How to prepare for deployment.

As long as they keep bitchin' - we can't lose!

As seen on the NCO Zone mailing list.

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend
whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble,
"Sorry,wrong cot."

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the
middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level.
Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the
toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to
three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it
altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop
using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who
lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking
chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on
"HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have
your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different
one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for
proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making
sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's
house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up
garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in
your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in
an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night.
When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as
you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your
yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and
put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or
six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of
their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of
months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee
table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of 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.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to
the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in
case." Every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to
you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then
say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet
clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of
the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without
ironing or removing the mildew,proudly wear them to professional
meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look
or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily
armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a
tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there
to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for
Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for
a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper
ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and
fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass
and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives
before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:
00 a. m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you
are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an
acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing
barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead
cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches off
center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M- Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the
exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the
web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back.
Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks,
give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and
shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's
back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to
your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so
you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air
conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order
yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate
the next deployment you've been ordered to support.