No, not really.  Just kidding!  I’m in a strange mood today.  I’m not sure I could describe my mood, even if I wanted to…

Today, Rob leaves for work at 8:30 and says, “I’m going to Hanau, do you want to go with me?  If you are, I’ll be here at noon to pick you up.”

He’s here at noon, sharp and I’m still wearing my bedroom slippers!  So, quickly I change shoes and we’re out the door in 30 seconds flat.  We have 9 miles to empty in the gas tank, so Rob says, “Let’s go get some lunch at Taco Bell.”  I’m perfectly agreeable to that.  We’ll get gas afterwards.  So, 30 minutes later, we’re headed to the shoppette to get gas and every pump has an orange cones in front of them.  So, Rob parks the car and says, “Well, I can at least get my gum.”  We haven’t even finished crossing the street when some employees tell us that all of the systems are down and the store has been closed down.  5 miles to empty.

We quickly walk back to the car and I reach for the fuel coupons (which we were saving since we bought them when gas was still under $3 a gallon) and I say, “Will 100 liters be enough?”  “Yeah, it should be he says.  We’re only going to use half of them though.”  We drive to the next gas station and end up having to circle three times because someone was hogging all of the Super premium pumps.  2 miles to empty.  He fills up the car with 50 liters.  If we had paid full price (German prices) we would have paid 80 Euro or $125!  That’s outrageous!  How do the Germans do it?  We were getting cheap gas.  We only paid $3/gallon!  The gas tank wasn’t even full, though it was close.

So, we get to Hanau and we see about 10 Soldiers standing around, blaring their tasteless music.  They aren’t doing anything but chatting.  How annoying!  I quickly offer my assistance, but no one wants to take me up on the offer.  I came because I thought they could use my help.  I stood around for the better part of the afternoon.  I ended up cleaning up this warehouse.  It was the nicest thing around, but dirty as all get out!  Yuck!  There were 5 Soldiers standing around doing nothing.  I’m a nobody and since I don’t wear a uniform, I don’t get to tell them anything, so I walk by the warehouse and start cleaning it, thinking that they would come in after me and start helping, but no…they just watched me walk by and whisper something.  Then, the NCO who is probably 100 feet behind me, follows me and tells the Soldiers standing around to get in there and start cleaning up.  They follow him grudgingly as I am beginning to clean stuff up.  After they all walked in, they went to where I was working (picking up the trash and throwing it in a bin) and they start doing what I’m doing.  I walked away and grabbed one of the 7, yes 7 brooms and start sweeping.  That’s when a couple of other guys grabbed brooms and started.  Well, you can’t sweep very well if there is furniture in the way, so, I start moving furniture to the front of the building.  After that, I finished sweeping, but by the time I finished the rest of the room, everyone was in the front standing around again and there’s still sh!t on the other side that no one’s taking care of, so I start moving all the nasty oil to one corner so that it can be disposed of properly and start to pick up these really heavy dividers and after I said, wooh, this is heavy did one of the guys come over and move them.  There’s still junk all over the place and it’s filthy so I start sweeping it.  They have taken the dust pans and done something with them and so I call them to help me.

It literally took us 15 minutes to clean (all of us together) but I had to start.  Even the NCO really didn’t motivate those guys to start working.  It was because I took the effort to start it.  I’m not going to stay in the same place that someone else has taken over, why should I–it doesn’t make any sense!  My husband had told the LT about that area more than an hour before I started working on it!  Madness!

So, then, we went to go see another area that needed to be cleaned up.  It was alright, but I ended up doing a lot of stuff there, too.  After my husband released everyone, he drove by the warehouse that I had cleaned and he said, “Yes, that is what it is supposed to look like.”  I didn’t tell him that I ended up doing most of the work.  And these privates were saying that “Uncle Sam had gotten his pay out of him!”  Yeah, whatever-lazy, good-for-nothing…

So, after we get done there, we have to go get more gas (yes, we used over a half a tank of gas getting from here to there) and some dinner.  We don’t want to drive on the roads at  rush hour, so we stop at Burger King and get some dinner.  In the middle of our dinner, Rob gets a call from his Supply NCO and they had a 25 minute conversation during our dinner, so I walked in the PX and ended up getting more printer ink.  I need it.  I need to be teacher-like and decorate an FRG/BOSS board.  I’m not sure how I’m going to accomplish this as it is supposed to completed by Tuesday next week and we’re flying to Budapest on Friday morning and I have no supplies to do such decorating!

On another interesting note, every single commander, except my husband will change over by the end of this year!  I don’t know why that is, exactly because there were two commanders that took command AFTER Rob did, so we’re not even sure WHEN he’s getting switched out.  There are many more changes coming in the next few months.  We’re FINALLY going to be getting another 1SG after the 4th of July.  Phew!

Anyway, have you had enough of my rants?  I’m sorry, is there too much military talk here?  If you don’t understand some of the acronyms that I use, let me know and I’ll enlighten you 🙂  If you made it this far, thanks!