Single Mom

The term has always grated my nerves more often than not.

A military spouse who's husband is deployed is not a single mother. Yes she is pulling the weight of both parents while her husband is gone, but she is married. She benefits from the income of her spouse, and the benefits of being a military dependent. She is (or is supposed to be anyhow) married and faithful to that one person (unless their rules of marriage state otherwise).

A divorced woman who's ex-husband plays a prominent roll in his childrens' lives, whether that be financially, emotionally, physically or all 3 is not single. She is divorced and she is not doing it alone.

Sure in the grand scheme of things, what other people consider themselves shouldn't affect me, but we all have our hot buttons, and this one, I guess just might be one of mine.

Once upon a time I was a single mother. I had no ex in the picture for my child, I had no benefit of child support, health coverage, or someone to help take care of my child so I could work. In fact, said child was 15 yrs old before she ever saw anything from her father. Said child went in increments of 5 yrs with no contact from him, as he drifted between women.

 It just seems like a slap in the face to all the women out there who have gone it alone, who have struggled, have known adversity, and plowed their way through.

That is my rant for the  day. Using the term single mom, when it doesn't really apply. Doing it for sympathy gets a 2 fist punch from this corner of the ring. What you really need to do is pick yourself up, and get a grip on life. There are so many people who would feel blessed to have half of what you have with your ex at least a part of your children's lives.

Im a bit peeved....

And it wasnt even my money!

My friend Jess ( over at Anchor's Away blog) went to Build-a-Bear with her husband and 3 young children, to build bears from daddy, prior to deployment. She spent an arm and a leg on 3 bears, the clothing and the pre-recordable voicebox for each bear. While checking out, one of the voice boxes died. They had her husband re-record on a new box and put it in the bear.

Not even 2 days into this deployment, another bear voicebox has died. The Bear surgeon at B-a-B thinks the voice message can be saved, that the "battery" died, and they removed the voicebox from the bear, and shipped it off to be "saved". It should be back in 6-8 wks.

In the event that it can't be saved it was suggested they could send a voicebox to daddy and he could re-record and send it back to be inserted into the bear. The issue is... daddy is not on vacation. He isnt on a large ship that has mail service for boxes to and from the ship. They get mail drops. A helicopter comes to the ship and drops the mail on the helo pad once a week or so. Mail does go out, but generally speaking it goes out when they port. Daddy could potentially beat the voicebox back to the states, given the up to 2 months to try and save the first one and who knows how long if they tried to ship one to him and have him send it back....


5 YEARS ago, another friend of mine went through this same ritual with Build-a-Bear. Her husband was fixin' to deploy and they took their 3 little ones in for the same reason.... making bears with daddy's voice. They had a horrible time, with 2 of the 3 bears, and lost the voicebox long before the deployment was over.

My biggest disappointment in this company is not that their items occasionally falter. Its that this is obviously a KNOWN issue over the past 5 yrs (just ask around the military community, its happened to a lot of people with deployed loved ones.)

Knowing that the get a good deal of business from families in these circumstances, and that the issue dates back to at least 2006 if not further back... one would think they would look into better materials (even at a higher cost to the consumer). When you want something a certain way, and you pay for it to be that way, it should last more than a couple days.