CRUISE INTERLUDE

I laugh when I see those pictures in a magazine or newspaper of people and their pets. You know, those contests where you send in pictures to see who looks the most like their pet.

My pet has taken on my personality, and I've noticed, my "illnesses" as well. We are both constantly trying to lose weight with no good results.

Last year when I fell down the stairs and cracked my pelvis, two weeks later, she "blew" her knee chasing something in the country so we both were on R&R most of the late summer and fall.

I have horrible allergies that seem to get worse every year. When we are driving to the country, Snoopy always wants the window all the way down the last couple of miles so she can hang her head out the window, ears flapping in the breeze. That is until we would hit the gravel road and she would start coughing---dust allergy? It can only be.

This week, my allerigies have picked up and settled in my chest and I've been pretty sick with bronchitis since the weekend. Last night, Snoopy was walking through the house repeatedly sneezing. Papa just says...."unbelievable".

At least we're not looking alike.....YET.




Now this little girl....yeah, I'll agree that we are related!!!

Stay tuned for more cruise story in the near future.

Grammy

CRUISE---Part 3

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and we were raring to go. Papa broke a belt first off which necessitated a trip to the corner Walmart which took alot longer than expected (another story---Papa shopping!) Anyway, belt purchased and we loaded up again for the short drive to Port Canaveral.

And our first glimpse of The Dream.





It was huge, we were terrified and excited all at the same time. SIL dropped us off with all the luggage



LOL! He went and parked the car while we stood and tried to imagine how the four of us would transport all that just a short distance to the front doors.

Thankfully, there were luggage porters about two rows over and they took the majority of luggage off our hands and we entered the front doors to begin the embarkation process.

Got checked in, passed security, had our Sail and Sign cards issued (the most important belonging to any cruise passenger---it's the room key, method of payment, identification on and off the boat--something NOT to lose) and across the gangway we went---all at seemingly breakneck speed because before we knew it, we were on the ship where we dropped out carryon luggage and collapsed. Those cruise people know how to work a process.

We were here!!





Since we couldn't go to our staterooms until after 1:30, we all headed to the above pictured Lido Deck aka the party deck to grab some lunch from one of the buffets and start meeting our other cruisers.






Then it was finally time to find our rooms.



I didn't think to take a picture of our stateroom but the below is an example except for couples, those twin beds were "united" to make a king which is what we had.



We already had had a full day and it was only early afternoon. We unpacked and got a little acclimated with our room and then toured the ship.
















That's enough for today,
Grammy

CRUISE--Part Two

So we spent the night catnapping, talking, reading (with reading lights, silly), listening to our ipods and just looking at the dark countryside fly by.

Friday was DD's 30th birthday. Hard to believe that my little baby girl was that old. But she was and did it gracefully!



Yep, Graceful....that's my DD. Somewhere early morning Friday, we stopped at Waffle House to have breakfast. We still had half the journey ahead of us (15+ hours to Orlando where we were stopping for the night and Georgia and Florida are LONNNNGGGG states). We were tired and travelworn already from a long sleepless night and so we went in and sat down and ordered a good breakfast. DD, meanwhile, went over to the Jukebox and filled it up with "breakfast music"....So it's 7ish in some small Georgian town in a Waffle House filled with older folks having a quiet breakfast and here is Skynard blasting out of the jukebox and DD with her hooked horns flying, yelling Freebird. Yep, she's a shy, retiring peach, that one!

The trip otherwise was uneventful, just long. Thinking back I don't even remember stopping for lunch but we arrived at Orlando sometime late afternoon and checked into our hotel. This is where Papa and I were stepping off the family vacation train and hiding out in our room for next 12 hours. DD and SIL were meeting up with some of their friends, our fellow cruisers, to go out on the town and celebrate DD's 30th and another girl's 21st.



Nice new hotel, quiet, comfy beds, huge room, cable tv, everything we needed to R&R quietly before our 8 day vacation began. We popped out to grab some burgers for dinner but otherwise, uneventful and we were both snoozing early, trying to catch up from the night. We're not spring chickens, ya know, and staying up all night can be a bit taxing.

Until tomorrow....
Grammy

Continuing----CRUISE Part One

OK, no more excuses about why I'm not writing. I will just start again. Thanks for hanging in there. Referred to my book of ideas...the Book of Ideas and figured to start with most recent and work my way back. Yeah, that's the plan.

THE CRUISE

Scary, Overwhelming, BIG, Exciting, Leery, Unbelievable, Once in a Lifetime, Optimistic, Pessimistic...just about every word I could think of entered my emotions before, during, and after.

And I haven't been the same since I returned. I'm not destined to live the life I've been living. I need to be independently wealthy, have numerous servants, and assorted people in my employ to take care of my every need. Travel the world, seeing all there is to see. Definitely not sitting here in middle America, toiling at a boring desk job, enduring crappy weather, and living a routine life.

Oh well. I'll try as I can to endure in between my vacations!

Darling Daughter had brought up this idea way back last summer. She was getting ready to turn 30 and wanted to do it up big. I was amused as I had my 30th in Cracker's first husband's basement and she had her 30th party at a VFW hall.

At first a cruise wasn't the idea. It was just going someplace tropical. For her friends and family to all get together and have fun. As she investigated, a cruise popped up as the ideal way to get tropical, travel, and do something most of us hadn't ever done before. So we scrimped and saved and talked to travel agents and started making reservations. The Carnival Dream, which at that time (last summer), wasn't even done being built yet, let alone sailing.....ah, The Titanic came to mind.

Then there were a rash of stories about people falling off of cruise boats (happens more than you know--just look out in the internet.....I did!) So I quickly crossed off a balcony stateroom and chose an inside cabin. If I had a do-over, I would have stuck with the balcony. But at the time, I could envision, me, early one morning, sitting on the balcony reading a book and enjoying my solitude while Papa slept in and the boat hitting a "bump" and over the rail I would go whereas Papa would be reporting, "she was just here, I have no idea where she went off to...."

I was equally afraid for my friends and family falling off the boat as well and thought, I'm just going to have to bring a long rope and start tying us together or I'll never be able to relax and enjoy this trip at all. Now after the fact, I see how hard it would be to actually fall off. Oh, it can be done on purpose or on accident, but it wouldn't be quite such a simple accident.

So by fall, we had our trip booked and paid for and spent the long, long, cold, snowy, miserable winter buying summer clothes and anxiously awaiting March and our departure.

Our group consisted of DD and SIL, Aunt Cracker and the Weatherman, Papa and I, and about 8 of DD and SIL's friends, many in that group were prior cruisers. We so wanted Fantastic Son and Serious Girlfriend to come along but they couldn't make it happen this time.

Everyone was flying on different days and times but DD, SIL, Papa, and I were driving down together. Now if you know our "family vacation" history, you might wonder if this was a good idea but we were determined to make this work and prove that we COULD enjoy a vacation as a family (regardless of what happened on all the past family vacations)...our history was NOT going to be the pattern for the future. Or at least this was my main objective.

So Thursday night at midnight, we all got in their van and off we went.....


Part 2 coming next.
Traveling Grammy

Try, Try Again

SO we've been having some little medical issues around the house the last two weeks and for a change it's not my behind or neck. Although I am still see doctors routinely for both.

No, it's been Papa. Two weeks ago he told me his jaw was sore and he thought he felt a bump. Oh no! Really, I said, you'd better check in with the doctor. But as before with the "heart attack", come Monday when the doctor's office opened, he said he felt OK and wasn't calling. This time instead of calling those close to him and tattling, I started researching "things" on the internet (I know, bad, bad Grammy) and sending him what I was finding.

After only an hour or so, he calls me and said he had a doctor appointment the next day. Well on Tuesday his doc seemed very concerned and didn't see evidence of a "bump". He called it an assymetrical mass on one side and he could definitely see it. Of course, after relaying this information, Papa refused to let me see him head on for any length of time so I could investigate.

Doc sent him for a CT scan, the sooner the better, and so the appointment was made for Thursday morning. (I was just thanking God that I had bought travel insurance.)

CT Scan was accomplished and, of course, they don't tell Papa any diagnosis. Thankfully early Friday morning the doc called and said it was just a bacterial infection in his jaw and around the salivatory glands and gave him a heavy duty antibiotic to take 4x a day for a couple of weeks and a refill tacked on and TO FINISH ALL THE MEDICINE. "Oh, and how is your aspirin therapy going?" Well that was a new one. After Papa's last round of bloodwork, I noticed in addition to his cholesterol being high, that he was pre-hypertensive and wondered if they were going to put him on the aspirin a day plan but no mention of it. Obviously they did mention it and either Papa didn't pay attention or he "forgot."

Ok, fast forward to this week and Papa had a three year routine colonoscopy scheduled. His father had colon cancer and at Papa's first procedure, 10 polyps were found, five being pre-cancerous so "you must come back in three years." We checked and rechecked and the antibiotics mentioned above as well as the aspirin and cholesterol meds were all allowed to be continued while prepping for this procedure.

Papa was a little more relieved, a different prep was being used than what he had to ENDURE the last time. So long story short, no cheating on food (I was the supreme food nazi), his prep liquids were consumed and the pooping commensed and all was well, so the next day off to the doc's office we went for the procedure.

Afterward, while we were sitting in the recovery room, the doc came in with some "bad news"....could only view the bottom half of the colon because the top half was...well, you know...not empty. We discussed all this and it could be that Papa ate too heavily on Tuesday, his last day of solid food. Maybe the antibiotic caused a little stopping up. Maybe the new prep wasn't as effective as the last one. Of course, later on that evening, Papa blamed the doctor as being at fault (no details as of why this blame) but continuing on this thread my jello was also thrown in as being at fault. See what I'm dealing with!

Anyway, bottom line, we have to repeat this whole process again in SIX MONTHS and go back to using the original prep, and to limit food to soups only on his last solid food day.

Maybe I'll just stay in the tropics until September when this procedure is over and come home.

Collecting once again for a Grammy fund!
Until next time....

OBE

Plain and simple--Overcome By Events! Sitting at Massey Gardens, yes we are back over here. Somewhat. We have beds, tvs and DISH satellite set up. Bathrooms and kitchen are coming along but the weather is really impeding our progress.

First, it snowed and snowed and snowed and we couldn't get up the road to Massey Ponds and now that the snow is pretty much gone, it's raining and the road is quite muddy. We did make it up yesterday for one truckload and one carload but that's all the progress this weekend. Oh well, we're not in a hurry and we are comfortable out here now and not trapped in one bedroom while trying to rehab the other house. That was all pretty miserable.

I've decided to do alot of deep cleaning over here as we move back and I'm getting ready to paint the front room of the back bathroom next weekend. We've had some roofwork and carpet cleaners in here to give the carpet a thorough cleaning after our "renters" left. Good riddance to that nightmare and I may write more of that story as time goes on but for now, just moving on.

We are getting ready for our big once-in-a-lifetime cruise to the Western Caribbean. We'll be there two weeks from today. Will be a whirlwind I'm sure.

I'm suffering another addiction which is contributing to my lack of writing. I've decided I enjoy reading more and from the looks of my blogroll, you'll see I have a ton more blogs that I'm enjoying. Having a hard time just trying to keep up with all that reading, let alone getting my blog written. But think I'm gonna switch around my priorities....I won't allow myself to read UNTIL I write a little bit.

All the cast of characters I've written about previously are all doing well and I'll get some updates written on everyone and some new pictures included.

But that's my short update for now.

Stay tuned....Grammy

Back to Writing

What to say....LIFE!

Woke up very early, with the sunrise, on Sunday morning out in the country, Massey Ponds. Sat outside with Snoopy and watched the sun come up and light up the wild pampas grass that is growing in the front yard. Thought I should go in and grab the camera and try to capture that picture but knew I probably couldn't. So still and so beautiful and almost quiet with just the few winter birds left.

Watched some deer walking through the side woods heading down to the front to grab a drink and cross the road into the woods at Massey Gardens. For once, Snoopy didn't attempt to chase them....in the funny way she mimics them...the deer/kangaroo hop we call it. Another thing you'll just have to visualize.

Then the near silent, peaceful Sunday morning was shattered with Papa in the house talking to himself and gun shots in the distance (it is hunting season) and the sounds of a hunter walking in the side woods. But I think my deer are safe in the woods at Massey Gardens. No hunting there......more to come.

Contented Grammy