Man, that's about back assward.

Real quick, because I've got about 1000 things to do today, but something just occurred to me. (And this is not so cynical. I'm typing this with a silly smile because the irony honest to goodness amuses me.)

Everyone says military wives have the toughest job in the world, right? You can't make one move around a military town without seeing ten things talking about how overworked, underappreciated, and overstressed military wives are. OK, I played that game for almost seven years. I can tell you, there are aspects of it which purely suck, and I imagine it would have been harder if I'd had more kids, or a lower ranking husband, but the fact is, that life as I lived it was an ill fit for me, but definitely not ridiculously hard like people paint it to be.

I'm going to tell you right now, it is 100x harder and more hectic on the outside! Don't get me wrong. BMW is a great company to work for, and we are SO unbelievably thankful for Thak's job there. We know what an amazing opportunity it is, and how rare it is for someone to be hired by such a high-end shop right out of school. Even so, from my end, this is harder than the military was. He makes less money (although that's a temporary condition), and while he doesn't work longer hours, the hours he does work are less forgiving. Sure, he probably COULD leave to come and help me with stuff that I really could use help with, but if he's not processing cars through his bay, he's not making any money, and while it would be nice to have him help with whatever it is, it doesn't do us a whole lot of good if we can't pay the bills, and if we want to pay the bills, he's got to fix BMW's. It's that simple.

I was actually talking about this with a civilian friend (who grew up a military brat, so she kind of understands both sides a little) the other day. I was laughing because of how the military wives go nuts over their husbands' paternity leave if the chain of command so much as dares to tell him when to take it, or doesn't let them tweak it to get him out of going to the field, or whatnot. It's amazing how much they take for granted that unless deployed, their husband will be there for every single thing. Thak won't get paternity leave. I really hope the baby's born on a weekend. He'll probably take a couple days off, but that's about it. We just can't afford more. They'd give it to him if he asked for it, sure, but it wouldn't be paid, and we just can't have that right now. Similarly, God Forbid a soldier (below a certain rank anyway) not finagle the day off work to watch the other kids so his wife can go to her OB appointment undisturbed. Even a higher ranking soldier will take the kids to work with him for things like that. We simply don't have that option anymore. I'm really glad most of my appointments are in home because it's just a ton easier with a toddler. On Monday, I have to go into the birth center and get my iron checked again (it's just standard procedure, one of the few we actually go by) and Orren will be going with me. It's not a bad thing. I don't mind taking him there, and everyone there likes him, but it's just the fact.

I've been hearing for the past almost 10 years about how the Army needs to be more family-friendly, but the short amount of time I've now spent on the outside, confirms what I'd thought all along. Take out the deployments, and it's already extremely family-friendly almost to the point of coddling. It's not bad out here. Don't get me wrong. We made the right decision, because another deployment would honestly be completely unacceptable to everyone in this family. It's just funny to see how much MORE self-reliant we have to be out here than we did in the Army, when to hear society tell it, it's the other way around.