Is a Cruise Right for You?

It's Cruise Ship Saturday! Today we have some questions to help you decide if a cruise is right for you.

"You can find tranquility, you can find party, you can find new friends. I'm a cruise convert." ~ Guy Fieri

Still working on the revisions for the new edition of Cruising with Confidence.
An excerpt from Chapter 1:

Several words may come to mind when thinking about a cruise: 

Fun...Adventurous...Confining...Formal...Exhilarating...Scary...Complicated...Fancy... Relaxing...Busy...Confusing...Rich...Expensive...Crowded...Intimidating...Titanic 

When discussing whether or not to take my first cruise the words with negative connotations dominated conversations. After years of cruising I now lean toward the positive sounding words. I can even say “Titanic” out loud, while on a ship, and not be afraid of jinxing things! I’ve moved from a nervous to an excited to a confident cruiser.
In deciding if a cruise is right for you, the elementary teacher in me would like to ask some questions: 

• Does your dream day consist of hanging out by a pool and working on a tan?
• Are you a dancer, a reader, a trivia lover, or a movie buff?
• Do you enjoy trying new foods? Prefer eating the same thing every day?
• Do you like conversing with other folks from different places? Long for alone time?
• Are you the type who likes being on the go?
• Would never having to make a bed, cook a meal, or wash a dish work for you?
• Do you like dressing up in fancy clothes or rather wear shorts and t-shirts all day?
• Are you looking to reconnect with family or friends?
• Does the idea of traveling to a foreign country excite you?
• Do you like the idea of getting a good value for your money? 

Answering yes to just one question could mean a cruise vacation is right for you.

Saying yes to cruising is also saying yes to beautiful sunsets at sea.

The Friday Fives

I thought I was going to be able to report on five things that I did today having to do with the number five. Didn't happen.

1. It was 50 degrees today! It felt downright warm in the sun.
2. Thanks to a coupon hubby and I had a $5 lunch today.

3. I thought I was going to be able to report I revised five chapters in the Cruising with Confidence book. Nope, but after a full week I've finished revising the 12th chapter today. Woo hoo! I have a few more edits and one more chapter to write and maybe, just maybe, the new edition to be ready before the end of the month. Again, woo hoo!

Throwback Thursday

"Take care of all your memories...For you cannot relive them." ~ Bob Dylan

The blog from five years ago today made me a bit sad. Kitty is no longer alive, the Disaster Auction quilt didn't garner as much money as I expected, and we no longer live in that house.

From January 11, 2013:
When I walked in the sewing room today my only thought was, "Seriously?"

Is it really necessary for you to be sleeping on top of the Disaster Auction quilt?! 

Cruise Ship Crew

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

It occurred to me this week that the best connections hubby and I have are to people outside our everyday life. People who don't live in our city or state or country.

Hubby and I have spent more than half our lives in a small rural community in Idaho. Going from a town with a population of around 800 to a city with a population of over 200,000 would seem to be a huge adjustment. We've settled in nicely but have become hermit-ish. Hubby goes next door some mornings to have coffee with the neighbor and daughter calls me on her way home from work in the evenings. That's the extent of our conversations during the day/week/month.

But on a cruise ship we are different people. We talk all day long to the crew members. Cruise ship crew come from around the world. Working for very low wages by American standards, these kids (most are under 30) have become our connections. We have close relationships with people from Nicaragua, India, Mexico, Serbia, Honduras, and Peru. I've learned more from them about other countries and nationalities and politics and religions than from any history book or TV program. We truly care about their personal and work lives. They've also let us into a cruise ship world few people outside the company know about.

It's a symbiotic relationship for all of us. For hubby, it reminds him of teaching high school and the rapport with teenagers that kept him young. For me, I can be a mom. And for the crew members they get a little break from the monotony of long days spent dealing with demanding passengers. We bring them chocolates and take them to lunch in port and give out hugs. And they treat us very well in return.

We cherish every day spent with them so when we aren't traveling we keep in close contact. Just yesterday I was chatting with a crew member from Honduras. I could hear his Spanish TV in the background and we were exchanging pictures of snow (me) and no snow (him). Only a few hours later they had an earthquake hit. I heard from him today and he had no earthquake damage at his home.

The earthquake reminded me of one of the days we spent in port with this particular crew member in Mexico. A place in Mexico that is no longer accessible because of the Mexico City earthquake in September. Now the earthquake in Honduras.

I'll just focus on the good times we've had with our crew. It's what keeps us going when we're stuck at home. We can't get these kind of conversations in Boise.

Sun Over Snow

"I'm definitely much more of a beach bunny. I prefer the sun over the snow." ~ Gillian Zinser

I'm with her. Last year at this time I took a picture of us being snowed in. It looked like this:

And today I took a picture out my sewing room window and it looked like this:

Better, but not good enough.

Even better? If I could be on the beach like this:

 But I'm not. So I'll have to take a little snow over a lot of snow. Dang.

3 - 1/8 = 2 7/8

"When I'm on a break from writing, I'll log on to Amazon and eBay. The doorbell is constantly being rung by deliverymen." ~ Sophie Kinsella

Not so much for me anymore. I did go through a spell where I was buying boxes of fabric off eBay like crazy. I used to have stacks of boxes coming in and then when I got motivated to make some money had stacks of boxes going out. Thanks to my woodworking skills, I finally made myself an eBay shelf in the closet to hold those listed items.

Although I might be exaggerating my woodworking capabilities just a bit. I took one of our remaining three bookshelves and cut a section off the bottom. Now it fits nicely in the closet. And I get to brag I am down from those large 15 bookshelves to 2 7/8 bookshelves.

Sew-In Sunday: Sewing Room Organization

“Organization is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.” ~ A.A. Milne

I thought today would be a sew-in day but I got bogged down getting the rest of the salt and pepper shakers listed on eBay. I started with over 100 and now they are just about gone. Yay me and hooray for downsizing!

So instead I went with an easier and less time consuming organizing project. The fabric stash is about the only non-downsized area I have left. While I have sold some of it, I still (probably) have more than I need. I keep moving it from one place to another, from one shelf to another, one box to another.

It still isn't perfect but it looks so pretty.

Introduction to Cruising with Confidence

"We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came."  ~John F. Kennedy

Despite hearing the passengers' first-hand accounts of how bad things were when sailing through the east coast storm this weekend, it won't deter me from cruising. For us it all started in 2004. The following excerpt is from Cruising with Confidence. (It is available on Amazon here.)

Nothing could prepare us for the pitter patter in our hearts upon seeing the enormous vessel we were about to board. 20 years of marriage had led us to this once-in-a-lifetime trip. A cruise to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Seven days roundtrip from Seattle to Alaska on the Diamond Princess. 

While we liked to travel, we weren’t cruisers. We took short road trips from our home in Southern Idaho to Central Idaho. We ventured to the Oregon Coast for Spring Break. Occasionally we would get on an airplane. But a cruise? Until this celebratory trip we hadn’t even entertained the idea. Cruises were for the rich – which we weren’t. Cruises were for those who liked to dress up and go to fancy dinners and cocktail parties – which we didn’t. Cruises were for people who liked the finer things in life - things we didn’t care a bit about.

If we had only known. We’ve had to rethink our beliefs about cruising.

Here’s what we’ve come to know.

Cruising isn’t only for the rich. On one of our most recent cruises we paid a total of $549 (not per person) for seven nights – and received $250 in credit to use onboard. What vacation can you take for that kind of price? Wake up a few mornings on a ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Then wake up one morning in Costa Maya, Mexico and another morning in Belize City, Belize and another in Cozumel, Mexico, all in the same week.  Gotta love a floating hotel!

Cruising isn’t just for those who like to dress up and go to fancy dinners and cocktail parties. On a 15-night holiday cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii our luggage was lost by a shuttle company. We made a mad dash to a discount clothing store on the way to port and picked up a few things. No fancy clothing, only some basics. We spent the next two weeks wearing and re-wearing the same items and still enjoying good food, shows, and the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. (If the thought of wearing the same clothes more than once grosses you out, apologies. We did do laundry, if that helps.)

Cruising isn’t only for those who like the finer things in life. The only jewelry we wear is our wedding rings. We drink tap water. We live in a two bedroom manufactured home. We no longer need to impress anyone with anything. We like adventure and have found cruising to be a cost-effective way to visit places we never imagined we’d ever get to see. 

Discount clothes and all.

Cleaning up Photos on the Phone

"Refuse to keep photographs that serve no purpose. You wouldn’t put bad photos in a physical photo album. Likewise, you don’t need to keep them just because there is space on your hard drive." ~ Joshua Becker.

So here we go. Time to clean up the photos on the phone.

Passport to Your National Parks Program

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books." ~Sir John Lubbock

I can't recall the first time I visited a national park as a youngster. Pinpointing the first visit with hubby and kiddo is just as difficult. I think (?) we started around 1996. Back then we didn't know about the Passport to Your National Parks Program. When we found out about it we purchased a big huge book of maps and descriptions and checklists and plenty of space to stamp the pages at each park visit. As we downsized we moved to a much smaller version of the huge passport book. Which required chopping up the pages of the big book and gluing the passport stamps into the new book. But we still had years of visits we hadn't documented with stamps.

So how to get stamps for the national park visits from way back?

Make your own. Microsoft Word + searching old pictures to pinpoint dates + hours of WordArt insertions - many deletions - jammed printer = sheets of individual, dated passport stamps.

More cutting and glue stick action and our National Parks passport book is downright pretty with stamps that look darn close to being official.

Digital Junk

"Do you really need to keep everything that is in your Documents Folder? Doubtful. In fact, you could probably delete half of those documents and never regret it." ~Joshua Becker

Two laptops. Two flash drives. Two memory cards. One external hard drive. Many, many hours spent over the last few days erasing our past work lives. Gee whiz, we had a bunch of crap that used to be important to us.

No more. I feel so free.

Bookshelves

"Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be?" 
~ Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Five years ago we had over 15 large bookcases throughout our house. Our hundreds of books have made their way out the door, on their way to homes where folks can appreciate them. We've shifted to ebooks, relying heavily on our public library. Don't even have to leave the house to check those out. Yay, Boise Public Library! Now we have three small shelves, holding only those few things we love.

The other shelf-hoggers on our bookshelves were photo albums. I used to do the whole scrapbooking thing. Large colorful and decorative pages with fun, cute, embellishments. Many, many photo albums with many photos and many pages. Until today.

Finally, our explosion of photo albums has been eliminated. Thank you, Shutterfly and Snapfish. Each one of our big, bulky, shelf-stealing photo albums has been reduced to its own photo book. How much of a difference in shelf space? Take a look.

On the left, one of the new books that came today. On the right, the original scrapbook pages from the photo album. No more bulky photo albums here. Just beautiful, lovely books.

Simplicity

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Many of Henry David Thoreau's quotes have spoken to me at different points in life. I even felt strongly enough about "suck out all the marrow" to have it tattooed on my arm in 2013. (Here's the pic.).

But today is about simplicity, not sucking the marrow.

My husband and I have been on a journey these last few years. A simplification journey. I'm guessing close to 80% of what we owned five years ago has been donated/sold/recycled/shredded/trashed. We've given up furniture and electronics and clothes. Tools and Christmas decorations and even trash cans have been sent away. Nine trash cans were in our house back then, one for almost each room. Now? Only two cans.

Just when I think I can't find one more thing to send out the door something else pops up. Check out what dropped out of a word search book today. A word search book from 2013.

It looks like a tag from when my mobility scooter was checked at the aircraft door with Alaska Airlines. From a (complicated) lifetime ago.

In the spirit of simplification, I'm going back to basics with the blog. A picture a day.

Happy New Year!

Money Bar, Cozumel

Balloo? or is it Baloo?

When my daughter was growing up she watched Disney movies over and over. While Beauty and the Beast was (and still is) her favorite (she's now 28 and just can't wait until the new movie comes out!) she obviously also has found memories of The Jungle Book.

Good ole Baloo the bear. It took me several times of texting before I finally realized it is spelled Baloo, not Balloo.

Why would I be texting the name Baloo over and over? Because she and her husband adopted a puppy at Christmas. A puppy who needs training. One who they don't want in his crate every day while they are at work. A puppy who needs a puppy-sitter. Which is where I come in.

Except I DON'T LIKE DOGS. Dogs jump and lick and bite and bark. No thank you. But in the interest of making the world a better place for people and animals alike, I agreed got roped into puppy sitting a couple days a week. I may be slow moving but I'm tolerant. And patient.

He's the cutest little guy. I keep telling myself he's just a trainable cat because I DON'T LIKE DOGS. But I do like him.

I think he's trying to tell me something.

I'm Tired of Being a Cheerleader

I told hubby today I'm tired of being a cheerleader for everyone else. After another sleepless night, icky rheumatoid arthritis medications, frustrations at a medical-related delay, a separate and non-related rude lady concerning a different medical-related issue, a car that needed several visits and more than a couple weeks and several hundred dollars to fix, and then a busy couple days trying to be the cheerleader for others, I'm done.

But I didn't get to be done yet. Because then there came another phone call requiring me to get out of my pajamas and make a drive to take someone else somewhere else. And now I'm past done. Then add in me sitting in this waiting room and having to overhear a loud conversation about all the political crap I've been trying to hard to avoid?

I AM DONE!

I long for rainy days.  On a cruise ship.  In one of the bars. As we pull out of a Bahamas port stop. I wanna be there. NOW.

Stop the Insanity

The craziness in this country is just too much for this person to bear. While I can't stop all this insanity I can stop my exposure to it. Time for me to keep away from the Internet and the television. Blog included. Hope I can be back when the negative nastiness is gone. I'd rather spend time with the foster kitties anyway.

 

Stay or Go?

I love traveling. I love seeing new places, doing new things, and pushing myself beyond my limits. I love airports, people watching, hotel breakfast buffets, watching movies on a big screen by the cruise ship pool, snorkeling, and rum punch made by island locals. If I had my way I would be doing one of those things every single day of the year. But after a few weeks I begin to miss my daughter. And my sewing machine. (Now if I could have my daughter, a kitty, and a sewing machine with me on a long trip life would be just about perfect.)

Then when I get home I want to stay home. I don't want to leave. I don't want to travel. I don't want another pat down at the airport (thanks a lot, knee replacements) and I don't want to be around another person on a tour. I don't want to get sticky from the salt water and I don't want to walk in the heat and humidity or the cold rain. I don't want to do anything but stay in my pajamas all day. (I'll keep the pool time and rum punch.)

How I feel about wanting to travel but then not wanting to travel is somewhat like the picture I took of the foster kitties. One is excited to get moving and the other decided to just hang in the recliner and take a nap.

What to do? Stay home for now.

Now if I could just get some really good rum punch.

Just a Few of the Fosters