Two military spouses walk into a bar …
Two military spouses walk into a bar …
No, that’s not the kind of joke we’re looking for. Military moves can be wildly stressful, but if you can find the humor in them and learn to laugh through what you’re dealing with? It makes everything just a little bit easier.
Comedian and Air Force spouse Ashley Gutermuth knows that is true. Through her many military moves, she has learned to flip circumstances around to find the humor, and the standup comedy she does as a result is downright hilarious. This episode of PCS with Military.com shares plenty of laughter as Ashley reveals her secrets for finding the funny in military life, why she owns six Roombas and her jokes that make people mad. Listen now.
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The following is an edited transcript of this episode of PCS with Military.com
Amy Bushatz: Welcome to PCS With Military.com. I'm your host, Amy Bushatz, Military.com's executive editor. On this podcast, we talk about everything you need to know to make this military move season your best yet. PCS With Military.com is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Proudly serving all branches of the armed forces, veterans and their families. No matter where you are in your military career, Navy Federal Credit Union has the products and resources to help you navigate your finances. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. Our members are the mission.
Now, let's get this PCS started.
Let's be honest, military life can be ridiculous. I mean, really unbelievably mind boggling, ridiculous. And learning to laugh about it, at least in retrospect, can be one of the keys to really making it without cracking or burning out. Maybe this is where I should use that old cliche. Laughter is the best medicine. If you can find that humor, it's just easier to power through.
Okay, but how do you find the humor in a military PCS? How do you find things to laugh about Today? We're gonna work on figuring that out with the help of Ashley Gutermuth a comedian and Air Force spouse known for her Instagram stream standup comedy on military life. I'm excited to talk to her today because I personally find her very, very funny. Ashley, welcome to PCS with military.com.
Ashley Gutermuth: Hello. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you.
Amy Bushatz: Well, I am uh, glad that you're here with us today because military PCS not so funny except for hopefully in this episode, so.
Ashley Gutermuth: Right. This is the only time that it's allowed. Every other time it must be serious.
Amy Bushatz: That's right. So why don't you start by telling us how many times you have moved with or without the military?
Ashley Gutermuth: Oh, the, with or without the mil. I think I've moved a total of 10 ish times. Uh, That also, that doesn't count, you know, when you move within a move like, your house isn't ready, so you gotta be uh, like I lived in an RV for a couple months on Fort Belvoir. Uh, That's what I call it, it other people, less dignified people call it Fort Belvoir. That's in Washington DC but I lived in my RV there and on in Warner Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, lived in an rv uh, while waiting for housing. So there's all those little individual moves. I would say a million.
Amy Bushatz: Did you live at the Fam camp in your RV at Warner Robbins? Because that is a special place. Yeah.
Ashley Gutermuth: Have you been?
Amy Bushatz: I have been
Ashley Gutermuth: to that one?
I have been
Amy Bushatz: Because we attempted to actually fam camp there, like during a vacation, only to discover the secret subculture of people who live in RVs on military bases permanently in the Fam camp.
Ashley Gutermuth: Yes. And it is a society in and of itself. So the Warner Robbins Fam camp, for those of you that don't know that many military bases have places where you can camp in tents, you can bring your RVs, they have like sewage pumps and things like that, and some are nicer than others. Uh, The Warner Robbins, I see when was I there? 2015 or so. We lived in an rv. I would not live there in a tent. I would not stay there in a tent.
Amy Bushatz: No. We discovered that.
Ashley Gutermuth: It is a tick city. I mean, you can't, you open your eyes in the morning and the ticks are like, she's up, let me go climb it. So you're just covered in ticks no matter what. Cause it's in the woods and it's in Georgia. There's also the water runoff like a sewage runoff, right behind where the fam camp is. I used to go back there and look at the water moccasins.
Amy Bushatz: So we camped what, and what I'm pretty sure was a sand pit slash litter box. And uh, because there were no two, our dismay, there were no tent area. It was just like open spot for tent camping and your cats.
Ashley Gutermuth: Nope.
Amy Bushatz: So, Also, I vividly remember there being a sign directly across from this area that warned about the alligators. So that was super special. There was no tick signage though. So now I think maybe they were missing missing a warning that they should have been giving.
Ashley Gutermuth: Well, no, the ticks are a nice surprise.
Amy Bushatz: They're bonus, we were on our way to go to on vacation in 2015, so maybe we were there at the same time.
Ashley Gutermuth: Oh. We might have been.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. So if you saw someone tent camping, and. Ha, that was us.
Ashley Gutermuth: They're insane.
Amy Bushatz: Exactly.
Ashley Gutermuth: Some special forces stuff right there. There are definitely alligators. I've seen the alligators in Warner Robbins. There's also wild pigs that they, you can get a permit to kill them on base. They're huge. They ate, ripped apart the golf course. I saw 'em just traipsing and down the street. But the thing about fam camps is typically, it'll say you can only live there for two weeks and then you either gotta move plots or you can't come back for 30 days.
But then there's people that get you know, waivers so that they can live there forever. And I stayed in them for several months, but I think the, so okay. You're just a secret. Here's just, it's just you and me talking, Amy. Uh, No, it's just a little secret. So you, I think that they do that because it puts them in competition with the housing companies. And the housing companies make it so difficult to get your houses on base. And if people could just bring their RV and live on base cheaply, well that solves too many problem. So why would we do it?
Amy Bushatz: Right, right. And I did notice that there, when we were there, I knew about the two week rule and I'm looking around looking at these places like that rV has been there substantially longer than two weeks.
Ashley Gutermuth: Like that guy's got a hot tub.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much so, you have just recently done a PCS I know that in the past you were stationed in New Jersey because you wanted to be close to New York City for your standup career, and you just moved to Texas, which is not near New York City. I have to say.
Ashley Gutermuth: Howdy. Yeah, I'm, I can still, I'm gonna commute just every morning, just head to New York. Uh, Yeah, the military had different ideas. I spent a lot of time going back and forth to New York, but then I also started getting like, gigs all over the place. So this year I'm doing a ton of traveling, so I wasn't gonna be in New York City that much anyway.
So it's not bad. I'm in San Antonio or right near major airport, so I can get on off plane pretty quickly. But I liked, I, I like Texas right now. I'm living in a Residence you know, the most glorious of inns. Uh, I've only had to move hotel rooms once and because too many people were smoking pot. You know, when your husband's starting a new job, what you want him to do is go to work smelling like weed on his first day. That's
Amy Bushatz: Yeah absolutely
Ashley Gutermuth: Ideal, Uh, won't worries any flags. So we had to move, move rooms, and well also the very first night, so we drove from New Jersey to Texas. It took five days. I had a lot of people that were sending me messages, they were like, why is this taking you so long? What the, you know, you can do what, 350 miles a day? Or something like that. And so that, that is how much it evens out to. Which is enough because you're already driving slowly because you are like, we were pulling a car trailer because of the ridiculous way that car transport is done within the JTR, the joint travel regulations. We're getting in the weeds, Amy. Well, well you can't, they won't ship a car for you. You're not allowed to travel with your spouse if, unless you are both in the same car and you tow your other car and you have to pay the expense of, it's ridiculous. They hate love.
Amy Bushatz: They do.
Ashley Gutermuth: Is what it is.
Amy Bushatz: They do. I noticed that.
Ashley Gutermuth: Don't want caravan.
Amy Bushatz: I've noticed that,
Ashley Gutermuth: You've noticed that? And that's it. That's it there. I don't want a caravan. I don't wanna block off semis from killing my husband on the highway. It's too stressful. So we drove in the same car. My rule for this one was, okay, we will be in the same truck and we will not tow anything. And I only lost out on the towing.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. All right. See, that's called negotiation. So I think you came out pretty good. Because negotiating with the military usually looks like not coming out at all, so, so I'm gonna call that yeah. So where does finding humor in military life fit into your military spouse life?
Because obviously you're making a career of this. Anybody who's seen you on Instagram knows that you're hitting the nail on the head and it's very funny. But what about your own life? Like how does finding this humor influence how you deal with all of, you know, this?
Ashley Gutermuth: I don't find any value in taking something seriously ever. And I don't, like, I won't, I don't really like to watch dramatic TV or dramatic movies. I don't like to be manipulated through music. It's, I don't want, why do I wanna feel sad or scared? I would rather have something make me happy and be funny. And if you can find, if you can make something funny, oh, that sucks you are creating something that wouldn't have existed otherwise. So you made something good out of something bad.
Amy Bushatz: Is there a difference between something being funny and finding humor in it though?
Ashley Gutermuth: You can find humor in anything. If something, so when you're writing comedy, if you start out with uh, a funny line usually that won't work. You, you wanna come up with something that's just like a straight line and then you try to finagle it to make it funny. If you just come out with you like you're trying to be funny, it doesn't really come across well. It comes off as like a dad joke or like it might be a pun or something like that. And that which puns if you write them, don't work. Puns, if you are in front of an audience and you just pull 'em out of the air, people lose their mind because it just, like it was created, it, they know it wasn't planned. You know, that kind of thing.
Amy Bushatz: Just a quick pit stop here to thank our sponsor. PCS With Military.com is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.. They may be called Navy Federal, but they don't exclusively serve sailors. Serving all members of the armed forces, they have the products and resources to help you navigate your finances through every phase of life. So even if you can't tell port from starboard, Navy Federal Credit Union will help you earn and save with great rates and exclusive discounts. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members are the mission, an equal housing lender.
PCS moves can be truly ridiculous. I think we know this, we've talked about this already which of course lends itself to those straight lines in finding that humor because it's just, there's humor in the absurd, right? That's just what it is. So not everything starts out as humorous, especially in the PCS world where people are dealing with pretty major stress, you know, and often having all of their stuff broken into tiny pieces or being conned out of huge quantities of cash. So. I understand that you have your own con that you've dealt with, and I've heard you talk about this a little bit. So I know that you have found humor in it, but can you maybe tell us about that? Like what happened? What is the con that you were a part of?
Ashley Gutermuth: I think you're referring to my tiny house debacle. Well, do you remember a few years ago, all the women in the world wanted a tiny house.
Amy Bushatz: Yes, for reasons that now evade us all after 2020, we're like, wow, that was really stupid.
Ashley Gutermuth: Well, I was ahead in the curve. Mine was 2011. It was like, it was a ways back. So, I wanted to, I wanted, first of all, I grew up around people that hoarded. I don't like that at all. I wanna travel lightly. I don't have any like I don't put pictures up of like family members. I don't, there's some paintings, but those were my husbands. Uh, I don't have a lot of furniture. I have six Roombas. That's it. That's my hor the extent to my hoarding. One time I bought 300 cans of olives, but I had a breakdown. It's fine. So I don't like to have a lot of stuff. So I thought tiny house, this would be perfect. And also we were moving, it was a military move and we thought they weren't going to give us a house on base, and we thought, we live in the fam camp and this will all work out. So we commissioned it to have it built, paid. And bear in mind, this was somebody that has and still does it, still builds them uh, was on tv and we paid it was like $12,000 or something like that. He, the date came to have it delivered. And we had talked many times and it didn't show up. And then he ended up sending us $2,000 back. And then we kept saying, you gotta send us the money. And he kept saying, well, my mom died. My mom died again. My dad is sick. My, my dad brought my mom back to life. Like, there's so many excuses over and over again. And then, so we went to the attorney general of the state and they said, oh, him, yeah, he's a problem. The, it seemed to me like my only thing that I could do would be to go into the woods where he lived and like confront him. It seemed to be the only choice I had and I couldn't do it and end up alive at the end. So basically the state was no help. We were in the middle of that military move and then moving again not that long after, and some other major things going on and never got the money back. So he still owes us $9,700 and have I let it go? No. No. I think that I'm laying in wait for that one. I, I uh, I don't know what's gonna come of it, but it's, I think it's still an open book. I, I uh, I can't say that I don't hold a grudge. It's a lot of money.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah, absolutely. But I think that you're, you know, at the same time we're still sort of laughing about this right. And I think that's a really good example of something that happens in military life. That's, or of just life in general that's like not that funny. And you're still sort of smarting over it as, I mean anyone reasonably would be but you're still able to sort of, laugh about it at least a little bit, which I would imagine lessens the sting.
Ashley Gutermuth: Oh yeah, you definitely, well, that's the thing, again, when you create something and I would like to do standup about it Um, at uh, some point, but to be able to joke about something as ridiculous, is that, like, how does that happen? How is, like, I always thought somebody steals more than 2000 that's grand larceny, right? Like, they go and arrest him. It's easy. No, apparently it's not easy. It really teaches you that you can, you could just do whatever the heck you want. And if there's sometimes there's just not much people can do about it.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Yeah. I will say, like there, as a journalist and a reporter, I often encounter things that I think, wow, this sucks. But man, what a good story. You know, so,
Ashley Gutermuth: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amy Bushatz: You know, and things that are happening to me that I'm like, this is insane. But this is gonna be good. Like, I'm gonna get a lot of mileage outta this one. Tricare is a great example. Constant shenanigans with Tricare. The v the va, another one, right? Like anytime the VA does anything insane, which by the way is a lot, I'm like, well, that's just gonna be a good story. But I imagine the same thing is true for finding standup lines in, in, in the ridiculous.
Ashley Gutermuth: Exactly.
Amy Bushatz: Because the military's full of ridiculousness. I mean, all you have to do is walk into the commissary and take a look around and be like, okay what,
Ashley Gutermuth: What, it, oh, that cheese is in date and moldy. How is that possible? Why is, Why is there milk here from 1999?
Amy Bushatz: Right. It's, yeah. What is this parking space and who is this guy who gets to park there? You know, just on and on. Right? It does not end. Like why is there always a chicken shortage at the commissary? Every time?
Ashley Gutermuth: Yes.
Amy Bushatz: You know?
Ashley Gutermuth: Yes. Not the other meat.
Amy Bushatz: No, not the other meats, just chicken. Like is there some sort of a chicken love that people have here? I don't know.
Ashley Gutermuth: Chicken bandit. It goes from base to base and buys all the chicken. And
Amy Bushatz: Here in Alaska, they have a super scary sign above the chicken. So whether there's chicken or not is up to the bandit, but the sign says something to the effect of previously frozen, do not refreeze. Like big capital letters. So if you buy this chicken, you best eat it, you know, today. So
Ashley Gutermuth: Interesting
Amy Bushatz: There's no chicken hoarding.
Ashley Gutermuth: They're trying to slow it down.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah, no chicken hoarding here. Because if you refreeze it, they can't even tell you what might happen. No one knows, no one's lived.
Ashley Gutermuth: You turn into the chicken bag.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah, that's right. Trans you're, you're, you're transformed. You're transformed. Okay. So I'm wondering if you've ever tried to make something like find a line in military re ridiculousness that did not hit the mark, that sort of missed the like, you tried it and it wasn't funny and people didn't laugh and maybe we're bringing up something that stings here. Ashley. I don't wanna bring up a hard memory, but
Ashley Gutermuth: Oh no, not at all. Everything I've ever done has gotten a standing ovation.
Amy Bushatz: That's what I thought. Okay. The answer is there's nothing. Great.
Ashley Gutermuth: Well, here's the thing. So no matter what, this is a good thing about social media when you start to get a lot like people paying attention to you. They throw their opinions in your face. And what that does is it helps you to solidify how you feel about things. So if you're, if you have people that are constantly sending you messages and you're like, I have peop somebody that's like, just out of the blue will send me messages and Why do you have the hair you have? Why do you wanna look like a man? Like, I don't understand. Why do you have? And you're just like, what is happening here? And uh, you can choose, like sometimes I'll choose to be confrontational. Sometimes you just block 'em stuff, but it causes you to think about it a little bit and you're, you can't really hide. Um, Some things that I've done that have made people, well, first of all, okay, let me take you to a what I think is something that nobody could complain about, but they do. I pick up litter every day. I've done it every day for three years.
Amy Bushatz: How dare you?
Ashley Gutermuth: I run three miles every day. How dare you? I got a comment from somebody that said, cuz I, I wear gloves when I pick up litter and I just, I'm trying not to get tetanus and hepatitis, just not today. And so I pick, I wear gloves. And this guy wrote, oh, great, you wear gloves when you pick up litter. So you're just adding more litter to the environment. Thank you. And I was like, wow. No, Brian, they're reusable gloves, come on. So people will do that about anything and everything. One of the things I've noticed is to make sure that you just don't um, sometimes I misunderstand what people are saying. They haven't communicated well, I haven't understood them. And then like I'll come back and attack them at some way and they'll be like, no, that's not what I meant at all. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. Um, Whoops. Uh, I was in like that mode or else having a bunch of people come after me. And then you were nice and I was like, ah.
But some of the things that have made people mad. So I have a video that's got 13 million views and it is me just on the phone pretending to call my husband who's deployed and I say, Hey, I've been uh, I just wanna let you know we're having a baby. I'm three months along. And he says, oh. I say, oh, you've been deployed for five months. Oh, sorry. I'm bad at math. And I did this whole, we made a lot of people mad, but I, I also wrote this long thing that was like, Rebecca and Steve are fine. They moved to Texas and they're trying to get a VA loan, but they can't because, you can't, they don't have handrails rails in their attic. Um, She really was just bad at math. But there's so many people that were like, this is gonna make people kill themselves, and how dare you? And I was like guess what? That's not happening here. You can, I, this happened to my people will take whatever you create and they will interpret it through themselves and that their world is teeny tiny. And they go, oh, I can't possibly think of some other application here for this and you're like, I can't help you. There's there's nothing I can do except play with you like a cat.
Amy Bushatz: Right. But I think you're hitting on something really important, which is when we are looking at our own military experiences to think about them from this maybe more outside type of perspective where like take the long view, right? Because Yeah. You know, I dunno, things are serious. Like they're serious and they're hard and they're stressful and man, it sure helps you to uh, get through them when you can maybe look outside of your experience right now and see how this might be funny later.
Ashley Gutermuth: Yeah, totally. And because it's a ridiculous proposition, what we do to move every two, two and a half years. You know, I did this, like we were talking about, moved from New Jersey to Texas.
And we, you know, you stop at every hotel. You're assessing where you are. It's a place where you've never been before. You're like, is this safe? Can I leave anything in the car? No. Let me spend an hour and a half dragging everything I own that the movers couldn't take into this hotel room where it's now cramped. Now I gotta figure out where food is. Oh, guess what? Now we have to go to bed cuz we gotta get up to leave so we're not in too much traffic to get to the next place. And you do that over and over again. And you're putting up so much of your own, uh, you people go two to $5,000 in debt every time they PCS and then we end up, you end up at a hotel at the other end, cuz you know your house isn't ready. And we the first night, so we've been doing all this driving. Two o'clock in the morning I start to hear people throwing things and screaming and I would get up cuz I think like a woman is being hit like this is what it sounds like. So I get up and I'm like, okay, well we gotta call the police. Gotta figure out how, like do I do it from here or do I call the front desk or what? And then I hear a woman yell at another woman, you better run b-i-t-c-h, run. Chases her down the hall. So I assume somebody was cheating on someone and got caught at two o'clock in the morning and then it was over.
And I was just like, what is, so you go, you're just so exhausted all the time and your body is in constant fight or flight mode and there's no letting down and you're in like a gross place. You're in a place that you're like, I wanna Lysol everything. And I don't, and I just, I was just thinking back, I was like, even if I wanted to go back to my old house. Even if I could, like I couldn't, somebody else is moving in to start where we were two years ago. Right. Though that is over that whole world and everybody you knew will never exist again.
Amy Bushatz: That's not sad. That's funny.
Ashley Gutermuth: You gotta go recreate your new life. And it's, there's so just so much stress to it that you have to be able to find other things into it. And then also occasionally to just be like, you know, Can't deal with it right now. I'm gonna go do something else. I'm gonna let this fail.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned earlier you have nine Roombas, which I think is something that people might want us to six, I'm sorry, how many.
Ashley Gutermuth: Six. I have six Roombas. I would love to have nine. And I think that I would take this as a recommendation from you to get three more.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Okay. So, uh, six, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to inflate your collection. Six Roombas. And people may have heard you say that and be like, what? Okay, so we gotta go back. You have six Roombas also why?
Ashley Gutermuth: Why? I like a clean floor. Uh, And yeah, I have, I do have six Roombas. I used to have seven. The seventh one died.
Amy Bushatz: Oh, I'm sorry.
Ashley Gutermuth: Um,
Amy Bushatz: Are they, do they have names like the Minions and, you know, Despicable Me,
Ashley Gutermuth: Only one is named and it's Todd, and it's because he's a jerk.
Amy Bushatz: Fair enough.
Ashley Gutermuth: Um, They're all Roomba nine eighties, which is a very specific type of Roomba that they don't make anymore. It has carpet boost. They're they're about 10 years old, and right now they're in storage. They're sleeping, they're hibernating, their little Roomba butts off. They work hard for me, but I don't take any crap from them. I yell at them. I tell them to clean harder. There's a thing going around that Roombas are watching people go to the bathroom cuz they have little webcams in them and that the like webcams are being uploaded somewhere. So if my rumors are doing that, you're getting six angles, which is impressive.
Amy Bushatz: It's a lot of data.
Ashley Gutermuth: I dunno what my roomba is. It's a lot of data. Yeah. I don't know where they're, who are they using? Verizon, Comcast. I don't let my roombas on the internet. Russia doesn't need to know all my, where all my olives are hidden.
Amy Bushatz: Fair.
Ashley Gutermuth: The truth.
Amy Bushatz: So one fun fact about Roombas is they contain lithium batteries, which are now a problem in military shipments. So I'm just wondering like if you're faced with a military move that you have to limit your lithium batteries and these are your Roomba babies. What are you what are you gonna do about that?
Ashley Gutermuth: I can tell you that right now in my hotel room in Texas is a big box full of Roomba batteries. That's what happened. You just gotta, I gotta make sure they have their food. What am I gonna do? Put 'em on display.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. And uh, what do the packers say when they pack up your, when they pack up, sticks, Roombas. People like this.
Ashley Gutermuth: Well, they knew me from social media, so they knew the Roombas. I think they took pictures of the Roombas. They were very lovely. We used LOGSA they came to rescue us because the military um, the we didn't get orders in time. And even though we kept saying, Hey, these orders are coming, these orders are coming. And the military was like, yeah, we'll get you movers. And then they were like, we're not getting you movers. What are you crazy? Uh, We had to hire LOGSA to do it and they, so they did a great job. But I wasn't there. I was, I had shows out of town. So that is a military spouse win when your husband has to do all of the packing and all of the moving and all the driving. Yeah, I'm very lucky.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Well, I'll say if anyone wants to hear more about LOGSA we have Isabel Schmidt, who is the co-founder of LOGSA Mil Moves on the show first season three and she was in season two. They can listen to both episodes and hear more about that company, what they do, and sort of inside tips from a military spouse who does moves herself for other people on moving with the military. Okay. Final thing, what do you recommend to people if they're looking for ways just to like find, to suss out some of this humor? You know, a lot of people who are listening to this might be in the middle of a PCS feeling the stress you were just talking about. You know, they've been separated from their Roomba collection and they are feeling a little bit down. So what are your recommendations for finding the humor in this stuff?
Ashley Gutermuth: Well, you know, humor a lot. It's built on rhythms and if you can list, the more comedy you listen to, the more that you start to see it. Read the hotel signs, like, there's a hotel, there's a sign in my hotel right now that says this area is off limits and it's near the breakfast buffet. And I'm like, get over yourself. Like, what do you mean it's off limits? Like it's off limits. I'm gonna go behind it. Do some, do things like that. Do Do some things that cause a little bit of trouble. Do try to, you know, look for word play. Try to like, you know, if you're moving alone or if you're moving with your family, try to be a little bit playful. Do something nice for yourself. Try to see like this my god, you know, I'd never been to a Buckey's before we got made it to Tennessee. Went to a Buckey's and you're just like, what is this Walmart of gas stations? You know? And that's funny in itself. Things that you never see. When we moved Uh, Delaware to Washington State, what I found funny was I'd be in the grocery store, all the same stuff, same packaging, different names like, cra, Hellmann's mayonnaise, I think is called Best Foods. But it's all like, run by different things and you're like, am I, where am I in a different country? Like, what is the deal? So you start to just, you'll become, you know, become observant. You'll start to see wordplay in things. And take a minute to try to look at it from a different perspective to just try to like flip it around. I think of it like literally like, how can I flip this around and what would make this more amusing? Try to, I try to amuse myself constantly.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah I find that having the fresh eyes of being in a completely new place, and let's be honest, like military bases aren't usually in city hotspots, so you're in a very rural place, so it's probably gonna be quite a bit different from other places that you've been. And that's an opportunity to find new things that seem quirky or absurd. And to me, those absurdities are funny. And it's a matter of just finding those things and then taking a beat to laugh about them in between all of the, of the ridiculousness that you're going through.
Ashley Gutermuth: Yeah, totally. And I wish you all well. I hope that you get to eat more than frozen salads like I'm having to eat.
Amy Bushatz: Ashley, thank you so much for joining us on PCS with Military.com. I really appreciate it.
Ashley Gutermuth: Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
Amy Bushatz: Thanks so much for listening to PCS With Military.com. Want more PCS advice? Check out the rest of PCS With Military.com wherever you get your podcasts. A special thanks to our sponsor, Navy Federal Credit Union, proudly serving all branches of the armed forces, veterans and their families. No matter where you are in your military career, Navy Federal Credit Union has the products and resources to help you navigate your finances. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. Our members are the mission.
And until next time, happy moving.