How to Prepare for Iraq

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

Things to do for a Smooth Transition, Once you find out you are Deploying

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage

2. Replace 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 "Wrong Cot"

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bath-tub and move the shower head to chest level. Keep 4 inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet. Leave 2 or 3 sheets of toilet paper or for best results remove it altogether

5. When you take showers wear flip flops and turn 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 the 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 a vote on what movie to watch and then watch a different one.

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

10. Have the paper boy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot to across to your neighbors house, laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use 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. The serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles for every meal.

15. Set your alarm 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 in your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month take every appliance you own apart and put them back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and then let it sit for about 5 to 6 hours on the burner before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people that you do not like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a few months and exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent light installed under your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds or lower the top sills so that you either trip or hit your head every time you pass through them.

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

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

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to the garage door after supper and then say," sorry it is for the other smith."

24. Wash only 15 item of laundry per week. Roll up semi wet clean clothes in a ball, place them in a cloth sack and put in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week unroll them without ironing or removing mildew, proudly wear them to family gatherings and professional meetings. Pretend you don't