Deployment Prep, Home Front Version

After reading the "Deployment Prep" post from CI-Roller Dude, I felt inspired to do the corresponding Home Front version

Original at http://ci-roller.blogspot.com/2011/09/deployment-prep.html

(You can try this while your loved ones are away for work up training)

1. Stay awake for days on end waiting for the phone to ring.  When you finally give up and sleep, have a friend call you and pretend to be a telemarketer, preferably from the same telephone exchange your loved one's calls will route through.

2. Get in the habit of checking your e-mail compulsively every 5 minutes.

3. Start buying treats, gag gifts, socks, personal care items, and deluxe toilet paper for your loved one, and 6 of their closest friends.

4. Package all the items above into a large box that your arms just barely reach around, and go stand in your local postal outlet for 25 minutes to an hour.

5. Have someone monitor your comings and goings, and signal your loved one to call you when you are in that one little zone where you have no cell service, and leave you a message saying how much they miss you, and would have loved to hear your voice ...

6.  Have your loved one finally call you while someone is shooting or blowing things up in the background, and have them cut you off in the middle of a sentence with  "Shit ... gotta go ... *click*" ... and then not call back for at least 24 hours.

7. Arrange to have the kids, your parents, their parents, and the dog all need urgent emergency assistance all at the same time, while your loved one is unable to help.

8.  While dealing with the above, have someone sabotage your vehicle, and the plumbing in the main bathroom.

9.  Encourage your loved one to start talking to you like you are under his command, and only about military things; you might as well get used to it now.

10. Have your friends all walk up to you with puppy dog eyes and say "How are you holding up?" ... but then not actually listen to your answer.

11.  Call your friend that knows you the best, and cry while on the phone with them.  practice until you can cry through an entire phone call without them being able to tell.

12.  Have your loved one call and say they are coming home ... and then call and say they are not ... then with a new date ... repeat process a few times ... then finally have them call from a simulated TLD location, when you are having a bad hair day, are bloated, and in sweat pants, and say they'll be home in a few hours