families, not want to spend time with them, and that that power is put into the discretion of morons who are so institutionalized that they wear a belt to wal*mart that has enough gadgets to make Q or Batman a little upset. Life is a preschool class to us. We have our finger painting areas, and our outside areas. We have our teachers that enforce the rules, and give us timeouts. I guess the only real difference, other than the obvious age one, is that in my preschool class was organized. Even through all of that chaos, my teacher always got us our nap time, our playtime, our food, and didn't hold us after class just because she thought there was more that we could do.
Without a kitchen, and my desire to cook... I'm drawn to my g/f Gina's kitchen where I attempt recipes I grew up on.
Even for my gringo mom, this enchilada casserole is excellente.
there is nothing that says killer better than a calendar full of kittens...
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