Can I Live With You?

I've come to the conclusion that we are never going to find a suitable place to live. We get less of a housing allowance now that Christopher is a WO1 than we did when he was an E-7. They were going to close down the base a few years ago and gave a lot of the on base housing back to the locals. Now, there is a shortage of available housing on the local economy for the soldiers and their families. Sweet. They should have just closed this shit hole of a base down. We are looking at properties closer to Ramstein, which I am totally not opposed to because the further I get from Baumholder, the better! It just sucks that Christopher has to make the treacherous drive up the side of an icy snowy mountain during the winter. Luckily (or not so luckily) he will only be here for this winter and another winter because of his deployment and our PCS date. Most of the people we have talked to live closer to Ramstein and just do the shitty commute. Unfortunately, that means that we will probably have to pay out of pocket for our rent. A lot of people have put in packets to change their housing allowance rates to the housing rates the soldiers in the Ramstein area get but they're still sitting on someone's desk waiting for approval. You would think that if everyone has to live in the Ramstein area because there is absolutely nothing available closer to Baumholder, they would support their soldiers immediately.

I know, you're probably thinking, you get free rent! Military pay is not that awesome, the military tells you what city and state to live in, and the Euro makes the dollar its bitch. I don't even want to get into the horror stories I've heard about people having to pay assloads of money for their utilities because their metering system here is strange. The meters get read once a year so basically you pay an estimated amount (based on the previous year) every month for utilities to your landlord. You have no idea if you've gone over that monthly allowance or not so at the end of the year, you could owe your landlord mucho dinero, you could break even, or you could get extra cash back. And apparently you have to buy your oil in bulk? I don't even know how that works. I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly but you buy anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 worth of oil to heat your house for the year and you have to do this every year or something. Yeah, who knows how this shit works.

Fun facts about the base here in Baumholder:

1. Highest STD rate of all the bases in Europe.
2. Highest sexual assault rate of all the bases in Europe.
3. One of if not the highest suicide rate of all the bases in Europe.
4. Highest pregnancy/birth rates of all of the bases in Europe.
5. Highest male to male sexual harassment rate of all the bases in Europe.
6. Highest reported child neglect rate of all the bases in Europe.
7. It is overcast and gray 75-80% of the year.

Does this sound like an awesome place to live or what?! Exactly where I want to be when my husband is deployed for a year and I'm left alone with my daughter. Sweet! So yes, closer to Ramstein? I can dig it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to live in Germany. Once Christopher gets back from deployment, we are going to have an amazing time travelling around Europe with our daughter. But this initial part? Blows. I'm 8 months pregnant, I want to get my house in order before the baby gets here, and I just keep hearing the ticking of the clock on how much time I have left with Christopher and how much time he gets with the bambino before he packs up his gear and has to say goodbye for a while.

Today, the gloom and doom wins and I'm having a pity party for myself. Today's the type of day that makes me miss alcohol. And Xanax.

At least I still have a few cupcakes to make me feel better.