Stephanie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

WARNING: If you don't want to hear a gal bitch and moan, this isn't the blog for you.

I went to sleep last night thinking that today was going to be a good day. When I woke up it seemed to be.

The weather here has been sporadic; One day it will be 25, and the next 75. I understand that since it doesn't get very cold in Texas that there's less preparation for is than there is in Alaska or Seattle, and the first day Stephen's school was canceled, I thought it was understandable since the city (if not state) had rolling blackouts and many places, including Stephen's school, had to go without water. Fine. Then last night I saw warnings all over the news and facebook that today there was a two-hour delay for school. At this point I was kind of rolling my eyes, since everyone has power and everyone has water and really, in my opinion, twenty-five degrees is not the end of the world.

We had all of these things that we had to do today, but we couldn't get going until 10:30 because we thought Stephen would have to go to school. Low and behold, we drive there, and not a soul was there. Great.

I really do enjoy our son's company, but I think the education he gets at school is important and should be a priority and if he can go to school, we want him there. We decided that we still had to go to Temple and be back in Killeen for a 2:30 dentist appointment, so we had better get on our way. We had time for lunch at BJ's, stopped at our (closest) bank branch to do a deposit, and then we made it over to Sam's Club and were in-and-out so that we could make it back to Killeen for Stephen's appointment on time.

Sure enough, at 2:30 when it was 47 degrees out, the dentist was closed with a polite note taped to the door. While the note was nice, a phone call would have been nicer. Had we known that school was canceled, we would have left Killeen earlier than we did. We probably would have gone to Round Rock and Austin and left in time to make it to our play date by 4pm.....Which would be our next bump in the road.

Around the time Stephen was tying his shoes to meet for a play date, I decided to make a quick confirmation call and was disappointed that they had changed their mind but forgot to tell me. Heck, at least we didn't pay our admission and stand there waiting, but had I known I would have never promised Stephen that we would do this and our day would have again gone differently. Even Sammie was decked out in a outfit that read something cute..."playdate playmate" or something like that....

At this point I had to get off the phone and tell Stephen that there was a change of plans and it broke my heart that he started crying. Once he calmed down I decided laundry was my new agenda and that I may as well throw in today's towel and I thought today wasn't going to get better, but it wasn't going to get worse. You must see where this is going...I jinxed it....More bad news.

Josh was supposed to get 10 days of leave when Samantha was born, but he was in school. Then when school was over, he was told there was too much to do and then he left the state for a month. Before he left, someone higher up the food chain told him that when he came back he could take his 10 days leave. At this point, it's really too short of notice to take any kind of vacation, but we were excited to have time together and it was supposed to fall over both my birthday and Valentine's Day.

One day Josh came home with his typical, "I have good news, and I have bad news," which seems to be the sort of thing I hear every time he has to tell me something Army related. The good news was that his leave paperwork was signed, but the bad news was as follows: *Many of the days he was given as leave was time he already had off, such as weekends, he was only given nine actual days, but all 10 days of his leave he was charged for, and then two days of his nine he had to work.

I was already astonished- I thought when you had leave that meant you DIDN'T have to work. Apparently when he was in school he missed something required of him and this was the only time they would let him make it up.

Well, tonight he gets a call saying that the original TWO times they told him he had to work didn't work for someone else, so now they had to change the dates in times. Somehow those two shifts turned into SIX shifts and now 5 of his 9 days off he will be working. In addition, of course, he doesn't get any additional time off, which he should have had in the first place.

These changes are effective as early as 8am tomorrow. He'll have to be up at 6:30, leave by 7 and I get to get the kids dressed and out the door by myself. Then tomorrow night I have had a meeting planned- one that I need to go to as soon as possible and that is only offered monthly and now it conflicts because not only is he supposed to work tomorrow morning, but he's also supposed to work tomorrow evening.

The next day, my birthday, I can no longer participate in Stephen's Valentine party at school or make it to a matinee as I had planned because he'll be at work. Then Saturday he's needed at work during the scheduled time for Stephen to play kickball, which means Stephen's going to have another disappointment if it's too chilly for Samantha to go.

I am on my second glass of wine in over a year. I am on quite a rant and I should probably just take my unhappy ass and go to bed but I want to end this with one final complaint: The next time someone tells me that I can't get the military discount (which is usually something pretty lame) they offer because I am not enlisted, maybe I'll just ask for a manager and let them hear this rant, as my husband isn't the only one who has to make sacrifices constantly for his role in the Army. Sometimes a haggard army wife deserves that 50 cents off their over-priced movie ticket.