Those of you with delicate sensibilities, stand clear. I am now going to vent my spleen with great force.
I am pissed. Tired, worn down, and last nerve exposed pissed. Let's see if I can explain why in the shortest manner possible.
We are scheduled to return to our homeland, San Diego, in the first week of July. So my dear hubby, the GM1, is leaving on Monday for SanDog to go apartment hunting. Stressful enough that he will be doing it all alone... I keep imagining living next to a strip club with megabass monster stereo addicted frat boys for neighbors. So when word came down that all our paperwork, furniture moving arrangements, car shipping, etc deadline would fall in the time frame when he's not around, we promptly ran around madly from one office to another, begging for emergency appointments and debasing ourselves before the Housing gods. After they stopped playing Catch-22 with us ("you have to get paper A signed at that office before we can sign B." "NO, you have to go back and get B signed over there on the other side of town before we'll sign A." "Oops, didn't we tell you to get C, D and Q notarized before we can even look at B? Silly us.") we got it all scheduled nicely and were assigned a move-out date of July 7. No problem, just glad to get all the ducks in a row with as little duckshit on the boots as possible.
Until we got home and looked in the mail.
All our Housing is being turned over to a private contractor (hereafter known as Those Sleazy Bastards). As such, everyone was notified they would have to sign a lease and set up an allotment so that the equivalent of their Basic Housing Allowance would go to the new owners. Housing was washing their hands of us. This was bad enough, being pushed off like an unwanted orphan, and most of the people living in Housing are not pleased. But being virtual prisoners of the system here (very little housing options outside the Navy Housing quarters here, due to location and rents being twice what they are on the mainland) we all have no choice but to hope for the best.
My hopeful best was that we would be out of here before all the lease-signing crapola was necessary.
Nope. No such luck.
In the mail was a letter from Those Sleazy Bastards, saying our date to come to a meeting and sign the lease was June 9. Well, dudes, got news for you, that is when the GM1 is out of town. Sorry. So we called up to set up a new date. Their suggestion? Put off the house hunting trip or come back early. Um, no. Not happening. It finally was decided that they would (heavy sighing of such effort on their part) come out here to our home TOMORROW and have us sign a lease.
Sign a lease for an entire seven days.
Actually six days since on day 7 we are out of here.
The financial wheels of the military grind exceedingly fine and equally exceedingly slow. Any allotment that would be started just so it could be cancelled a week later could be haunting us for the next three years. It might take that long to stop the money going out to pay rent on a place we aren't even on the same side of the ocean as. Not an option.
"But" whined Those Sleazy Bastards, "you must give us an allotment. "
Nope. Not happening.
So the showdown is tomorrow. I predict the outcome will be a compromise that we enema the week's worth of rent out of the money-laden bowels of PSD (the fund-producing and fund-deducting accounting organ of our Navy life) and give it to Those Sleazy Bastards. Not one penny is coming out of our non-reimbursed pockets. They will show up bright and chipper in the early light of morn, fully prepared to shove papers at us and steal signatures and run. I plan to sit down with a magnifying glass and a legal website pulled up and go through it all word by word.
And just to prove what a tough cookie I am, I'm not even offering them coffee.
Hmph! Take that, Sleazy Bastards!
/rant
I'm done now.
I need a beer. Or two.
(previously posted on Blogspot)
Posted by LeeAnn at May 29, 2003 06:54 PM