you can't keep a good girl down

I get insanely angry when nincompoops from Hunny's workplace call him and engage him in lengthy conversations about work when he's on leave. I mean, the guy's on leave, that's L-E-A-V-E, and he's already told you so, so why don't you just call someone else? Someone who's actually at the office, perhaps?!!! People take leave for a reason, you know. People don't take leave to sit around at home and wait for phone calls from work.

For Hunny's sake, I sincerely hope that mobile phones are prohibited in hospital delivery rooms. Because should he receive a call from work while I'm in labour, I guarantee you that one of two things will happen:

1. I will take the phone from his hands and yell, "He's on leave and I'm his wife and I'm in labour so why don't you get off the phone you *&$#@@@**!" Pardon my french.
2. I will take the phone from his hands and hurl it across the room with a strength born of rage and pain.

But I don't really blame his colleagues, the poor sods. After all, they're merely acting in accordance with a culture that's so ingrained into Hunny's workplace, or should I generalise and say, the whole SAF. It's common knowledge that it's tough being a soldier's wife, isn't it? But perhaps that should change. We military wives have been treated dismally for way, way too long.

I'm sick and tired of all the hours that Hunny spends away from me organising some mess event - an event that I, as his spouse, am not even invited to. Because it's not allowed.

I'm angry at the way his request for 3 weeks' leave (after I deliver) was rejected summarily, with his idiotic superior concluding, "It's not that tough, I'm a father, I've done it before," or some similar-sounding crap. And my husband is the same guy who works so hard he accumulated 20 over days of Off-In-Lieus (he gets one for every night duty he pulls) - that's an entire month's leave on top of his yearly entitlement. And did I mention that Hunny's still got leave accruing to him from last year???

I'm still mad at how he got posted away to Darwin for a whole month just a few short months after we got married.

It's gone on long enough. The Singapore Armed Forces are stupidly short-sighted if they do not improve the state of welfare for soldiers and their families. Think about it - give a soldier something to fight for, and you turn him into a warrior. What do men fight for? Forget the fame, glory, country blah blah blah. Please. Most Singaporean men sign on as regulars because it's a career. But men will fight for their families, their homes and their women. It's been like that throughout the ages. So stop doing things that strain familial ties, stop straining marriages with sucky welfare and lousy work hours, build up those families, and you'll get dedicated soldiers - warriors - in wartime.

It's no wonder that the Armed Forces are facing serious manpower shortages. Why, if things get too bad, I'll simply start putting pressure on my husband to leave the Air Force too. You see, you gotta realise - while our men take and give orders in the rank and file, it's really we - military wives - who call the shots.