You Know You're a Military Wife When.....

...you can unpack a house and have everything in place in 48 hours.
...you string barbed wire to keep the neighbor's kids out of your flower beds.
...your husband's work and dress clothes cost more than yours do.
...you've changed more oil and mowed more lawns than your husband because he's not usually able to be there himself.
...you use a crook-neck flashlight with a red lens during power outages because it's the only one you can ever find in the house.
...your children grunt, say "hooah", "roger that", or "aye aye" instead of "ok".
...you know that it's normal to light shoe polish on fire and that the best way to spit-shine boots is with cotton balls.
...your husband does a route recon and takes a GPS for a trip to the mall.
...you only write in pencil because EVERYTHING is subject to change.
...you need a translator to talk to your civilian friends, only because they have no idea what DFAS,AER, TDY, ACS, NPD, PCS, and ETS mean.
...you have a larger selection of curtains than Wal-Mart does.
...you can remember where you kept the Scotch tape in your last house, but unfortunately, not in this one.
...you mark time in duty stations, not years. (you could be a military brat for this one)
...you refer to friends not only by name but by the state that they live in.
...you know that "back home" doesn't mean at the house you live in now.
...you tear up when you hear the National Anthem, even though you've heard it 100 times by now.
...you know that a 2 month separation IS short, no matter what your civilian friends say.
...you ALWAYS know when payday is and are counting pennies if there are more than 2 weekends during that pay period.
...you know better than to go to the PX or commissary between 11:30 and 1:30 unless it's a life or death emergency.
...you show your military ID to the greeter at Wal-Mart.
...you know that any reference to "sand" box reminds you of your hubby's last deployment, not your kid's backyard toys.
...you find yourself explaining your husband's LES to him.
...you have enough camouflage in your house to wallpaper the White House.
...you don't have to think about what time 21:30 is.
...you start ripping open MREs and looking for the M&Ms when you run out of candy.
...you can't remember the last time you saw a doctor who wasn't wearing BDUs.
...the local dry cleaner knows you by your first name.
...it only cost you $25 to have a child.
...you find that a large number of your clothes and household items are olive drab or loam, even though you never planned it that way.
...you pick apart uniforms on TV and in the movies
...you've learned to sleep through the sounds of tanks, planes, helicopters and artillery simulators.
...you can hate military life but be terrified to leave it all in the same breath.
...you defend your lifestyle no matter how bad things get because you know there's no other life for you!