How
should an officer’s wife answer the door to her husband’s new commander
and his perfectly-poised wife? How about with a gruff, “What do you
want?”
Let me back this up. Day 12 in Germany began like every other so far, like a scene out of an even more dystopian-like Ground Hog’s Day. We woke up at precisely 6 a.m. and reported downstairs to our firm, but equally cold, German, hotel overseers. We ate our daily serving of meat mosaic in the form of slimy cold cuts with a side of stinky cheese and got the children onto their school bus.
Seriously, we eat bologna and head cheese for breakfast here. Like, it’s a real thing.
Yesterday, I decided that my sour attitude about this Army PCS needed to change for the better, so I loaded up my swim bag and headed on post to … did you think I was going to say SWIM? Nope. This post is so small that there is no pool. Nope. I loaded up my swim bag to try my hand, or more accurately my ass, at a spin class.
Now, those of you who know me also know that I have a slipped disk in my lower back and suffer from decreased lung capacity and the asthmatic symptoms caused by such a lung injury. Now you are going to ask yourselves, “Why would Kim do such a crazy thing?”
That is a great question, friends! I did it because there is literally nothing else to do around here. There are no jobs to apply for. The forecast told me that air conditions were bad for people with asthma; No walks through the black forest today. I have no car. I can’t read German well enough to navigate the local, and I do mean very local, bus schedules just yet.
Anyway, I went to spin class. Aside from having to get off my bike after 30 minutes and use an inhaler, terrifying the entire class and prompting a registered nurse to come out and check on me, I thought I did really well. Of course, the bike seat rode up my enormous ass the entire time and I’m pretty sure I bruised my colon, but I called it a win.
Chris dropped me off at 8:45 a.m. and I had agreed to shower at the gym and then walk to the library where I would be able to read until he finished a finance briefing around noon and could pick me up.
As I stood completely naked and attempted to apply lotion to my skin while balancing my towel over my delicates, my phone rang. Of course, it did. How could I have done something as stupid as attempt to go to the gym and shower without interruption?
It was Thomas. He was about to cry and begging me to check him out of school. He swore he was going to puke himself to death if I didn’t extract him promptly.
There I was, dripping water, leftover sweat ( … because let’s be honest here. Who actually gets completely clean in a locker room shower?) and diluted lotion all over the floor in front of the spin class members who had just attempted CPR on me, while telling my son that he had better be seriously ill to ask to leave school.
Once I decided that his illness was, indeed, ferocious enough to warrant missing class, I dressed as quickly as I could and raced out of the gym into the brisk, German air to discover that I did not have a car.
Well, what was I going to do? How would I get my vomitus son from school without a car?
I began walking across post to find Chris. And while this installation is pretty small comparatively, it was still a good hike. I had to ask about a hundred people where the incoming Soldier’s finance briefing was being held, but I found him and interrupted the briefing to get Chris’ attention. I should remind you that my hair was still dripping water when I left the gym, so I had a towel on my head. Beautiful. I was simply radiant.
We got to Thomas just in time. He did not die. He did puke 4 or 18 more times into the Ziploc bag that contained my workout clothes, but he did not die.
Second win of the day.
Chris had then missed the finance briefing where we learn how to get paid for the roughly $4,500 that this move has cost us out of pocket to date, but Thomas was safely delivered to his bed and toilet. It's worth it, right?
After soothing Thomas, I sat down to read the book I had planned to read in the library after the bike-defilement class, when my newly acquired Handy (that means cell phone in German) informed me that my pin was invalid, and my phone had been locked, but no worries, I wouldn’t need it for anything in the hotel. What could possibly go wrong?
Little did we know that in our haste to get the kids out the door for school and then get on post for that amazing spin class and the finance briefing I banged into Wedding-Crashers style, we let the cat, who has been holed up for a couple of weeks now in a carrier or in one of the two rooms in our minuscule hotel-home, sneak across the hotel hallway into our second room. He peed all over Joseph’s bed.
Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I thought, with the naivety of a newcomer to a distant land who has no reason to believe that this new world means her harm, “Hey, it started out rocky, but I’ll be able to salvage this day.”
The other boys returned from school, had a snack, spilled the milk all over the hotel carpet, did some homework, fought for 45 solid minutes, Joseph told me he lost his newly-bought coat that took me a month to find, and I remained, uncharacteristically, calm.
“No worries, Joe. It’s just a coat.” I said. “We will find another one.”
An hour passed. Two hours passed. And then I hear Ben telling Joseph that he “smells like cat’s butt.”
Of all the insults these boys fling at one another, this one was unique and required additional investigation.
This is the point in this story where I find out that the cat urinated all over Joseph’s cubbyhole he now calls his room. I swore dirty words many times. I stripped the bed. I attempted to call Chris so that he could hurry home (?) and get the comforter and linens to a washing machine as quickly as possible, and you are never going to believe this part, he was already doing our laundry at a laundromat on post when I attempted to phone him, but, alas, my phone was locked.
In my frustration, I lashed out at Ben who, in my defense, has been a real curmudgeon all day and I guilted him into taking Mapledog out for a long walk while I dealt with the cat-piss situation.
Usually, a story of non-fiction couldn’t possibly get any worse at this point, but that is not how life for the Greens plays out.
I mentioned earlier that I dressed quickly and hurried out of the gym in order to find my sick child and get him home (?). Well, I don’t know if you have curly hair or if you have ever loved someone with curly hair, but there are certain ointments and salves that must be applied in order to prevent those curls from becoming an Afro once dry, and while the natural look is incredible on my black compatriots, it leaves me looking like the Pacific Northwest’s infamous Rachel Dolezal.
I had just sat down defeated and angry, lectured Joseph on why ripping open the hotel's ball-point pen was a terrible idea at the moment, and was desperately trying to keep my head from imploding, when I heard a faint knock at my hotel door.
“What?” I shouted.
I was sure it was Ben coming back with the dog prematurely, armed with some stupid excuse as to why she didn’t poop.
Another knock.
“What do you want? That dog had better have popped. I mean it,” I yelled.
Another knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager …
OK. So, earlier this week Chris got our P.O. Box set up, and while in line, he made a new friend. This event is, in and of itself, a rare miracle, as he never speaks to anyone. Who did he meet? I’m so glad you asked. It was none other than his new commander’s wife, Christine or Christy or Crystal, who knows? I wasn’t paying attention when he retold the story because I didn’t care what her name was. Why should I care what her name was? I have enough going on in my 200-square-foot homestead (I’m sorry, that’s 60.96000m in Germany) to worry about officer wife clubs and tea parties. I think they still call them tea parties. They might as well call them tea parties. I’m never going to another one, and they are just as make believe as the ones held around plastic tables in princess dresses.
Anyway, Chrysanthemum asked if we (the family) were doing OK, to which he responded that we were not, in fact, “doing OK.” And that this entire moved had sucked from beginning to, well, we are still at the beginning and it has continued to suck. And that we were going to be in this shitty hotel room for months and we didn’t have a kitchen or a place for the boys to do their homework. She comforted him (I guess, I wasn’t really listening when he told me this story, as I mentioned earlier) They parted ways.
OK. Back to the third knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager … and I shout, “What do you want?” into the faces of two perfectly-poised people dressed to the nines.
To be honest, the first thought that flooded into my head was, “Shit! The Mormons found us again.” They always find us. You’d think being genuine apostates, they’d leave us alone. While contemplating what I was going to do with the Mormons at my bedroom door, Chrissy said, “Hi! I met your husband earlier this week.”
It suddenly dawned on me who she and the man behind her were, Chris' new post office buddies. This was not going to turn out well. I could smell the downturn coming, but I knew I was powerless to stop it.
I grunted, “He’s not here. He’s doing laundry.”
She sputtered a bit then said, “Well, he told me that you were staying at the Schöll and I thought I’d stop by.”
To which I replied without giving it one moment to marinate in my head as to whether it was the right thing to say, “Now, why would you think that was a good idea?”
Shocked, she just stood there a very long minute before adding, “I want to invite you to a ladies' luncheon next week.”
Now, you guys know how much I hate the officer-wife bullshit — the vacuous rituals that turn once perfectly pleasant women into rank-wearing, gossipy, twits, but what I hate even more are unannounced visits … to my hotel-room home … filled with the scent of fresh cat piss ... by a commander's wife ... while I'm wearing a white girl’s Afro.
I glowered at her before responding, “I don’t do ladies' luncheons.”
Keep in mind that I don’t even know this woman’s name. She certainly didn’t think she required an introduction, as her name and rank should have preceded her, obviously (that was snark). I have never seen her before, and she showed up at what is essentially my bedroom door at dinner time, unannounced.
And, as if I had not already told her no, she continued to try and convince me to attend the event at which the ladies will be served the meal of lunch next week.
“No. I don’t do ladies' luncheons,” I repeated.
She stood motionless, caught in a pregnant pause for what felt like an eternity as her husband, my husband’s new commanding officer, cowered behind her.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I asked as I shook my lovely locks in her direction and showed off my hole-filled LuLaRoe leggings and over-sized tank top — no bra mind you.
She told me there was not.
I shut the door.
I’d like to take this moment to remind any of you who may not already know how to behave with strangers, do not knock on their hotel doors and expect them to be grateful for your inconvenience. I repeat. Do not knock on strangers’ hotel doors and then act bewildered they aren’t nicer to you than they are. Any response less volatile than a swift kick in the ass, is you getting off easy. I did not kick Christa; therefore, I showed great restraint.
Third win of the day for me.
Let me back this up. Day 12 in Germany began like every other so far, like a scene out of an even more dystopian-like Ground Hog’s Day. We woke up at precisely 6 a.m. and reported downstairs to our firm, but equally cold, German, hotel overseers. We ate our daily serving of meat mosaic in the form of slimy cold cuts with a side of stinky cheese and got the children onto their school bus.
Seriously, we eat bologna and head cheese for breakfast here. Like, it’s a real thing.
Yesterday, I decided that my sour attitude about this Army PCS needed to change for the better, so I loaded up my swim bag and headed on post to … did you think I was going to say SWIM? Nope. This post is so small that there is no pool. Nope. I loaded up my swim bag to try my hand, or more accurately my ass, at a spin class.
Now, those of you who know me also know that I have a slipped disk in my lower back and suffer from decreased lung capacity and the asthmatic symptoms caused by such a lung injury. Now you are going to ask yourselves, “Why would Kim do such a crazy thing?”
That is a great question, friends! I did it because there is literally nothing else to do around here. There are no jobs to apply for. The forecast told me that air conditions were bad for people with asthma; No walks through the black forest today. I have no car. I can’t read German well enough to navigate the local, and I do mean very local, bus schedules just yet.
Anyway, I went to spin class. Aside from having to get off my bike after 30 minutes and use an inhaler, terrifying the entire class and prompting a registered nurse to come out and check on me, I thought I did really well. Of course, the bike seat rode up my enormous ass the entire time and I’m pretty sure I bruised my colon, but I called it a win.
Chris dropped me off at 8:45 a.m. and I had agreed to shower at the gym and then walk to the library where I would be able to read until he finished a finance briefing around noon and could pick me up.
As I stood completely naked and attempted to apply lotion to my skin while balancing my towel over my delicates, my phone rang. Of course, it did. How could I have done something as stupid as attempt to go to the gym and shower without interruption?
It was Thomas. He was about to cry and begging me to check him out of school. He swore he was going to puke himself to death if I didn’t extract him promptly.
There I was, dripping water, leftover sweat ( … because let’s be honest here. Who actually gets completely clean in a locker room shower?) and diluted lotion all over the floor in front of the spin class members who had just attempted CPR on me, while telling my son that he had better be seriously ill to ask to leave school.
Once I decided that his illness was, indeed, ferocious enough to warrant missing class, I dressed as quickly as I could and raced out of the gym into the brisk, German air to discover that I did not have a car.
Well, what was I going to do? How would I get my vomitus son from school without a car?
I began walking across post to find Chris. And while this installation is pretty small comparatively, it was still a good hike. I had to ask about a hundred people where the incoming Soldier’s finance briefing was being held, but I found him and interrupted the briefing to get Chris’ attention. I should remind you that my hair was still dripping water when I left the gym, so I had a towel on my head. Beautiful. I was simply radiant.
We got to Thomas just in time. He did not die. He did puke 4 or 18 more times into the Ziploc bag that contained my workout clothes, but he did not die.
Second win of the day.
Chris had then missed the finance briefing where we learn how to get paid for the roughly $4,500 that this move has cost us out of pocket to date, but Thomas was safely delivered to his bed and toilet. It's worth it, right?
After soothing Thomas, I sat down to read the book I had planned to read in the library after the bike-defilement class, when my newly acquired Handy (that means cell phone in German) informed me that my pin was invalid, and my phone had been locked, but no worries, I wouldn’t need it for anything in the hotel. What could possibly go wrong?
Little did we know that in our haste to get the kids out the door for school and then get on post for that amazing spin class and the finance briefing I banged into Wedding-Crashers style, we let the cat, who has been holed up for a couple of weeks now in a carrier or in one of the two rooms in our minuscule hotel-home, sneak across the hotel hallway into our second room. He peed all over Joseph’s bed.
Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I thought, with the naivety of a newcomer to a distant land who has no reason to believe that this new world means her harm, “Hey, it started out rocky, but I’ll be able to salvage this day.”
The other boys returned from school, had a snack, spilled the milk all over the hotel carpet, did some homework, fought for 45 solid minutes, Joseph told me he lost his newly-bought coat that took me a month to find, and I remained, uncharacteristically, calm.
“No worries, Joe. It’s just a coat.” I said. “We will find another one.”
An hour passed. Two hours passed. And then I hear Ben telling Joseph that he “smells like cat’s butt.”
Of all the insults these boys fling at one another, this one was unique and required additional investigation.
This is the point in this story where I find out that the cat urinated all over Joseph’s cubbyhole he now calls his room. I swore dirty words many times. I stripped the bed. I attempted to call Chris so that he could hurry home (?) and get the comforter and linens to a washing machine as quickly as possible, and you are never going to believe this part, he was already doing our laundry at a laundromat on post when I attempted to phone him, but, alas, my phone was locked.
In my frustration, I lashed out at Ben who, in my defense, has been a real curmudgeon all day and I guilted him into taking Mapledog out for a long walk while I dealt with the cat-piss situation.
Usually, a story of non-fiction couldn’t possibly get any worse at this point, but that is not how life for the Greens plays out.
I mentioned earlier that I dressed quickly and hurried out of the gym in order to find my sick child and get him home (?). Well, I don’t know if you have curly hair or if you have ever loved someone with curly hair, but there are certain ointments and salves that must be applied in order to prevent those curls from becoming an Afro once dry, and while the natural look is incredible on my black compatriots, it leaves me looking like the Pacific Northwest’s infamous Rachel Dolezal.
I had just sat down defeated and angry, lectured Joseph on why ripping open the hotel's ball-point pen was a terrible idea at the moment, and was desperately trying to keep my head from imploding, when I heard a faint knock at my hotel door.
“What?” I shouted.
I was sure it was Ben coming back with the dog prematurely, armed with some stupid excuse as to why she didn’t poop.
Another knock.
“What do you want? That dog had better have popped. I mean it,” I yelled.
Another knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager …
OK. So, earlier this week Chris got our P.O. Box set up, and while in line, he made a new friend. This event is, in and of itself, a rare miracle, as he never speaks to anyone. Who did he meet? I’m so glad you asked. It was none other than his new commander’s wife, Christine or Christy or Crystal, who knows? I wasn’t paying attention when he retold the story because I didn’t care what her name was. Why should I care what her name was? I have enough going on in my 200-square-foot homestead (I’m sorry, that’s 60.96000m in Germany) to worry about officer wife clubs and tea parties. I think they still call them tea parties. They might as well call them tea parties. I’m never going to another one, and they are just as make believe as the ones held around plastic tables in princess dresses.
Anyway, Chrysanthemum asked if we (the family) were doing OK, to which he responded that we were not, in fact, “doing OK.” And that this entire moved had sucked from beginning to, well, we are still at the beginning and it has continued to suck. And that we were going to be in this shitty hotel room for months and we didn’t have a kitchen or a place for the boys to do their homework. She comforted him (I guess, I wasn’t really listening when he told me this story, as I mentioned earlier) They parted ways.
OK. Back to the third knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager … and I shout, “What do you want?” into the faces of two perfectly-poised people dressed to the nines.
To be honest, the first thought that flooded into my head was, “Shit! The Mormons found us again.” They always find us. You’d think being genuine apostates, they’d leave us alone. While contemplating what I was going to do with the Mormons at my bedroom door, Chrissy said, “Hi! I met your husband earlier this week.”
It suddenly dawned on me who she and the man behind her were, Chris' new post office buddies. This was not going to turn out well. I could smell the downturn coming, but I knew I was powerless to stop it.
I grunted, “He’s not here. He’s doing laundry.”
She sputtered a bit then said, “Well, he told me that you were staying at the Schöll and I thought I’d stop by.”
To which I replied without giving it one moment to marinate in my head as to whether it was the right thing to say, “Now, why would you think that was a good idea?”
Shocked, she just stood there a very long minute before adding, “I want to invite you to a ladies' luncheon next week.”
Now, you guys know how much I hate the officer-wife bullshit — the vacuous rituals that turn once perfectly pleasant women into rank-wearing, gossipy, twits, but what I hate even more are unannounced visits … to my hotel-room home … filled with the scent of fresh cat piss ... by a commander's wife ... while I'm wearing a white girl’s Afro.
I glowered at her before responding, “I don’t do ladies' luncheons.”
Keep in mind that I don’t even know this woman’s name. She certainly didn’t think she required an introduction, as her name and rank should have preceded her, obviously (that was snark). I have never seen her before, and she showed up at what is essentially my bedroom door at dinner time, unannounced.
And, as if I had not already told her no, she continued to try and convince me to attend the event at which the ladies will be served the meal of lunch next week.
“No. I don’t do ladies' luncheons,” I repeated.
She stood motionless, caught in a pregnant pause for what felt like an eternity as her husband, my husband’s new commanding officer, cowered behind her.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I asked as I shook my lovely locks in her direction and showed off my hole-filled LuLaRoe leggings and over-sized tank top — no bra mind you.
She told me there was not.
I shut the door.
I’d like to take this moment to remind any of you who may not already know how to behave with strangers, do not knock on their hotel doors and expect them to be grateful for your inconvenience. I repeat. Do not knock on strangers’ hotel doors and then act bewildered they aren’t nicer to you than they are. Any response less volatile than a swift kick in the ass, is you getting off easy. I did not kick Christa; therefore, I showed great restraint.
Third win of the day for me.
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