Ahhh, the base spouse FB page....

[ohyouknow]

It really gets some gems.  What's the favorite you've read on your local board?

Last night on ours someone posted that they were thinking of going back to work because they weren't cut out to be a SAHM after all.  To which the Vice Wing Commander's wife responded: "Carefully consider before you do that. You are the best person to raise your children, not daycare."

I replied that working moms raise their own children too w/a little smiley face, then she edited her comment to make me sound like a crazy person talking to myself.

[panicked]

I get so annoyed when people think that our place is barefoot in the kitchen, waiting wistfully for our soldier to return home. We don't get paid enough for me to be a SAHM. Plus, I enjoy working (mostly). I don't think that's bad and it angers me when it's portrayed as a negative. I've been all but shut out of the frg because they only meet during the workday. Chaps my ass.

[ohyouknow]

Holy shit Stan! That's awful. People are so cruel behind their online persona. :-(

panicked - you are preaching to the choir! I can't even read the "Toughest things about being a military spouse" lists without being like "WTF?"

[ohyouknow]

Jan 16, 2015 13:20:19 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 16, 2015 12:05:54 GMT -5 panicked said:

I've been all but shut out of the frg because they only meet during the workday. Chaps my ass.

Preach! audette has had this complaint too.

And when it's 2 AD members? I don't know what they do. Talking to Audette about how much she has to do for her H's OER bullet points (wrt to FRG and such), I mean really, let's say my dreams come true and I get to change components and be on AD. If I'm a company commander, H by then is a first sergeant. Neither of us have spouses who can be typical spouses of those roles. Ugh. And it's the same for any civilized dependent with any career of their own.

I remember that with Audette! That is craaaazy.
Move over to the AF, Stan. I didn't have anything to do with the Key Spouse stuff in my husband's last command and the Key Spouses were thrilled. There were some people who LOVE doing that, and they were so happy to have me out of the way. Kudos to them. It worked for both of us.

[cattledogkisses]

Jan 16, 2015 13:20:19 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 16, 2015 12:05:54 GMT -5 panicked said:

I've been all but shut out of the frg because they only meet during the workday. Chaps my ass.

Preach! audette has had this complaint too.

And when it's 2 AD members? I don't know what they do. Talking to Audette about how much she has to do for her H's OER bullet points (wrt to FRG and such), I mean really, let's say my dreams come true and I get to change components and be on AD. If I'm a company commander, H by then is a first sergeant. Neither of us have spouses who can be typical spouses of those roles. Ugh. And it's the same for any civilized dependent with any career of their own.

H is a company commander and I'm definitely not playing the "typical" role (pretty much for the reasons you listed: I work and go to school full time, and live 4 hours from where the unit is based). It's been fine. There's a fantastic group of NCO spouses who have been running the FRG for far longer than I've been around, so I'm perfectly happy staying in the background and letting them keep doing their thing. 

[Dory1988]

I'm convinced neither of our commands have an FRG. I take that back. I've met my husband's FRO. He's a retired Master Sergeant who gives me free soda and tells me how awesome I am every time I see him. Other than that I don't hear from the FRG.

ETA: As for the original post, one of the many spouse boards for the base we're at ends up on Dear Dependa pretty frequently. If that doesn't say something about it idk what does.

[meltoine]

I get frustrated because no one comes to our events. I'm a key spouse, and we're very careful to schedule things for an even mix of daytime, weeknight, and weekend activities. And no matter what, the same 6 people always show up. We're all SAHMs, so weekdays are easiest for us and I'm frequently tempted to just say F-it and only schedule stuff for when it's convenient for the people who actually come, but I wont.

As for FB gems, the day after our Christmas party, a spouse posted on FB this long rant about how she's been forgotten by her H's squadron during his deployment and when she was active duty this never would have happened, she's so pissed she didn't get an invitation to the Christmas party.

Turns out, they got married the day before he deployed. He never told anyone in the squadron that they had gotten married, she never joined the FB group or came to any events. We can't check in on you if we don't know you exist. It's a two-way street, yo.

[ggirl]

These are the posts that don't make me miss H being in the military lol. Every event during his last deployment was in the middle of the work day. I attended the pre deployment brief (had to leave work early to go) and one of the suggestions for staying busy while your spouse is gone? To get a job. I almost burst out laughing.

[Deleted]

Best one I have seen in a while:

Please no rude comments! Is it safe to lock your 2 year old in his room while sleeping at night?.. I'm having trouble with this, I say no but I'm being told it's safe in case there's a fire in the home?

Um....okay. I have no idea why you would ask this...or why you would ask it on a MILITARY board.

[amaristella]

Jan 16, 2015 14:52:10 GMT -5 meltoine said:

I get frustrated because no one comes to our events. I'm a key spouse, and we're very careful to schedule things for an even mix of daytime, weeknight, and weekend activities. And no matter what, the same 6 people always show up. We're all SAHMs, so weekdays are easiest for us and I'm frequently tempted to just say F-it and only schedule stuff for when it's convenient for the people who actually come, but I wont.

As for FB gems, the day after our Christmas party, a spouse posted on FB this long rant about how she's been forgotten by her H's squadron during his deployment and when she was active duty this never would have happened, she's so pissed she didn't get an invitation to the Christmas party.

Turns out, they got married the day before he deployed. He never told anyone in the squadron that they had gotten married, she never joined the FB group or came to any events. We can't check in on you if we don't know you exist. It's a two-way street, yo.

We did that. We scheduled for the people who showed interest. We did get the inevitable "but whyyyy don't you schedule events that work for me?" and our answer was always "Tell us what time works for you and what type of event you are interested in and we will gladly do that". We had people whine that you had to be in a secret club to get your topic onto the meeting agendas. Um, not only did we always ask for additional comments and suggestions at meetings, we gave out the group and our personal contact info. so that people could give us feedback. You can lead a horse to water....

[amaristella]

Jan 16, 2015 13:41:47 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

Jan 16, 2015 13:20:19 GMT -5 Stan said:

Preach! audette has had this complaint too.

And when it's 2 AD members? I don't know what they do. Talking to Audette about how much she has to do for her H's OER bullet points (wrt to FRG and such), I mean really, let's say my dreams come true and I get to change components and be on AD. If I'm a company commander, H by then is a first sergeant. Neither of us have spouses who can be typical spouses of those roles. Ugh. And it's the same for any civilized dependent with any career of their own.

H is a company commander and I'm definitely not playing the "typical" role (pretty much for the reasons you listed: I work and go to school full time, and live 4 hours from where the unit is based). It's been fine. There's a fantastic group of NCO spouses who have been running the FRG for far longer than I've been around, so I'm perfectly happy staying in the background and letting them keep doing their thing. 

You're totally fine. Just don't be "that" person. We had one once. We invited her to everything that the other key spouses were invited to (In our group key spouses could give input at board meetings but could not hold an officer position or vote for anything) as a courtesy. Every single time she emailed us all back with a detailed description of her day and why she was too busy to come and how her daughters/job/whatever was more important to her when a simple "Sorry, I am not able to make it" would have sufficed.

[amaristella]

Jan 16, 2015 21:09:57 GMT -5 al dente said:

A few months ago a women came on irate her husband got orders to South Korea. It went on for 100+ comments with tons of people saying they loved it there, had a nanny and house cleaner, tons of positive things.
The lady argued everyone with how she has 4 kids, that South Korea is right next to North Korea so how could the military ever dream of sending them there, and ended with her telling everyone they don't know her LYFE and this is why she only talks to people in her church who don't judge and persecute her. Lol.

Did anyone tell her to stay the fuck home? The military doesn't own you, only your spouse. If you don't want to go then DON'T GO. I currently have the opposite problem. I want to leave my location and the Navy doesn't want me to but they don't own me and they can't stop me from leaving. Therefor I am leaving. It is expensive as shit, though.

[amaristella]

Jan 16, 2015 21:20:33 GMT -5 al dente said:

Jan 16, 2015 21:14:50 GMT -5 amaristella said:

Did anyone tell her to stay the fuck home? The military doesn't own you, only your spouse. If you don't want to go then DON'T GO. I currently have the opposite problem. I want to leave my location and the Navy doesn't want me to but they don't own me and they can't stop me from leaving. Therefor I am leaving. It is expensive as shit, though.

Oh ya. But then she would be away from her husband and her four children need a father! And everyone was like "well you married into the military... You're lucky to even have the option to be together."

Shit. I was forced to make a series of grownup decisions because I am, in fact, a grown up and live with those decisions. -Lots of Dependas everywhere.

[audette]

Jan 16, 2015 13:41:47 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

Jan 16, 2015 13:20:19 GMT -5 Stan said:

Preach! audette has had this complaint too.

And when it's 2 AD members? I don't know what they do. Talking to Audette about how much she has to do for her H's OER bullet points (wrt to FRG and such), I mean really, let's say my dreams come true and I get to change components and be on AD. If I'm a company commander, H by then is a first sergeant. Neither of us have spouses who can be typical spouses of those roles. Ugh. And it's the same for any civilized dependent with any career of their own.

H is a company commander and I'm definitely not playing the "typical" role (pretty much for the reasons you listed: I work and go to school full time, and live 4 hours from where the unit is based). It's been fine. There's a fantastic group of NCO spouses who have been running the FRG for far longer than I've been around, so I'm perfectly happy staying in the background and letting them keep doing their thing. 

That's the problem - it's a crapshoot.  Sometimes there will be other folks who are happy to step up and do the FRG stuff, sometimes there isn't.  But it still has to happen for the commander's OER.  So even though I worked full time, and was on the road -internationally- for work at least 1 out of every 4 weeks during DH's command, I still ended up being the FRG leader...  Because there was no one else willing.

DH has left command.  The new commander isn't married, so the first sergeant's wife has been voluntold to take on the FRG.  She's not happy about it, but there just isn't much for other options...

But, anyways, yeah.  The whole concept of working spouses seems anathema in most units.  It's reinforced by stereotypes, but it's also just damn hard to maintain a career thru all the freaking PCS moves - so many spouses eventually give up...

[brandienee]

Jan 16, 2015 14:52:10 GMT -5 meltoine said:

I get frustrated because no one comes to our events. I'm a key spouse, and we're very careful to schedule things for an even mix of daytime, weeknight, and weekend activities. And no matter what, the same 6 people always show up. We're all SAHMs, so weekdays are easiest for us and I'm frequently tempted to just say F-it and only schedule stuff for when it's convenient for the people who actually come, but I wont.

This is really nice. I would actually go to events if they were available during the weekend or evenings. 

I used to go when we had a Commander's wife who had a job. She was awesome and understanding of everyone's schedules and made it work. We had a great culture when she was "in charge".

Our new CW isn't the same, She created a mandatory (lol) spouse meeting at 2:30 pm on a Thursday to discuss fundraising. Not only did the working spouses have issues with this, the moms and dads with school age kids were pissed. 

[panicked]

Jan 17, 2015 10:38:10 GMT -5 brandienee said:

Jan 16, 2015 14:52:10 GMT -5 meltoine said:

I get frustrated because no one comes to our events. I'm a key spouse, and we're very careful to schedule things for an even mix of daytime, weeknight, and weekend activities. And no matter what, the same 6 people always show up. We're all SAHMs, so weekdays are easiest for us and I'm frequently tempted to just say F-it and only schedule stuff for when it's convenient for the people who actually come, but I wont.

This is really nice. I would actually go to events if they were available during the weekend or evenings. 

I used to go when we had a Commander's wife who had a job. She was awesome and understanding of everyone's schedules and made it work. We had a great culture when she was "in charge".

Our new CW isn't the same, She created a mandatory (lol) spouse meeting at 2:30 pm on a Thursday to discuss fundraising. Not only did the working spouses have issues with this, the moms and dads with school age kids were pissed. 

mandatory spouse meetings? Oh lord, she's got another thing coming if she think she holds any kind of power like that.

[G22]

LOL to mandatory spouses meetings....in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday no less.

Our page is super low key and dead. I've always been surprised by that.

[NomadicMama]

u

Apparently, this woman also shared, on a different FB group, that her DH was TDY (she shared the country he was in), she'd lost her mil ID, did not have a ration card and did not yet have her mil license that would allow her to drive here.  She wanted to know the closest place, on the economy, to buy cigarettes.  My friend, who told me about that posting said than it deteriorated quickly.  Go figure.

[amaristella]

Jan 17, 2015 12:01:52 GMT -5 NomadicMama said:

u

Apparently, this woman also shared, on a different FB group, that her DH was TDY (she shared the country he was in), she'd lost her mil ID, did not have a ration card and did not yet have her mil license that would allow her to drive here.  She wanted to know the closest place, on the economy, to buy cigarettes.  My friend, who told me about that posting said than it deteriorated quickly.  Go figure.

Thank you for posting this. I made DH read it so he would stop rolling his eyes at me when he thinks about going away for a year.

[pennylane]

The only thing I have found entertaining so far on the page for our new duty station is the people who live on base complaining about the air traffic noise. Hello- you live on an air station. It seems pretty common sense to me that it isn't going to be quiet when you live near a runway.

[nsl]

This thread inspired me to go looking for a base spouse page for our duty station, and I found this gem inside of 30 seconds:

"Military spouses: Please refrain from vicious, isolating stares at other military spouses unless you are looking for violence."



ETA: OMG, there's another one claiming that she hasn't had a haircut in two years because she's too afraid of "locals" touching her hair.  DUUUUDE.  It's a city of 750,000; use Yelp like a normal person. 

[nsl]

Jan 18, 2015 23:37:21 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 18, 2015 22:52:57 GMT -5 nsl said:

This thread inspired me to go looking for a base spouse page for our duty station, and I found this gem inside of 30 seconds:

"Military spouses: Please refrain from vicious, isolating stares at other military spouses unless you are looking for violence."



ETA: OMG, there's another one claiming that she hasn't had a haircut in two years because she's too afraid of "locals" touching her hair.  DUUUUDE.  It's a city of 750,000; use Yelp like a normal person. 

Is that a racist thing do you think? 

Given where we live I think probably yes. 

[amaristella]

Jan 18, 2015 23:48:02 GMT -5 Stan said:

Jan 18, 2015 23:38:31 GMT -5 nsl said:

Given where we live I think probably yes. 

I figured. For how much I love the military, I sure hate a lot of people associated with it.

True that. I always think of that guy in the documentary Carrier who is just an extreme racist and he even ends up leaving the Navy during the course of the filming partly because of his racist attitude. But it's representative because there are bungholes in every crowd. The military has never been an exception. Speaking of Carrier, the CO who everybody liked and seemed like a great person....yeah. Google his name now and see what has transpired in the time since the documentary was filmed. Unbelievable, some people. In fact this article about sums up my opinions on the situation. Except for the the idea that Admirals are god-ly. To an extent they are because there's not a lot of accountability and what there is, is often inadequate. But at the same time Admirals are expendable because the Navy has too damn many of them. They have more Admirals than they know what to do with which is also shameful but a completely different topic.