First four days can be found
here
Day 5: Jamaica, my breakdown and my obsession with the ice show.
Well tomorrow, another early morning. I was so damn frustrated at this point, I was in tears. I called down and asked to speak to the guest services manager to see if maintenance could come up and look at the door. I was told they were busy.
Maintenance showed up at about 8am and I said everyone is asleep, please come back. I go down for breakfast after my husband's hot water for tea shows up. After all that, I try to come back and sleep but I'm unable to.
I let our stateroom attendant (who was just a total doll) know we are expecting maintenance. We go down for lunch and on the way, we managed to speak to the guest services manager, who manages the guests experience for the hotel rooms. I let her know my frustrations about the noise and how we can't seem to get a handle on it. It's horrible.
She manages to get us another room on the way other side of the ship. It's a smaller room, not the same category but it's the best she can do because the Tony Award tech guys just left the ship (sorry to hear that! I wanted to see them grinding on each other again ;))
Anyway, I take the room and after lunch we move. The room hasn't been cleaned but I take off for a bit and come back and the room is all made up. The stateroom attendant is kind of a noob but he cleans the room well enough. There's not enough room for my wheelchair either. I DON'T CARE!
Dinner that night was lovely. I couldn't tell you what it was. It was just delicious! :D
Steph has become a winning machine with the 21 table while Dad and I head off for this free machine that let's you play heads up Poker. I sit down for a tourney with my dad and I win! I consider this to be a honor because he's a long time poker player and he's won quite a few tournaments. He has a bunch of t-shirts from winning :)
I go to bed early and sleep for 13 hours. Thank god!
Day 6: Cruising.
Honestly, this day was all about watching the water go by and just chillaxing. I take a nap and write on and off all day, just enjoying myself. I also go for a seminar at the health spa about the benefits of chinese medicine for arthritis and auto-immune. I'm totally fascinated by the benefits and decide to look into this when I get back from the cruise.
I have a great talk with my dad about business over lunch and where we are going with marketing and product development. I finally convince him to sign off on a couple ideas I have that I think will drive our business into the next level and I'm excited to implement them.
Dinner tonight is so totally awesome! Shrimp and lobster for the win! It's also the Captain's dinner so who is driving the boat? :D
At dinner, Steph and Helene start talking about the diving show they were watching while I was at the chinese medicine seminar. Helene said "Steph liked this one guy who had perfect gorgeous abs." And on this trip, I can definitely see my baby sister has grown up.
So Helene is trying to describe him to me and she says his thighs look like big hams to her. I couldn't hold back my laughter and while us girls are all snickering, my dad pops up and says "Well, all those guys with perfect bodies have little dicks."
My mouth dropped open as did my little sister and my step-mother. My dad rarely swears and I just couldn't unhear that.
After dinner, we go to the Casino and I can't get over the fact that the James Bond theme plays on a loop as you walk in but we find my hubby there chatting with a fellow Scouser (from Liverpool) and I mentioned it was the captain's dinner so I asked who's driving the boat? The dealer said, "Don't know but we might hit an iceberg." Hubby said, "Too soon, mate." and they both laughed. Only Scousers could joke about that :P
So I play against my dad on the poker machine, because he can't believe I won. He wins this round with three kings against two pair. I let him crow about it for a while before we hit the craps table.
I stood by the table, explaining the bets to my hubby while the dice rolled. My dad showed up and he convinced us to play while he taught my husband. While I can explain the basics, my dad has been playing craps longer than I've been alive. When the guy next to me crapped out, the dice came to me and we bought some chips so I could roll.
And I hit a roll that would not stop. The cheering from the table when I hit points and elevens was heard throughout the casino. People bought in and played the come line as I hit number after number. For some reason though, I couldn't hit a hard eight, which was my mom's number. I tried though until I hit a seven finally and the dice moved on. You know it's a good roll when people cheer and shake your hand.
Then my dad crapped out pretty quickly and then on to my husband who hit some beginner's luck. And then he hit a hard eight. I took it as a sign my mom was watching over him, because she always loved my husband :)
We walked away from the table when our rolls were done and they shook Damian's hand. We had some good bank on that roll. We didn't play roulette because my husband said it was mental.
Anyway, I drag Steph off the machine and we head for the ice show. I snag a couple boss seats and I can't get that song out of my head. I tape the song so I can shazam it later and figure out what it is. I know I've heard it. I just can't name it.
I'm exhausted so I hit the bed early.
Day 7: Cozumel; my luck ran out and my computer world fully collapses.
This morning, I'm up early and feeling great! I head up for breakfast and write a bunch, finally ending up on the Solarium deck and sitting in the sunshine while banging away at my keyboard. Some towel guy tried to tell me a joke but unless your name was Drake or Robbie, I wasn't listening.
I really feel lazy just laying around and eating whenever the buffet is open but honestly that ship was so big, after I lost the water bloat, I'm five pounds less than when I started the cruise. There was just so much walking.
Anyway, I make a huge salad for myself, piled high with feta cheese. I take the first table I could find and go get a glass of water. I nom on my salad, which taste sooooo good. I get up to get another glass of water, trying to decide between plain water and enhanced water, which taste like crap.
When I get back, there's a glass of soda next to my computer, which is weird but since I'm in the same cafe my waiter manages, I figured he just told someone to get me a soda but I don't feel like one. I finish my salad and start to work on my story and suddenly this old guy shows up and tells me I'm at his table.
Now, I've been there with my computer for fifteen minutes and my server is confused because she didn't seat him there. Anyway he tries to bully me into leaving but I'm done with my food anyway. I should have stayed there to screw with him but I was in a mood to write so I just left after telling him he was an asshole.
So I hung out at a different table that my waiter found for me that looked out over the water. The buffet area is so huge it stretches from port to starboard and about 1/3 of the ship. As I'm eating, a Carnival ship docks near us and I took a picture of it. The Carnival ship is as long as our buffet area. We were parked in the opposite direction, aft (butt of the boat) in.
Our boat is bigger than yours. Neener.
So you see my theme, which is much like when I'm at home. I escape to write.
While on vacation, I would get up and while my family slept in, I wrote over breakfast. If they managed to find me, I put away my story but for the most part, I hid out. Our evening waiter on the cruise was the manager of the breakfast buffet and every morning, he created this little space where I wouldn't be disturbed by the other cruisers and I still had a great view. I was almost done with my story and started re-writing the beginning by this day.
Cozumel is really hot so instead of getting off the ship, I just head to my room and nap for three hours. After that I wake up and get ready for dinner.
Dinner that night isn't supposed to be anything special so Hubby and I go off in search of something awesome. We hit this place called the Seafood Shack on the Boardwalk and as we are eating, we set sail. I had two grilled lobster (frozen so I have no problem with the seafood allergy) and we leave but I'm thinking we're supposed to be in Ft Lauderdale the next day but we have one more day of cruising.
I'm ready to be home. I'm tired of cruising. Seven days is just wayyyyyyy too long. I'm tired of walking this ship. My back, thighs, knees and feet hurt like a bitch. So I head back to my cabin to look over what to do tomorrow and I decide one more day at sea won't be too bad.
After dinner, I get back and my computer is on the floor. I NEVER leave my computer on the floor. It's just too dangerous for it down there. But I decide to use hubby's computer because my wireless is just not working the last couple days. It's driving me nuts but apparently it's a ship wide problem, not just my computer. My hubby has a gaming laptop so it has a super strong wireless signal.
The whole cruise, I can't seem to get on the internet. I'm an avid dropbox user but because of the wonky internet on the ship, I couldn't seem to back-up like I thought and all I can do is pray my computer doesn't do anything strange because I can't back-up my story.
Sure enough, my computer went nuts. When I took it downstairs to get some writing done, it kept shutting off every time I turned it on, like the battery was dead. I thought that was weird so I plugged it in and it still does the strange drama. So I do what any good CEO does when their $3K computer goes on the fritz.
I cry.
Hubby calmed me down and assured me that I would be able to fix it when we got home, even if we had to send it in to Sony. I'm freaking out because I didn't think the last back-up worked because of the wonky internet and I was using a new program called Scrivener and I wasn't sure of how to back it up. So I checked Dropbox via my hubby's computer and there is no sign of my back-up, in fact the last back-up was three weeks ago, not even my back-up from when I left for the cruise.
WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF??!?!? I have a total full-blown panic attack but my hubby manages to calm me down. I love him so much because he kept a cool head and calmed me like he does with cats who freak out. He was like the zen master.
Too tired to think about it, I popped a Xanax (It's not actually Xanax but in that same family) and I hit the sack.
Day 8: In mourning of my lost computer.
Blissfully, I slept in until 10am. I'm too upset to eat breakfast but I managed to have lunch. I e-mailed my CP and cried on her shoulder (thanks Kele)
Not even the ice show could cheer me up and dinner tasted like ash. I had full on depression. But I decided that if I couldn't get my story back, it was because it wouldn't work anyway and I just needed to toss it. The universe was trying to tell me something.
OMG! A towel monkey was in our room! ACK!
Hubby had a Ron Stoppable moment. :D
I spent the evening indulging in my packing OCD to keep my mind off my computer. This apparently fascinates my husband because I made all our clothes fit into one suitcase when we brought three. I'm magical like that :)
So as we packed to go home, I handed my husband my computer and said "I don't care what you do. Move mountains or do some voodoo but make this thing work. Save my story! But if we have to, we'll send it into Sony." I didn't want to do the last because they would probably erase my hard drive.
While I packed, hubby bonded with my sister. They are so alike, it's hard to believe they aren't twins. I'm glad they got to hang out :)
While hubby has no trouble getting to sleep, I can't night because I'm so eager to get home. About 3am I fell asleep.
Day 9: I'm on solid ground but the earth is still moving.
I'm shot out when I wake-up at 5:30 but I have a very early brekkie with my husband and see him off for the early train back to Orlando. Again, from the beginning of the story, he hates traveling by car.
If you ever get a chance to cruise out of Ft Lauderdale, do it. Getting off the boat and going through customs is so organized and easy, with a snap of our fingers, we were done and getting in our car for our trip home.
The drive home was fraught with worry, I was sure I would give myself an ulcer. My hubby got home before I did and the house was hot but he sat down with a cup of tea and called Sony.
When I got home, he handed me the computer and told me it was fixed. And it was! Something inside had become dislodged and he fixed it so it's working perfectly with all files intact! YAAY! Hubby for the win! He's my knight in shining armor and my hero!!!!!!
So I hugged him and cried tears of joy. He makes my world turn because he calms me when I'm freaking out and carries me through the hardest times of my life. I'm lucky to have found him and I can never say that enough.
The final stop? I pick up my babies at the kennel and everyone there was sorry to see them go. What I love about Best Friend's Pet Care at Disney is when I walk into the separate cat area, the cats never seem stressed or meowing to get out. They are always calm and happy. Although my babies did hear my voice and come out from under their blankie :D
So we're are home. I just finished the last load of laundry. My hubby didn't take enough shirts on the cruise but that wasn't a big deal. In unrelated news, my hubby tried a new skin wash, which gave him a nearly 2nd degree burn on his face right before the cruise. So he was feeling like shit the whole time but still managed to keep a brave face for me.
So I'm glad to be home and resting. I finally understand the whole needing a vacation from my vacation. I've woken up both mornings with my cats around me, purring their heads off. It's good to be home :)
More pics to come later!
