Tag Archives: military

Gaming: A Love Story

Posted on by Standard 3

It would come as no surprise to those who know me that I have a rather obsessive gaming streak. This condition has only gotten worse with time. But every time someone mentions my odd fascination I can only think of one instance where it was painfully apparent.

I was playing a game on the wii called ‘Paper Mario’. Now, before I am judged for the gaming console, yes I own and play both ps3 and xbox games, but Mario has been a faithful companion throughout my life and it would be a terrible shame to leave him behind.

Alright, on this bright and sunny day, my sister was watching me as I went through the levels. Switching views and pressing buttons that, god bless her, she will never understand, when I reached a point (as all gamers do) that was difficult to figure out. I had the guide, but my pride refused to allow me to perform that travesty without at least beating the game on my own ONCE. The giant flower kind was defeated and there was a hall of paintings. Going back did nothing. There was no one left to fight and no place to go. I stared at the screen switching the views back and forth until I was a little dizzy.

Rebekkah stared too, but when she had given up hope, made food and ate it, in fact, I kept searching. And finally I saw it. The tiny, hair line crack in the ground before the first painting. (It was so small because we had a small TV… details are not easily seen). “Ha!” One ground pound into the hidden room and I was moving again. I picked up the items, hit the switches and continued on.

Bek didn’t understand how I figured out the puzzle, nor did she understand how I was able to know exactly what to do with the items the game gave to me. It made me laugh, and I tried to explain… and as the nerd chatter exited my mouth I was hit by an epiphany. She will never understand it because she doesn’t care to. Its not important to her. It wasn’t a skill she wished to have nor cared to. 

With that I just smiled, nodded, and continued my game. To this day she brings it up, still uncertain of how I did it. Its endearing and is one of my favorite memories from that era.

-bug

 

Survey Says

Posted on by Aside 3

Today I took a ‘random’ survey sent out by PACAF (Pacific Air Force for those of you who don’t know). It was about my training and what we could do to improve upon it. I answered the questions to the best of my ability and finally came to the last section: ‘If you would like to make a suggestion or have any further comments please write them in the area below.’

Oh, ok. I can do that. There are many improvements to be made, and I will certainly help you out. Don’t worry,

Caitie travelling alone...

Air Command, I got you.

I started with basics about what we learned in tech school and what we actually use. A lot of the stuff we learned is obsolete and most of our leadership doesn’t understand my job anyway. Our CDCs looked like they scraped up enough information to get by with rather than creating an actual form of guidance for us to reference. Our on the job training was the only actual instruction we receive. But it wasn’t good enough to stop there. There were parts of my career that don’t make sense in certain squadrons, better bring that up too. And while we’re at it we should probably throw something in there about people full-heartedly believing that we are magicians and can drop everything to look at their computer because it will ‘just take a second’. Bitch, Work. Do you go to it?

I spent a good hour and half typing, spell checking and re-reading my ‘suggestions’. It flowed gracefully. It lacked most of my sass and came across professional. I was quite proud of it. After my sixth or seventh read through I decided this was as good as it was going to get.

That is when the fateful moment came to hit ‘submit’.

Then I got a wonderful little error message that read: “your comment exceeds 200 characters in length.”

What? CHARACTERS? Not 200 words (this was about 600 words). 200 CHARACTERS. That means punctuation and spaces are being counted.

You mean to tell me that you just let me type a damn essay into your stupid little comment box and didn’t warn me that there was a limit? You know what Air Force, you’re a bastard. You don’t care what I have to say. You don’t want instruction on how to improve. What you want is a standardized ass-kiss annually. That isn’t my game. I don’t play that shit.

I deleted my beautiful work and replaced it with this: “Stop wasting valuable time with surveys. I’m an airman who does 9 different programs with no help because you can’t decide what my job is. I’d love to chat, but as I said, I need to get back to work. Must be nice to have an automated system do it for me.”

Most of my ire died out after lunch, but its a damn shame that I couldn’t send that in. Oh well, cei la vie.

-Bug

Haterade

Posted on by Standard 6

The last two years in the military have taught me a few things. 1) Cuss words are just sentence enhancers… they aren’t necessary, but they do emphasize the emotions in which you wish to convey. 2) You won’t always like your bosses and sometimes quitting isn’t an option. And 3) I really dislike military dependents. If you don’t know what a dependent is, its basically a human leech that affixes itself to a military member and then projects an almost admirable sense of self entitlement.

This post is about that last one. Yesterday, while minding my own business, I decided to go running after work.

 

Little did I know that on this day my track would be inhabited by all of the dependopotamus’, but their spawns as well. Apparently they were having an ‘Eggstraviganza’ for Easter and had reserved the bottom floor of the Weasel’s den for the evening.

No big deal, I’m headed to the second floor and am only passing through. Or so I thought. Apparently this was an Airman Volunteer Opportunity and probably the bitchiest woman I have ever encountered in my life stopped me on my way through the throng of children. “I thought I told you to put more Gatorade out of the spouses while they were running. Why is this table empty?” I know this face, this woman is the wife of an officer in OG.

“Excuse me?” The look on my face could wilt flowers.

This is the natural cycle.

“Did I stutter? Should I go talk to your Commander?” I would have thrown down right there, but lets be honest, if this woman sat on me I’d probably break. She has at least 200 lbs on me, for whatever reason once these women get married they give up on fitness and start gaining weight like its a personal goal.

“Ma’am, I’m on my way to the track. I don’t work here.” Good girl. Stay nice.

“I don’t care who your are. Do you know who I am? Go get the spouses Gatorade.”

My dad will like this one, ” I’d like to, I wanted to, in fact, I almost did… but then… you asked.” I side stepped the Gorgon and kept on my merry way.

“Don’t you walk away from me! I want your name and rank right now!” She looked like trying to keep up with my light gait was the most exercise she had done since the 90s.

nuff said.

It was this moment where MY Commander saw this woman chasing after me and asked me what was going on. Before I could reply, the woman started in on how disrespectful I was being etc.etc. She was shushed and then she asked me again what was going on. “Sorry Lt Col Jost, I was headed to the track to time my run when this lady stopped me accusing me of not following her orders, then demanded, even though I’m not volunteering at this function, to set up refreshments. I don’t even know where to get what she is asking for and I have places to be after I leave here.”

This moment will live in my memory as a glorious moment in life. “Its a good thing you are my airman, in my squadron, and under my command. Its nice to see that you are taking your PT seriously. I’m sorry that happened to you. Please, go ahead. You don’t have to be here.”

The woman looked like my Commander slapped her in the face. But since my Lt Col out ranks her Maj husband she couldn’t say a damn thing.

And so ends the story. I would like to say not all dependents are like that, because truly not all of them are, but a lot of them are. In 4 years I hope to see less of them… but for now its unavoidable. I feel bad for the poor saps who married these monsters.

-Bug

The Exceptionally Long Road To Fitness

Posted on by Standard 1

I’m in the military. Being fit is only optional if you don’t care if they throw you out. Seeing as that isn’t the way I want to go out (I pictured something more like ‘A1C dies surfing a tsunami on a 2X4), I have to conform. That’s not a strong point of mine.

Throughout life I have made a habit of doing the opposite of what the crowd did. I joined ROTC when everyone was joining team sports and FAA or Key Club, I created a semi-racist club just because I got bored at a predominantly black school, etc.etc.  And that made people blindly follow me. This is how I came to the conclusion that joining the military was a good idea for me. It made no nevermind that I had never in my life done a sport of any kind, and therefore was incredibly out of shape. This would haunt me for the rest of my career.

Basic only marginally helped me get a little better. I am an incredible klutz,  on week 6 of basic I tore a ligament in my right ankle. Needless to say this didn’t help my already suffering physique.  Tech school PT was a joke. I wasn’t the slowest person out there, therefore, I assumed I was doing fine. Then the real air force happened. No scheduled PT time meant I wasn’t going. Not going led to eating bad because, hey, I just got out of basic, I can afford it. Well… you can’t afford it for 2 years.

Recently I started to feel everything around me spinning out of control. My job was stressing me out, my health was deteriorating and my lack of exercise had nothing to do with it. On top of that I had recently failed a PT test and leadership was coming down hard on me. I felt helpless.

That’s when I started dating Levi. He made me feel better about everything going on, not placating to my bad moods but making me do things to relieve stress. Namely: Running.Having someone to look good for will make you do things that normally you wouldn’t do. As I’m sure everyone can relate to. I mean, who ENJOYS diet and exercise? No one. I want chocolate cake everyday but I know that doesn’t fit with the image I have in my head. So to the track I went with an iPod and bad attitude.

At first it sucked horribly. I hate running. I am terrible at it. But damn if don’t feel great afterwards. He gave me something to control in my crazy life. My new PT schedule was getting noticed and leadership started to lay off me. I had a blood transfusion and I started getting faster. It was actually nice to think you can do better, know you can do better, and then do your best. It was painful but at the end of the day you know you did something.

Then something amazing happened. I started noticing muscle tone. My goals shifted from just running because I could control it, to running because it was good for me and made my outside look as good as I felt inside. No dietary supplements or quick fixes, just natural exercises.

Motivation is a key element, and knowing you are your own worst enemy in that field is also important. It isn’t easy, but since when is anything that is good for you easy? That isn’t how life works.

If I can do that anyone can. Unless you’re like my sister who has been smoking for 10 years and apparently has earned the right to 1) Never run and 2) Smoke inside. I will concede that point.

-Bug

Mother Prayers

Posted on by Standard 2

Sometimes I have to sit in wonder at just how detailed God was with His creation. And nothing shows me the evidence of God’s sense of humor more than my own family.

When Rebekkah was born, I was sincerely unprepared for this serious, rather pessimistic child. Everything was a battle for me with her. She refused to talk for the longest time. She was over a year old when she began to walk. I am convinced she was weighing the pros and cons about getting hurt, and erred on the side of caution. She was (and is) stubborn. While she is worth every minute, she was a lot of work.

In contrast, my younger daughter, Caitlyn, was her opposite. Born only a year later than her preemie brother, Caitlyn was a quiet, good-natured baby. Thank God. Dj was one, and Bek was two, so I was severely exhausted all the time. Bek was always worried, Dj had figured out how to get out of his bed, and then out of the house at all hours of the night, and I was desperately trying to keep them all safe. It was hectic, and I’d be lying if I said I was enjoying the moment. I was just trying to survive….

During that time, I was beginning to be concerned about Cait because she seemed to have that same intense seriousness Rebekkah had had as a small child. Cait just seemed to sit back and watch everything happening around her. It occurred to me more than once that she was probably trying to figure out what she’d done in a previous life to end up in this chaos of a family.

Having three kids in three years, the grandparents were losing their excitement at the birth of each one. It happens. And when Cait showed up, there wasn’t much fanfare on any of their parts. It distressed me that no relatives seemed genuinely thrilled about her.My mother had all but adopted Rebekkah, and Dj was the first born grandson on his father’s side…that family adored him. But Cait seemed to only have her mom. It made me feel more protective of her, and it also triggered in me the need to develop the bonds between the kids. My heart  cried out to Jesus that someone love Caitlyn the most. As a mom, I can’t show favoritism, but every kid needs to think they are the “best” in someone’s eyes.

And then Jesus answered my prayer in the form of Don. From the minute that baby saw him, her eyes lit up in a way I’d never seen, and he was in love with her right back. She was immediately the favored one, and he was adored right back. There was something there that both had been waiting for. Their bond was instantaneous and strong. It would seem she had been a Daddy’s girl all along — she’d just been waiting for the right Daddy.

It has been a long running joke in this family that Rebekkah and Dj belong to me, but Dad has exclusive ownership rights to Caitlyn. They have a bond that is so powerful that it has been used on occasion to get the others out of trouble. Cait had an “in” with the judge of the house, and she pulled strings constantly to get reduced sentences for the others. She would have been an awesome lawyer — she’s been practicing the art her entire life. Their relationship catapulted me into the disciplinarian position of the family for the first time in my motherhood.

All grown up, my little Caitlyn is far away in Japan. She has had to brave several earthquakes, a tsunami, and a nuclear meltdown all without her Dad or me there to help her. And now, she is having medical troubles that scare me to death. And because she is now the property of the United States, I have no say in any of it.

When I began feeling morose about my helplessness in this child’s case, I try to remember the prayer, and realize that Jesus answered that desire of my heart perfectly. He loves Caitlyn like a favorite child, and He is not bound by the laws of the United States military. He’s right there with her, doing what I can’t do for her.

In the midst of diapers, formula, ear infections, pacifiers, and the million and one other things we get busy with when our babies are small, we always hold on to this hope that one day, these kids will grow up, and we won’t worry about them so much. I guess this hope is necessary, but it seems a bit of a false one. Instead, I find that I actually worry and pray more for them as adults. The pains are more pronounced, the disappointments are more devastating. And the environment control we once had is gone forever. They’re on their own…..

Jesus is the only safety net I can spread beneath these lives. Prayer is my only tool.

However, I have more than enough proof that God answers the prayers of mothers. :-)

– Cathie M.