If I were in Charge of the World

My mom has a book of poetry titled, "If I were in Charge of the World, and other stuff" - or something to that effect. I used to love reading poems out of that book, I think because I related to it. Even at a young age I knew that things would run a LOT smoother if I was in charge.

You can call it arrogance. You can call it stubbornness. You can call it being controlling. Really, you can call it whatever you want. But really, if I were in charge things would be a lot better.

I know right now you must be chuckling a little bit, but please don't . Because I am on some level serious here. I am sure there are things that would certainly not be better, technology at the forefront of that, but there are so many things that I just shake my head at because in my arrogant, stubborn, controlling brain I think I could do it better myself.

One such example came Sunday night when Austin got his schedule for this week. The lovely person in charge of his deployment had scheduled 3 hours of work for Monday, 2 for Tuesday, and 3 for Wednesday. Monday and Wednesday were not scheduled to start until 10, though, so in my mind that is more than just 3 hours. But if you add up 3, 2, and 3 what do you get? That's 8. How many hours are typically in ONE work day? That's 8. So, why in his infinite wisdom did he not just think to cram it all into one workday, giving the soldiers more time at home with their families?

Well, one reason is that he is single so he doesn't have a grasp on the family side. Another irritating reason is that the army functions on an understanding that spouses don't work...so when we do, it makes it hard to get involved in things and make it to meetings that are "for the families" and they don't understand that we have any of our own scheduling to do. A side example would be when meetings are scheduled for 5:00 and I am requested to be there, or when there are lunches or midday activities that I'm "encouraged" to attend. But that's not my complaint for today, I wouldn't want to bite off more than I can chew here so I'm just focused on Austin's schedule for this week. Personally I had planned to take Wednesday and Thursday off work to be with Austin, but if he's going to be at work until noon then what's the point? I may as well work a half day too. But I can't take a half day Tuesday (today) because of things that are due by the end of the day, so rather than 2 full days off work, or 1 full day and 2 half days, the army just stole 4 more hours from me.

If I were in charge, though, I would have booked plane flights months ago rather than days ago which would have allowed ample planning. I would have scheduled for things to have been taken care of in as few days as possible to allow for some down time - whether to be spent with family or alone. I would have done a lot of things differently from this person in charge, and I'm not even in the military know-how.

But, I suppose if I were in charge of the world I would have taken care of Afghanistan in a completely different way too so I wouldn't be in this whole situation to begin with. Sadly, I am not in charge of the world, instead I have chosen to let the Army be in charge of my world. And this is how the army functions so I guess I better put my big girl panties on and get over it. I'll work on that.