She Said . . .
Well the trip we had planned for and looked forward to for months is coming to an end. Today is our last full day on the ship. Tomorrow they kick us off. This time not prematurely.
I try to title the sections so people can skip the stuff they don’t care about, which you might want to do with the following section which has nothing, really to do with the goings on during our vacation.
My Thoughts Having Nothing To Do With Vacation
I have thoroughly enjoyed the week on the ship. I am not kicking and screaming to get off. It is a rare event to have 7 days in succession where you can do absolutely whatever or nothing at all. If you have ports of call, you are likely getting off the ship to see something you want to see. If you are on vacation, it is unlikely you ever have 7 whole days to contemplate the world and life. If you are at home for 7 days, there is always something to do - clean the house, finish some project on your To Do list, cook, etc.
I feel I really needed it. When I started thinking about it, I really haven’t had time to process so much of what has happened in my life the last few years, with Kaylene being so sick for so long and then passing away. Not to mention all the numerous other things that happened along the way which in themselves would have been just a blip but whose effect on my life was magnified by the sadness enveloping every fiber of my being. Last year’s vacation should have been the opportunity to do that, but falling down breaking my face, getting kicked off a cruise ship, and making a trip to an Australian emergency room, did not lend itself to a time for reflection. (Excuse the pun - since we are now on the Celebrity Reflection.)
What a fantastic opportunity to look out at the vast ocean and just feel. Mourn the loss of one person who has been there with me at every significant point in my life, always. Feel the overwhelming love for my husband and the peacefulness that overcomes me as I think about his place in my world. The thankfulness I have for all the amazing friends I have accumulated in my life. Some I speak to on a regular basis, some I speak to from time to time, some I only see on Facebook, and some I must be content to merely hold in my heart. You all know who you are. If I start naming names now, I will leave someone out, think about them later, and then feel bad for not mentioning them. Appreciation for being able to participate in the lives of my nieces and to keep their mother alive, if in some small way, in their lives.
I am content in my currently chosen profession. I say currently because I look back and I see a few of them; professions, that is. I can and do make a positive difference in people’s lives. Some may wonder how a family lawyer who divorces people can feel that way. Maybe some think I break up families. The families are broken before I ever come on the scene. The healing can begin based on what I do and how I do my job.
My life is full. Full of love, family, amazing friends and colleagues, and truly a fulfilling life. I can dwell in the sadness and all the bad things that have fallen in my path or I can look to those good things that have made my life something worth living. I choose to be thankful and happy that God has blessed me with so much! The bad stuff, large and small, help me see all that is amazing in my life.
Well, enough philosophical mumbo jumbo. Y’all are reading this to hear about . . . Oh, Lord, I have no idea why you would read this.
Days 5 and 6
Days 5 and 6 looked much like the prior days. Blaise finished both the sequels to The LIncoln Lawyer. I am shocked he read two novels back to back without non-fiction in between. He did not want to start reading any other novel because he will not pick it up again until our next vacation. While I read novels all the time he does not. Now he is reading some book about infinity - the numerical concept, not the Celebrity Infinity (a ship), nor neverending time.
I finished my second David Baldacci novel, Saving Faith. I found it to be one of his weakest stories. Now I am on to Dennis LeHane’s Since We Fell. I have loved Dennis LeHane since long before they made Mystic River a movie. As a matter of fact, I haven’t even read that one. The current one I’m reading may be the first I don’t like as it appears one of the characters I have come to enjoy in the first 38% of the book was killed in the first sentence. It appears the rest of the story is telling us how the characters got there. Or maybe it is just a dream - the killing part. I hope.
We did some exercising in the the fitness center. Some of my running friends would be real impressed with some guy on a treadmill who ran (not walked or even jogged) for 40 of the 45 minutes I was on the elliptical doing my 15-20 minute miles. Hey, but I went.
We did see two boats in the last few days. Just as I was beginning to wonder if we would even see a single boat until we hit Fort Lauderdale.
Before the cruise I thought it might be a little unsettling to not see boats or land for days on end. It has not been.
We have gone back to the Captain’s Club happy hour every night because we have so enjoyed talking to the wonderful couple from Jackson Mississippi. This is quite the accomplishment for my anti-social husband. He must really like them for him to want to go back. If you haven’t figured out by now, he likes to be anonymous in most situations.
General Thoughts On A Transatlantic Cruise
I think if you have the opportunity to do it you should. If you are the ansy type who has to go go go all the time, then it might not be fore you. You can do as much or as little as you want on the ship. I choose lots of contemplation time and reading with a few events and activities sprinkled in. While I would do it again probably sooner than Blaise, we both have enjoyed it. But I look at the long list of places we want to visit in this world and it may be a while before we do the transocean cruise again.
If you do decide to do a transatlantic cruise at some point, I recommend going from the east to the west (ex. - Europe to the U.S.) for a couple reasons. First, take your long flight TO Europe so on the back end, you only have a couple hours to reach your final destination home in the U.S. Take your hit on losing the hours of your time that way and gain it back on the cruise back to the United States. Which leads me to the second reason to go from Europe to the U.S.: 25 hour days! We had seven nights we fell back one hour, which give us 25 hours days. You don’t feel like you are missing any time and you even feel like you are cheating the system getting extra time in your days. Yes, I know I lost them on the flight TO Europe, but on the cruise back it sure feels like you are getting some bonus time!
Coming Up
Tomorrow we get off the boat. When Blaise booked our flight back from Fort Lauderdale to D/FW, we had a discussion whether or not we should take the first flight home at 8:30 AM or the last flight at 8:30 PM. We knew we were going to fly Spirit since they have the best prices (even with paying to check bags) but they only have the 2 flights a day. After 7 days relaxing on the boat, I did not want to run off the boat at 7 AM and worry through customs and picking up our luggage at the port if we were going to make it on the plane. I just didn’t want to end our vacation that way. I may regret my choice about 3 PM tomorrow, but we’ll see. So we are leaving at 8:30 PM ish and won’t get in until nearly 11 PM. We will have to Uber home because as we understand, Brandon is still in Florida working insurance claims.
There is a free shuttle bus from the airport to downtown Fort Lauderdale (which is really just canals and shopping) so we will check our bags at a security locker and take the shuttle downtown. If we get bored there, we’ll just Uber to a movie theater and watch something even though I have no idea what movies are playing right now. If someone has seen something good lately, let us know.
I would love it if Brandon is close enough to Fort Lauderdale to come spend a few hours with us. But last we heard he was heading to the Orlando area.
While I am not ready for vacation to end (I never am), I am ready to talk to my friends and catch up on the latest goings on at the Courthouse. I am sure Charles has thoroughly enjoyed my vacation since his wife and I aren’t texting all the time, particularly during the many gold rush shows our spouses love to watch. Maybe since I’ve been on vacation that annoying female gold hunter has realized she’s no good at it and quit. I can dream. It’s sad that I know enough to hate her.
I am also looking forward to seeing my beautiful nieces. I have most definitely missed them! By the time we get back their school volleyball seasons will have finished and their club volleyball practices will be in full swing.
Dana’s Food Watch
Tuesday Dinner: Our tasty little bite before our appetizers was a “devilish” egg with caviar sprinkled on top. It was an exceptional deviled egg. The egg spawned a conversation about my Thanksgiving menu since the nieces, Lyle, and let's not forget cute furry Lucy, will be at our house. I absolutely LOVE having them over during any holiday! These days all the cooking is on me so I have to give it a bit of thought and planning. I would have a mutiny though, if I did not have deviled eggs. Blaise says order it all from somewhere and be done with it, but I don’t quite have that in my yet.
Back to dinner - we had some sort of crusted shrimp for an appetizer with a tomato-based sauce. Outstanding! For our entrees, Blaise had the lamb shank and I had the cannelloni. I am not a big fan of lamb, but Blaise let me have a bite of his and it didn’t taste lamby at all. The cannelloni was amazing. I don’t know what they do to make their pasta so delicious, but it is. Every time. Blaise again had the cheese plate for dessert and I cannot remember whatsoever what I had.
Wednesday Dinner:
Last night was what I now call “fancy” night - our last one for the cruise so they always have super special food choices. Our little bite (For Randee - I know the name, I just can’t spell it and I am afraid the spell checker won’t properly correct it when I go online to upload this) was a cold shrimp with wonton noodle things. It was dry but tasty. I think it should have had some sort of sauce. Blaise had the wedge salad with blue cheese dressing for his starter and I had something tasty (because I ate the whole damn thing) yet unremembered. For his entree, Blaise had herb encrusted lamb chops and I had the butter poached lobster. Blaise had the cheese plate for dessert and I had a chocolate bar with peanut gelato. The chocolate bar was a chocolate mousse with a dark chocolate sauce covering the whole of it.
Injury Watch
No injuries but I did lose my other pinky nail. It has been nearly 3 weeks since I got my nails done and they look awful. Yes, a first-world problem.
He Said . . .
And last day of the 2017 vacation cruise. So I must say that I truly enjoyed the down time but I’m ready to get home, I loved the ports of call and any time you can get your own personal tour of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel you know it’s going to be very special. It’s utterly amazing to me that we can be across the world in less than 14 hours and enjoying what our art, history, social and civic teachers said would define you when you were a kid; I think back to my childhood, I couldn’t even imagine seeing these priceless treasures, not to mention the beauty that these places hold that local takes for granted. I would have never guessed it was going to be possible and I consider ourselves to be so very fortunate, health, happiness and getting to experience places like these, it’s incredible…
Just as an aside, I should give you a glimpse into what I hope none of you were unfortunate enough to experience during your school years. We used to refer to our high school as the Stalag because it had 8 foot fences and constantan wire running above it, I used to joke about whether they were trying to educate us or just keep us contained until the judicial system could take over. The last two days of each of my high school years were marred by racially motivated “brawls” that ended violently and with too many police cars to count. I was one of the smart ones who realized early that for some reason our gym was a “safe zone” and everyone that wasn’t involved climbed to the top of the rafters and watched the lunacy of our childhood play out. Fortunately by my sophomore year I was able to convince my mom that there was not going to be any learning going on and my life could be in question, she concurred, I stayed home!!
With that as a backdrop it makes me feel so fortunate that I am able to enjoy the true meaning of the things that are out there for us to experience and not just Google them up, some things just can’t be seen on Google, just as Robin Williams said to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel? Or how you felt when you looked up at that ceiling the first time and realized that it was his very FIRST painting, unbelievable!! That said I feel so very fortunate to be able to see these things for ourselves with someone I truly love being with, Brandon notwithstanding, I REALLY miss talking to him and can’t wait to get within cell coverage to call him to find out what’s going on in Florida with the cat. duty.
So as we close this vacation out, I hear there is going to be a final wrap up Saturday I am looking forward to getting home and starting the planning for 2018, I am strongly encouraged about China as I got overruled this year, 2019 is shaping up to be the Baltics. In any case I’m already looking forward to the crazy things that will invariably come up to/from and on the boats. FYI, we priced the Galapagos and Celebrity wanted 30K for that and Machu Picchu, clearly they don’t know who they’re dealing with here.
I finished the second book in the Lincoln Lawyer series (the Brass Verdict), it was better than the others, including the one they made into a movie and hopefully they’ll make this one into a movie as well. I’m sure Ami will want to see it if they recast Matthew McConaughey as the lead again… :)
Next on the list is called Beyond Infinity, a book about trying to reduce infinity to something more palpable than my very first Calc Prof called it “a gosh awful big number”, and I can hear it coming out of his mouth with a Texas draw/twang like it was just yesterday, God I loved the way he taught, he made math so much fun and for me was so engaging that if you didn’t finish your homework you felt like you let him down personally; what a teacher!! I’m a few chapters in and so far we have landed on anything too lofty like quantum mechanics or string theory, we’re still wrapping our heads around how to define it so it should be a fun read. She started by creating an imaginary hotel with infinite rooms that you could accommodate all the guests who came in as long as people didn’t mind moving from room to room and that was fine, then she added a second floor, more interesting conceptually when you want to move people from the second floor to the first due to a fire, and then finally infinite floors being moved to the 1st floor, then it just became more challenging, good fun after you noodle it a bit.
Looking forward to getting into Fort Lauderdale tomorrow to see how it looks after some cleanup time, we’ll go downtown after we drop off the luggage at the airport. Hopefully we be able to find the restaurant we ate at last time, 1926 or something like, fabulous mexican food, I can’t wait!!! And then just the big front seat, 1A and 1C at 8:45P to get home.
I don’t think I’ll do another transatlantic again but you never know, I want to see the ports more than I want 7 straight days of solitude, but who knows maybe after retirement I’ll feel differently. Until then be healthy, be happy and hug your significant other and let them know how you appreciate them every day, or whatever their equivalent love language act would be, see you soon…
No comments:
Post a Comment