Military Math

At some point in time, we will all experience the feeling that things don’t always add up the way they should, I like to call it “military math”. My first experience came when my husband signed up, the resulting formula was:

Current salary ÷ 3 = live on remainder.

I lived, but it wasn’t pretty.

Then came battalion. Wasn’t it 6 months out, 6 months in? Then it was 6 months out, 10 months in. But when I did the math, between month-long field exercises and ancillary trainings, it ended up:

6 months out + 6 months in = 2 months of him actually home.

Now the formula is 6 months out, 12 months in. According to my current calculations, that will probably work out to about 43.6 days of being home. I start to measure it in hours (1038 to be exact) just to make myself feel better.

Trying to figure out how much space you need to live in your next duty station? Take the square footage then allow for the following storage deductions:
- furniture that belonged to your great-grandmother that doesn't fit (and your family will disown you if you get rid of it but heck if they have the space to keep it)
- curtains and rods for the windows that will miraculously disappear at one duty station (and magically reappear at the next).
- the guest bedroom (really? What were you thinking?)
- cold weather gear as you move from Great Lakes to Yuma, AZ. (Get rid of it and you are destined to be sent to Maine.)

Sqft of house - sqft storage of ‘just in case’ items = 600 sq ft of usable living space.

Where military math really begins to get fun is in the moving out process. As the days tick down, my desperate need to maximize usage of all items purchased increases exponentially. The formulations begin to get so complicated I’m not sure even a class in differential equations would begin to suffice.

Take my soap and shampoo. Apparently, in an attempt to not throw anything out (and thereby mess with my current income calculations) I must shower a minimum of 4.517 times a day. I smell peachy.

The cleaning products under every sink beckon me. Funny how I was able to silence them for so long but now their din is overwhelming. Fine. In order to use up all the various sprays and cleansers, I will need to mop, sweep, dust and wash windows 6.832 times an hour. It’s just not happening.

The computations continue as I move to my pantry. Is it wrong of me to serve ribs, roasted potatoes, frozen pizza, canned asparagus, frozen pineapple, and waffles for... breakfast? I’m eyeballing the Costco sized ketchup bottles and wondering if I can turn them into spaghetti sauce….there must be a way, there must be a way. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of pickle relish soup somewhere. Oh right, like you hadn’t thought of that already.

By the time the movers come and the last box is on the truck, I will have done enough mental mathematical manipulations to make Stephen Hawking proud. But really, there’s only one formula that truly matters to me:

Military husband + me = one heck of an adventure