I love base housing.

I love base housing. I really do. The complex is nice, our neighbors are nice, etc.

There is, however, one minor detail that is seriously going to cause me to develop a close relationship with either earmuffs or something 90 proof.

We live right next to an elementary school.

And I do mean right next to it. So everyday...every freaking day...the Pledge of Allegiance is broadcast on the loudspeaker at roughly 8 am. Being of the unemployed persuasion, I'm not awake at 8 am...at least, I'm not awake until I hear the freaking Pledge of Allegiance for the forty billionth time. But I can usually go back to sleep after that. I grumble, cuss, and then I'm out.

Lord help me when class gets out though. For some reason, the farther children are from each other, the more urgent their need to communicate...and thus the need to SCREAM at skull-splitting volumes. Entire conversations happen from one end of a block to the other, usually causing my apartment to be caught in the crossfire. I even heard one shriek "BE QUIET!" today, and my irony meter short-circuited.

Since I work at home, this does have a tendency to disrupt my day. Aside from the fact that my concentration is easily broken by noise when I'm trying to write, I will say that there is something mildly weird about trying to write a graphic sex scene with the sound of screeching children in the background.

I honestly believe the military put us in such close proximity to a school for one of the following reasons:

1. To encourage us to procreate by subjecting us to hordes of adorable schoolchildren, making the urge to have a dozen of our own nearly irresistable. (FAIL)
2. To encourage us NOT to have children by subjecting us to swarming masses of screaming, crying kids, rendering us paralyzed with fear and unable to procreate even if we wanted to. (We weren't planning to procreate anyway, so...FAIL)
3. To drive us completely, irretrievably, batshit insane. (WIN)

I don't dislike kids. I think I've mentioned that here before. I know that kids will be kids, and kids will be loud. It's life. I'll deal with it. However, I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't annoy me. Because it does.

If we were suddenly given the choice between living next to this school for the next 3 years, and living in a soundproof apartment that is also infested with badgers?

I'd go for the badgers.