Everybody thinks its all fun and games in the World's Greatest Canoe Club. Well it ain't no picnic. How many times have we heard this quote from our flustered wives?

While you were out for six months sailing the world and having all that fun, I was left behind all alone raising our two children without any help from you. I didn't get to see the world. No! I just saw the same four walls day in and day out. Where were you? Out having the time of your life, while I was stuck here with your children.

1: Buy a dumpster, paint it grey and live in it for six months strait.

2: Remove all pictures, plants and decorations from your house. Paint all furnishings and surfaces haze-gray. Run all of the wires and pipes from the inside of your houses walls on the outside or your walls. Paint directional flow arrows and lable those pipes by contents.

3: Pump ten inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then pump it out. Clean up, and paint the basement "deck grey."

4: Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town. Find the most run-down, trashy bar you can, and pay $10 per beer until you are hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.

5: Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower. Reassemble and test at the extreme of its tolerance.

6: On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too much water during the week, so all showering is secured.

7: Raise your bed to within six inches of the ceiling. Cut a single bed in half lengthwise, and enclose it on three sides. Add a tool that prevents yhou from sitting in any position (18" is a good height). Place your bed on a rocking table to ensure that you are tossed from side to side. Place a dead animal under your bed to simulate the smell of your "cube-mate's" sheets.

8: Have your neighbor come over each morning at 0600 a.m., and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout, "Reveille, Reveille, All hands heave out and trice up."

9: Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her stand in the back yard at 0700 a.m. and read it to you at the top of her voice.

10: Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock the bathroom door for twelve hours and hang a sign on it that reads "Secured - Contact OA DIV at ext. -3053."

11: Submit a request chit to your father-in-law, asking if it's O.K. for you to leave your house before 3 p.m.

12: Invite 1200 of your not-so-closest friends (People who chain smoke, fart loudly, snore like a MACK TRUCK on an uphill grade, and use expletives in speech the way kids use sugar on cold cereal) to come over, then board up all the windows and doors of your home for three weeks at a time, for at least six months. After the six months are up, take down the boards, and since you're on duty, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home....you can't leave until the next day.

13: Shower with the above mentioned not-so-closest friends. Do not flush the toilets for the first week to simulate the smell of 40 people using the same commode. After this flush just once daily.

14: Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home with applicable PQS (Personal Qualification Standards) Quals like: Dishwasher Operater; Blender Technician; etc

15: Walk around your car for four hours checking the tire pressure every fifteen minutes.

16: Sit in your car and let it run for four hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly "Lit Off."

17: Empty all garbage in bins in your house, and sweep your driveway three times a day, whether they need it or not. Prior to this, have the same next door neighbor annouce, "Sweepers! Sweepers! Sweepers man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down both fore and aft. Sweep all lower decks, ladder backs, and passageways. Now Sweepers!" Work hard cleaning all day, even if it only takes three hours. Whenever possible repeat your efforts. When complete inspect your work, criticizing as much as possible. NEVER be satisfied with a good solid effort.

18: Repaint your entire house once a month.

19: Cook all of your food blindfolded, grabbing for any spices and seasonings you can get your hands on, and serve cold. Remove the blindfold and eat as fast as humanly possible so as not to taste it as it slides past your tonsils. If the food does not stick to an inverted (upside down) plate, use more lard.

20: Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, losing every fifth piece.

21: Spend $20,000 on a Satelite system for your T.V., but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel. Force yourself to watch the video of a movie you walked out on and an episode of "Charlie's Angels" that you didn't like the first time you saw it. Have your friend bring you over TIME and NEWSWEEK from last month and a PLAYBOY with all the photos cut out.

23: Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.

24: Spend two weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it "world travel."

25: Attempt to spend five years working at Mc Donalds and NOT getting promoted.

26: Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead bodies of your co-workers.

27: Needle-gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.

28: When your children have been in bed for three hours, run into their room with a megaphone, and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their battle stations.

29: Post a menu on the refrigerator door infoming your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour, when they finally get to the serving line, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menus anymore....they just ask for hot dogs. Then tell them you are out of hot dogs.

30: In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating them at four-hour intervals.

31: Lock yourself and your family in your house for six weeks. Then tell them at the end of the sixth week you're going to take them to Disneyland for "weekend liberty." When the end of the sixth week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been cancelled due to the fact that they need to get ready for the AME inspection, and that it will be another week before they can leave the house.

32: Work in 18-hour cycles, sleeping only 4 hours at a time, until you ensure your body doesn't know or care if it's daytime or nighttime.

33: Listen to your favorite CD or Cassette six times in one day for a week. Then play music that causes acute nausea until you are glad to get back your "favorite" cassette.

34: Prepare yourself for an emergency that will require you to evacuate the premises, knowing that the biker gang you hired will simulate sharks and cut off your arms and legs. Study first aid for bleeding until you can quote the book verbatim. Stock up on band-aids, aspirin, Robitussin, and Motrin, which have been proven by NAVY DOCTORS to cure every disease known to man.

35: Buy a gas mask and scrub the faceplate with steelwool until you can't see out or it. Wear this for two hours every third day and shut off power at the main breaker and run through the house screaming, "Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire in the main machinery room! Fire in the main machinery room! Do this until you sweat profusely and lose your voice; then restore power to your main machinery room.

Put your family through these, and then let them tell you how glamorous the Navy Life is.