What do you think the military owes families?

Seriously. I'm asking.

Like most, I've been outraged about the shutdown of the MyCAA program with no notice. When my first friend told me she was now out $800 tuition because of it - right when she needs to make a first college tuition payment for her son - I shook with anger. When I logged on to Facebook and saw just how many of my fellow military spouses were affected, I was incredulous. And then when I read the DoD's response, that the program was shutting down because too many people used it - and this after they spent who knows how much money to spread the word about MyCAA at Education Centers and FRG groups throughout the world - I was insulted.

The whole thing has got me thinking.

Obviously, if our Soldiers worked for IBM, we wouldn't necessarily expect tuition assistance or other programs. But our Soldiers don't work for IBM. We're a whole world away from IBM. So I ask you now, what do you think the military really owes families?

I know it's an open (and loaded) question. And it's somewhat open to interpretation. But I'm hoping to hear back from a lot of you about what your expectation really is. I think it's something I may write about - so if you are willing, please leave a comment below. Or if you want to really go into detail, feel free to email me at nonessentialequipment@gmail.com.

I can't wait to read your answers. I still can't quite figure out my own.

Kristy Kaufmann addresses the Congressional Military Family Caucus.

It's definitely worth a watch. I'm glad that there are women like Ms. Kaufmann out there addressing mental health issues for military families:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=292804056975

(Unfortunately, I can't embed, but you can see it in all its glory on the Congressional Military Family Caucus' Facebook page).

Add this to the "Tell me something I don't know" file

As wars lengthen, toll on military families mounts.

Note that they don't mention anything about FRG volunteers. Or how much the Army is relying on said volunteers. *sigh*

Military millionaires in the making.

You know, I read CNN's Millionaires in the Making blog for the comments. People are damn snarky. Mix that with stupid and you get an instant recipe for laughter.

This week, they covered a married couple who both happen to be active duty Captains in the Army. I was not disappointed. The comments go above and beyond my expectations.

You want your soldier to have a cel phone? Really?!

One of the biggest demands that families had before our unit deployed was that their husbands be able to take their mobile telephones with them. I thought this a terrible idea for a variety of reasons. One, you can be tracked with a mobile phone on a network. Two, if you ring your soldier at the wrong time and his phone is on, there goes any chance of hiding. And three, well, chances are, even with that phone, you aren't going to talk to him any more often than you would anyway. At least, if the soldier is doing his job and not putting his comrades in danger.

But I must admit, when I made arguments against bringing mobile phones to Iraq, I never thought of the accidental pocket-dial. And as a soldier named Stephen Phillips just found out, those kind of accidental pocket dials can happen at the wrong time.

Interesting.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who is concerned about the rising Evangelical element in the Army.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/26/atheist.soldier.ap/index.html

I'm curious as to what you all think of this lawsuit. Has it any merit? And does anyone else giggle a bit when they realize that it appears there is at least one atheist -- even in a foxhole?

Read this now.

This Sunday's NY Times Magazine's Lives Essay: Frances Richey's "Inventory," a poem for her son in Iraq.

This is just ridiculous.

An article in today's New York Times discusses the difficulty for some soldiers to receive their citizenship, even after a directive from President Bush to put them at the front of the line. One soldier, Abdool Habibullah, honorably discharged from the Marines after a tour in Iraq, has been waiting for years pending a "background check."

The saddest part?

In the meantime, Mr. Habibullah is working as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic in
Connecticut, though he hopes to get a better-paying job in the federal
government once he is naturalized. In October, Mr. Habibullah’s father and
grandmother became citizens in separate ceremonies, though they applied fully
two years after he did.

Mr. Habibullah has passed the citizenship test and been
interviewed, and he said he does not know what to do to move his application
through the backlog faster.

“Every time I ask about it, I get the same answer:
it’s pending the background check,” Mr. Habibullah said as he looked over his
military medals, which are displayed on a wall in the Mount Vernon, N.Y.,
apartment he shares with his wife and 1-month-old son.

Funny how his background didn't take nearly as much time to examine when he decided to sign up for the service.

All of a sudden, I'm really glad that CPT Dick is going to Iraq.

Because, after all, it could be the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. I just read an interesting and heartbreaking article about the state of things there in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

What every young wife should know about military balls.

1. It is not prom.
2. Yes, your dress can be too short or too low cut.
3. No matter how many times you've taken the AFTB class, when it's time to go through the receiving line, neither you nor your husband will remember which side you are supposed to stand on while walking through.
4. There is never enough free hooch.
5. How good a time you have is directly proportional to how good your hair looks and how comfy your dress is.
6. You will spend over $100 for little more than a dried hockey puck of meat, mystery potato and a vegetable that has been overcooked in butter.
7. If no one mentions the "Guess the stripper" game to you during the course of the evening, chances are, someone decided that you might be her.
8. The Commander's wife may have had a few too many and had a really good time but you are never to mention that you saw it happen.
9. Always, always find a seat next to the couple that brings their own bottles.
10. No matter how good someone told you the guest speaker is, he will always talk for much longer than anyone really wants him to.
11. And -- this is important -- see #1.

Straight talk on Iraq?

An interesting article in the NY Times interviews current students (primarily Majors) at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College and their take on mistakes made in Iraq.

Soldiers' Angels Challenge.

The call has gone out for Military and Military Spouse bloggers to try and get 5 readers out there to register for Soldiers' Angels. If you do register, but "Non-Essential Equipment made me do it!" in the comments section.

It's a worthy cause. Go ahead and do it!

Another rant.

What happened to the sense of personal accountability and responsibility? Seriously?

My start as FRG leader has not been a great one. Outside of the leader hand-off drama and the accompanying smackdown, my short tenure has been marked by ladies who believe my job is to pick up their slack when they make mistakes or decide not to bother to take care of their own business. A few examples:

(1) We have a wife who is in the states. Her husband was in another unit OCONUS and thought he'd be headed stateside. So he sent her back early on the Army's dime. And he did so against the advice of his command.

So what's now happened? She wants to come back and be with her husband. But she can't afford to move back here or live here on her own dime. So she wants to reneg on the agreement that her family made with the Army and make the Army pay for her to come back and provide her housing, all the while complaining about how the Army has let her down and doesn't care about families. And she's spouting this line to any and everyone who will listen.

But the best part? She's already managed to do this once. He was stationed overseas before and she choose to return early and then found a way to get back courtesy of Uncle Sam. It just pisses me off. We have so many wives who are doing the right thing, who are going through the long process of command sponsorship now made even longer by the Army's transformation. And now they probably have to wait even a few days more since the powers-that-be have to listen to this chick whine. Again.

(2) Our unit has a ton of pregnant ladies right now. And I know they've been briefed on family care plans. I know this because I could probably do the family care planning spiel in my sleep and I'm not pregnant. But still, we have a bunch of ladies who are about to pop who are only now coming forward and saying, "I want my husband to come home. I don't have anyone here to watch my kids when I go into labor."

Now, my civilian friends who are pregnant have two or three back-up plans and they only have to worry about their husbands maybe losing mobile phone reception for 10 minutes a day on the freeway. My one friend, L., has a list of no less than 6 numbers to call both in her wallet and taped on her refrigerator at home in the case that she goes into labor and is unable to make the calls herself. She jokes that she would tattoo all of those numbers on to her body, you know, if they weren't so wacky about pregnant chicks getting inked.

She's that serious about making sure that there is someone that she trusts there to watch her older daughters when it comes time to push. I wouldn't expect anything less.

This is your pregnancy. These are your children. Why would you not make sure that you had a family care plan in place so you could concentrate on popping that baby out in peace? And you are a military spouse, why would you ever assume that your husband would definitely be home? These are the most important points.

But then, if you are going to ask me for help, why on earth would you curse me out when I try to explain that I cannot guarantee that your husband can come home -- that is a chain of command issue -- and that you need a back-up plan at the very least for labor because I'm assuming that if your husband can come home, you won't be having all four of your other kids in the delivery room, too?

(3) And finally, we had to set up an AER loan for a family of 5 that had no money in their bank account. Not a dime. But when I stopped by today to make sure that the AER was taken care of? Mrs. Spendy couldn't help but tell me all about the two Persian kittens that they *had* to get for their girls for $700 a pop. $1400 for kittens! I just about had kittens when she told me.

I don't know. I know that my heartstrings should be pulled when I read a story like the one that GBear posted on SpouseBuzz, but after doing the FRG thing for so many years, all I see are the inconsistencies in the story and the ways that this family probably did not follow advice or regulations. I see it every day. Now, that's not to say that the military doesn't make mistakes. It does. And when the Man messes up, believe you me, I will be the first one up there making a stink.

But people need to remember that God (and the Army) helps those that help themselves.

Rant.

I signed Munchkin up for a toddler preschool program about 10 days ago. He has always loved going to group daycare for the couple hours that I hit the gym and run errands and this preschool deal sounded perfect -- 3 hours a day, 3 times a week. I could get my stuff done and he could participate in daycare with a curriculum.

And I have to say, even an education snob like me was impressed with that curriculum. They go over colors, letters, shapes, days of the week, etc. Plus, they give the kids a ton of play time and schedule bi-weekly field trips to local attractions. Very impressive and just what you should do for pre-school kids -- make learning fun.

Last Friday's trip was to a wild animal preserve about half an hour away from here. All week, the teachers talked about the field trip and how the kids would see ostriches, camels and tigers. And caught up in the excitement, I started telling him all last week about how he was going to the preserve and would see all kinds of great animals. A book he loves features a bunch of farm animals, I wondered aloud if he'd see pigs and sheep at the petting zoo portion of the preserve. I talked up how he needed to behave and use his listening ears while he was there. I was just so psyched for the little guy.

Until I go to drop him off on Friday morning.

Apparently, yes, the program schedules the trips. But a parent has to accompany each child in order for them to go. No exceptions.

So I get there and am told, for the first time ever of this rule. Okay, I get it. It makes sense. I probably should have asked. I mean, you'd have to be off your nut to take 10 two-year-olds off post for any extended period of time. But I was super-annoyed at this discovery.

One, because they should have spelled it out to a new parent. That's their job. I had to sit through an hour long orientation where they repeated themselves again and again about the need for sufficient diapers and emergency back-up numbers. They could have been more explicit about how field trips work. I looked over all of the paperwork they gave me after I got home that afternoon and not one piece of it explained that parents had to accompany children on trips. Not one.

Two, because when I said I could not go -- I had scheduled an FRG-related meeting for that morning and could not reschedule -- they looked at me like I was the meanest Mommy in the world. The director had the audacity to say, "But the kids have been so looking forward to it! Munchkin loves animals so much I know he'd love it!" Well, guess what? You're right. He would have loved it. And if you had done your job and made sure I knew the rules, I could have rearranged my day and my kid wouldn't have to be disappointed.

That was the worst part. Munchkin was disappointed. He watched his new friends file out the door on their way to the park while I had to usher him into the hourly care room with all the babies (I won't even mention how mad I am that I had to pay for the hourly care, too). I was heartbroken for him. And as I heard the teacher start singing "Oh, MacDonald" in that perfect, Mary Poppins voice that all pre-school teachers seem to have, I felt about about an inch tall.

Mental note: mark all future field trips on calendar and schedule around them.

Knowing is half the battle.

Deployment postponed.

I'm mostly happy about it. But I swear, it wasn't even two minutes after I emailed the news out to our family that my mother-in-law wrote back and said, "With the pullback, maybe he won't even have to go!"

Uhhh, no, Mom. Sorry. Doesn't work that way.

As if we don't do enough already.

"Ma'am, your ID and this name don't match."

"I know, as I was just trying to explain, I'm clearing for my husband because he's already in the field at his next duty station."

"You can do that?"

"Yep. With a power of attorney, which is right there underneath the clear sheet."

"Really?"

"Yes. I've already done so at three agencies before I came to see you. You can ask your supervisor though if you want to double check."

"No, I believe you. Wow. I didn't know you could do that. When it comes time for me to clear, I'll have to get my wife in on it. You know, cut some of my work in half."

"Don't you even dare."