Happiness is coming to the end of a long hitch. I got to pack up my crap, help give the boat a good once over, and drag my shit over that dock. Gotta shine up my gators and

hit that club tonight! You learn a lot about the people you living and working with on a boat when its time to make a crew change. I caught this boy we trying to teach to work the deck in the galley spraying “Mr. Clean” all over every damn thing. He had no plans to actually clean anything; he thought he could fool somebody with the old “Deckhand in a drum” routine. Well, lemon fresh bacon grease is still bacon grease. I had to put him on the business end of a mop, and some old school bleach water. I figured while I had him occupied, I would go take a look at his room- see how he was planning on leaving that for the next man. I was neither shocked, nor surprised to see most of his shit in garbage bags, ones that looked A LOT like the ones we buy for the boat. He did a nice job of duct taping the bags shut. He did a lazy ass job, though, of making that room ready for the next man. You ever notice how some folks treat their room like a hotel, leaving it the same as it was when they got there, and others act like they own the damn thing? Go in there hanging stuff all up on the walls, drilling holes in the wood, hanging cheap speakers and wires and shit? They leave posters on the walls, dirty laundry in the drawers or lockers, shit all over the bunks, enough to make you want to kill somebody. Then you come on, already pissed about being back on a hitch, and got to feel like you’re staying over at their house instead of moving back into your own room. My favorite is when they decide to put a dozen of those nasty ass plug-in air fresheners in your room to cover their funk, instead of just washing those clothes and maybe mopping the damn floor. Them things make all your clothes smell like you been in a shady ass strip club before you even get to go to a shady ass strip club. They bout get a married man in trouble. All you need with that cheap smell on you is to have a couple ones in your pocket for the wifey to find, and you’d be hemmed up good! I hate that stuff, and anything made to make something dirty smell clean. Fabreze and all this. I told that boy, and every other of these young ass, never been away from Momma for a minute boys, that we aint having that. You clean, don’t cover. I’m a bitch to live with, but when they learn this way, maybe they go home and be better about the way they living there. Yall know this new generation don’t have Daddies at home. We got to raised them up on the job, and on the boat. Well, im gonna go check on his mopping, and run him back in his stateroom to finish cleaning it the right way. We will see if HE comes back next hitch. If he does, maybe he will be worth keeping. Well Yall, I got to go do that, and then go see what food im taking to the house, so Im out. Peace, Ballah-