For all the old Sailors and Marines out there…

A few suggestions on what to do when you really get lonely for the sea

1. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your spouse whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble “sorry, wrong rack”.
2. Renovate your bathroom; build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping up.
3. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until your are nauseous
4. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to “high”.
5. Don’t watch TV except movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.
6. Leave the lawn mower running in your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.
7. Have the paper boy give you a haircut.
8. Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across and onto your neighbor’s house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
9. Buy a trash compacter and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
10. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (optional: canned ravioli or cold soup)
11. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.
12. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can; then run into your yard and break out the garden hose.
13. Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put them back together.
14. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to set for 5 hours before drinking. (optional: add a dash of kerosene for taste and the proper oil slick)
15. Invite at least 85 people you don’t really like to come visit for a couple of months.
16. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
17. Raise the threshold and lower the top sill on your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
18. Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.
19. When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
20. Every so often, throw your cat in the swimming pool, shout “Man overboard, ship recovery!”, run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off the counter onto the floor, then yell at your spouse for not having the place” stowed for sea”.
21. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don’t plug them in). Go stand in front of the stove; say, to no one in particular, “Stove manned and ready”. Stand there for 3 or 4 hours; say, to no one in particular, “Stove secured”. Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.

The other option is take out a good bottle of Scotch and pull the cruise book off the shelf 🙂