One Day and a Wakeup

One day and a wake up! As crew change approaches, time seems to stand still. It’s like when you were 7 years old, and Christmas or, pick a Holiday, is a week away and you just can’t wait till the day arrives. Another 3 week sector of our lives is coming to an end, and we all look forward to scattering about the world to the place we call home. Mine is in Pennsylvania. Mike’s is in San Juan. Ernesto calls home, Rincon, Puerto Rico.

Each place is different but each of us looks forward to those places with the same feelings. Ernesto is looking forward to surfing every day, and I mean Surfing EVERY DAY. He explained to me one time how he just HAS TO GO SURFING EVERY DAY, or he doesn’t feel right. HE HAS TO! Well, he’s 30 something and single, that’s what he should do.

Mike will go home to San Juan, play a little baseball on the weekend with the over 40 crowd, but spend most of his time holed up in his condo, watching the stock market on his computer. Sounds boring to me, but it’s what he is looking forward to doing.

I’ll go home and, well, basically do nothing. That’s not totally true. First I have the honey do list to take care of. So why is it that the last day I’m home, I’m scrambling around trying to finish up the list? The list really isn’t that long, but I tend to put off half the list till later. I’m trying to improve on that.

It’s interesting how we try to speed up the process of getting crew change to arrive. For instance, crew change is on a Wednesday. When we wake up on Monday morning, a normal person would say we have 3 more days till crew change. Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday. But to a seaman, it’s “1 day and a wake up.”It just sounds better. And we repeat it all day like a trained Parrot. Like, if we say it enough, it will be true.

You see, we don’t count Monday because, well, it’s already here. And we don’t count Wednesday because, well, that’s the day we get off. See? Makes sense right? Of course it doesn’t.

My first day home will consist of enjoying my morning coffee on the deck. Going through my mail that my wife collects for me. I’ll work out. Probably not, it’s my first day home. I may start on the honey do list, but I doubt it; I have 3 weeks for heaven’s sake!

What I definitely will do during the day is decide what wine I’m going to have opened when my wife walks in the door from work. I’m thinking a White right now, but that may change, I’m very flexible.