Clean cups! Clean cups!

Hurray for uniform changeover time! This is the time of year when Noah (and all the other Navy folk in this area) have to switch from dress blues for special occasions to dress whites. Naturally, an event of this nature calls for an inspection.

Also naturally, the new uniform didn't get hauled out of the closet until 7pm the night before inspection.

Naturally.

It turned out that the uniform required a patch to be replaced, and since it was too late to get it to an alterations shop, Noah opted to have me put it on. Of course I refused, since me hand-sewing is basically just an invitation for tears and blood, at least one of which would be terribly difficult to get out of a white uniform on short notice. After watching his efforts, though, I relented and just did it for him. Yes, my sewing looks like a four-year-old did it, but his looked like the work of a half-blind dalmatian with palsy, so it's an improvement.


Fig. 1: My sewing, seen from the back.


Fig. 2: His sewing (artist's rendition).

There was a bit of drama over some weird blue stains on the sleeve, but they fortunately turned out to be only detergent. There was further drama over the fact that Noah had been shining his shoes before trying to get the blue stains out of the uniform and thus left shoe polish all over the place, but after much consternation and a wee bit of panic (apparently smudges on the dress whites are a fairly dire problem), Shout(tm) removed the problem almost entirely.

What follows is a picture essay of Noah's final efforts to render himself presentable. My apologies for the poor image quality, since all pictures were taken either around 10pm Thursday night or 5am Friday morning.


Noah is a lot better at ironing than I am, so he got to do that.


Turning things inside out is happy times.


Last-minute ironing the next morning is NOT happy times.


Finished product minus the hat, which cannot possibly be worn indoors under any circumstances. Note half-asleep half-smile, produced after much pleading to look slightly less like a super-spiffy serial killer.


Noah's response to my accusations that he was lacking in animation.