Pissing Contest

I don't know if I'm having an off day or what, but I just want to bitch and complain... And honestly my husband is just tired of listening to it...

It drives me nuts when the Marine Corps makes exceptions... Why? Well because we never benefit from those exceptions. Selfish? Yes...

It just drives me nuts because my old neighbor who I try to remain friendly with since we have mutual friends is a crappy person, and her husband is an even crappier Marine... Well they just seem to catch all the breaks.

Her husband deployed once while they were dating... Then they got married and when they threatened to deploy him she goes and gets herself pregnant so they won't send him... And no, I'm not just speculating, I mean she was BRAGGING about how she wanted to get pregnant because they supposedly couldn't send him... Which I thought was crap, because while all this was going on, my husband was currently deployed and I was standing there talking to her holding a 4 month old who my husband had still yet to meet. But guess what... Even after they gave him orders to deploy, she wound up getting knocked up, and guess what, they pulled his orders and decided not to deploy him because they didn't wanna hear her bitch and complain.

Well good for her, she worked the system. So the next year he wound up deploying on a MEU for 6 months... He came home for 6 months, then it was time for the unit to deploy again... But of course she had a plan... She started bitching and complaining about some cosmetic surgery that she needed to get and wouldn't be able to take care of her son (even though her parents live there) she was very insist that her husband not deploy... Well it didn't quite work out as well as planned... They pushed back his 6 month deployment and just had him deploy the last 3.5 months, rather than the full 6. But still, she worked the system once again getting her husband's 6 month deployment redused to 3.5 months.

Well now, here it's been a year, and he got orders to Afghanistan. She tried her damnedest to get him out of them by saying that his great-grandfather was deathly sick (he's well in his 90's, that tends to happen), they sent him in the "late party" going over there so he could spend an extra week at the great-grandfather's bedside in Texas... But the sad thing is, they never went to go see his grandfather, they just went "home" to see their parents in San Diego. So for the past 3 months his great-grandfather has just gotten worse and worse. Now it's to the point he's on a ventilator and they're just waiting for everyone to say their goodbyes... Sooooo, now she's calling the Red Cross 4 and 5 times a day bitching about how they HAVE TO send him home... Well guess what, now they are. Which just pisses me off.

I know that seems totally cold and heartless... Trust me I know that... And I know I sound like a total bitch right now... But exceptions like this just REALLY piss me off. The Marine Corps says "Emergency leave is the term used to describe leave granted for a personal or family emergency requiring the member’s presence... When the presence of the service member will contribute to the welfare of a dying member of the service member’s or spouse’s immediate family; i.e., father, mother, person standing in loco parentis [step-parent], spouse, children, brother or sister." No where does it say anything about great-grandparents... When my husband was on his second deployment his grandmother died... But of course they told us that it wasn't a member of our "immediate family" so they would NOT be sending him home.

So when I make a comment to this girl about her counting her blessings because she just keeps getting lucky with compationent CO's (she didn't know his great-grandfather AT ALL, so she wasn't phased by his passing) she says "Well my husband's been deployed four times, yours has only been deployed twice so I don't think I would consider that lucky"

Mmmm kay... Ya wanna get into a pissing contest, one of those "deployments" was when she was still in high school, while she was still living at home with mom and dad, before they were even married... And another one of those "deployments" wasn't really a "deployment", he was just TAD in Japan.

Them:
Iraq: 3 months (they weren't even married yet)
MEU: 6 months
TAD Japan: 3.5 months <---Not "deployed"
Afghanistan: 3 months
Total months deployed: 11.5
Months away due to deployment/TAD: 15.5 month

Us:
TAD Meridian, MS: 3 months
Iraq, part 1: 7 months
Iraq, part 2: 8 months
TAD Myrtal Beach, SC: 2 weeks
TAD St. Louis, MO: 1 week
TAD USS Kearsarge : 3 weeks
Total months deployed: 15
Months away due to deployment/TAD: 19.5 months