3/14/22

It's Monday and I'm baaaack!  Jessica and I had a wonderful time on our cruise and I'm leaving tomorrow morning to take our grandson camping again.  We'll be home on Friday.  We spent most of the day packing the RV and got most of the stuff loaded before the storm hit.  Whoo-boy!  Did it ever hit!  The sirens were going off in town, the wind was howling and the thunder and lightning were exceptional.  A bit south of us, they had a tornado, but we only lost tree limbs (as far as we know... it's dark outside).  We'll take a peek in the morning, I reckon.

This cruise was unique because stuff happened onboard that's never happened to me before.  We stopped in 3 ports, but we had to skip our 4th destination because the wind was blowing too hard.  The captain tried to dock that massive thing twice before he gave up and told us we were moving on.  It was our last day to dock and the day was going to be short on shore, so we didn't care too much anyway.  We headed on back to New Orleans, but when we were sailing directly between Cancun and Cozumel, we had a jumper.  A gay couple were on deck 16 and having an argument when one of the guys shouted out, "I'll show you!", and then jumped off.  Someone threw a life ring overboard, but no one ever saw him again.  We circled around and around and finally just stopped.  There were 2 cruise ships docked in Cozumel and they sent out boats to help search and then the Mexican Coast Guard came out to help, also.  We searched for about 6 hours and then it started to get dark and we took off for home.  There were hundreds of pairs of eyes searching the sea for him, but he was never spotted.

I did something on this cruise that I'd never done before in my life.  I sang in the karaoke bar.  Jessica and I sang a duet and we were a big hit.  People in the crowd were clapping along and we got a lovely applause when we finished.  I was pretty nervous, but thank goodness I didn't pee my pants or anything.  Alcohol may have been involved.  Just sayin'.

We had to keep changing our clocks back and forth, back and forth.  It was irritating.  Carnival doesn't do that.  We just stay on the ship's time.  Anyway, on the last day, I moved the clocks forward again because of daylight savings time.  I didn't realize that we were still on Mexico time and the time was already an hour ahead.  So, instead of the alarm going off at 6:15 a.m., it was really 5:15 a.m.  By the time we realized my mistake, we were already dressed.  Dang it.  We didn't get to sleep until almost 1 a.m., either, so it was a very short night.  The good news was: we had plenty of time to finish last minute packing and have a nice breakfast before heading out for the day.  

Speaking of breakfast.....  we ordered room service 5 out of the 7 days for breakfast in our cabin.  Out of those 5 days, we never got a single order delivered correctly.  We got hot chocolate instead of chocolate milk.  Coffee instead of water.  A different kind of cereal every day.  The list goes on.  It was downright hilarious.  Each night we'd fill out the form and place it outside our door, and then try and guess what would really be coming the next morning.  It was always a surprise.  And delivered at least 15 minutes too early.  We got so we'd just rely on the knock on the door to wake us up and skip the whole alarm thing.

My back wasn't doing as well as I'd hoped, but it's only been 2 weeks since my surgery, so I've got to give it a chance.  Sigh.

I did have one slightly scary moment, tho.  It's a bit personal, but I'm gonna share it anyway, so here goes -

I had to pee.  After sitting on the can, I looked down and saw a bug in my underwear.  We'd gone to the beach the day before and my mind went crazy inside of a split second.  I panicked and flicked it onto the floor.  The entire time I was doing my business, I never took my eye off of it.  I sure didn't want it to escape somewhere in our cabin.  When I finished, I grabbed a tissue and snatched it up.  I really wanted to see what it was, so I placed it on the bathroom counter and slowly opened up the tissue.  I was ready to slam it with another tissue if it tried to make a get-away.  It didn't appear to be moving, but I couldn't tell what it was, or if it was truly dead.  I decided to find my glasses for a better view because it appeared to be one of those tiny grasshopper thingies.  Once I got my glasses on, I leaned in closer, but very cautiously.  My heart has been beating hard this whole time and my mind in warp speed.  It was a scab off my back.  A scab that looked nearly identical to a tiny grasshopper thingy.  Cruises are bad for your health, at times.