I needed a vacation following my vacation...

Wow! It's been two months since I updated this blog! Shame on me (the worst kind of shame...internet shame)!

I've been scrapbooking the photos from our Carribbean cruise which is akin to an autopsy. There is visual proof it existed and served its function but then it was taken suddenly from us. Now I'm left rummaging through the ashes of mere memories....what a downer!

Actually, reliving the cruise has put me in a great mood and has inspired me to contribute to the world via my blog today. Plus, all that scrapbooking junk has rendered our dining room table an arts & crafts area where no food or drink dare tread. I had to get away to the computer to enjoy some coffee (and we all know that right next to a keyboard is a great place for a huge beverage).

The cruise was everything I expected and more...with the "more" being the tremendous amount of food they shove at your face. The first four days were great but I have learned that there is such a thing as too much delicious food. Since I don't really cook at home enough to speak of, my body was not made to handle this level of cuisine seven days in a row. By the last day we were in the line for the breakfast buffet, I started thinking that a bowl of Cap'n Crunch sounded really appealing.

The trip started with a couple of hiccups. When we parted with our luggage in Galveston, all seven of our bags were loaded onto one cart and hauled away. We waited in line after line after line at the cruise terminal, stopped for a family photo, and then were hustled aboard where we were immediately offered adult beverages. In other words, it ended up costing about $25 just to board the ship comfortably and with a reasonable keepsake. We had some time to kill prior to the compulsory lifeboat drill (which no one warned me about prior to the trip and I never saw on a single episode of "The Love Boat" -- or were they just not as safety-conscious in the 1970s?) so we wandered the boat, located the dining areas, pools, etc while waiting to be reunited with our luggage at some point. After our first excursion around the ship, we returned to our rooms where they happened to be unloading our bags....well, six of our bags at least. When I inquired about the 7th bag, I was told that we were to give the staff a grace period until 8:30 pm to complete the bag delivery. The little naggy voice inside my head said "They lost it! And you knew that was going to happen! Score one for you!"

We left again to go to the dinner buffet and returned to find no 7th bag and only half our shore excursion tickets. By this time, I was thinking "This vacation is ruined! I hate this cruise line! The incompetence of these people is astounding...." I boldly grabbed the confirmation sheets I printed out at home and headed down to the Guest Services desk to demand that they rectify everything at once or face severe pouting and a stern talking-to from me in front of other guests (as if they're not subjected to that every day...they probably keep score and rate our outbursts on a scale of 1 to 10).

As it turns out, my bag wasn't really lost. It was just hanging out in the lobby waiting for me to arrive. As soon as I stepped off the elevator to the lobby, my bag grabbed my attention (How could it not? After all, it's a purple gingham bag with "Megan" embroidered on it"). It was sitting up against a wall with the other dislocated bags like a police lineup. Well, that's one problem solved thanks to my tenaciousness on a totally unrelated matter. I snatched it up without missing a beat and took my spot at the end of the Guest Services line. When I finally made it up to the desk, the nice Indian gentleman explained that I would have to plead my case to the Shore Excursions desk which would open at 10:00 the next morning. After reviewing my paperwork, he seemed optimistic that the situation would be remedied with very little static.

The next morning, we ate breakfast and played some mini golf at the top of the ship where it felt like we were sailing across west Texas. The wind was unbelievable. It made for some golf hilarity fit for "Happy Gilmore". A ball would linger past the hole, then take a 180 and land straight in the cup. As expected, even though Trent landed two holes-in-one and no one else did, he still managed to get mad at the wind (he's also been known to get mad at the sun when it's too bright in the morning) because he didn't ultimately win.

Once we were done with the futile task of hitting a ball into the wind for 30 minutes, I decided to head to the Shore Excursions desk. Imagine my surprise when I saw all the people who had decided it would be better to wait in line on the ship and take the leftover excursions that hadn't been booked to capacity rather than book their excursions in their pajamas online like I did a month prior to the trip. Who does this? Seriously, the line snaked around the corner and must have been fifty people long! This was unacceptable to me. First, they tried to chintz us out of half our tickets then they had the nerve to make me wait in line to fix their screw-up. I think not.

I marched back over to Guest Services and calmly explained that I would need a proxy to represent me at Shore Excursions. This woman could see I was obviously at a breaking point...or she saw my windblown hair and just assumed I was bat-poo crazy. She excused herself to Shore Excursions as I waited at the counter. Minutes passed and suddenly Neal emerges from the elevator waving an envelope. "They brought the other tickets!" he hollered just as my proxy returned with duplicate tickets. "Nevermind...thanks!" I waved at her as I took off. Problem solved.

Megan took to her teen group right away and we pretty much never saw her on the boat from that day forward. We would occasionally reunite when she would check into the room to change clothes or ransack the place during a scavenger hunt but other than taking her ashore with us, we pretty much vacationed without her for the majority of the trip. Trent, on the other hand, found his group entirely too pedestrian for his tastes and elected to stay with Neal and myself. I guess there were no other boys with whom to discuss "24" and guns (those silly neophytes!).

The first excursion into Jamaica was extremely dangerous and filled with peril, and I'm not referring to the dope dealers and panhandlers. I'm talking about the incredibly negligent driving practices. We were supposed to participate in a Jungle River Tubing Experience that day so we met up with our group in the cruise terminal which looked just like a dirty bus station in Houston. (That was after we managed to free ourselves from the clutches of the women selling African art, jewelry, and rasta-man hats right on the pier by the ship.) We were then herded onto a shuttle bus and driven outside the huge concrete walls separating the Americans from the impoverished masses that the cruise line would rather us not see. As we proceeded up the mountain, I realized I was glad I had visited the ladies room before we boarded because I would have peed my pants otherwise. That driver was whipping around curves where there was "nothin but cliff" on one side. His demeanor was the typical "Every little thing gonna be alright" but I think we were starting to suspect that was a facade.

We arrived with our lives intact at the top of the mountain and were told to wait for our guides at the little outpost. Neal decided that this would be the best time to administer some insulin to our son so we wouldn't have to worry about it once we were in the river. He had pre-filled a syringe on the ship and shot it into Trent's arm. It was shortly after that when we re-examined the syringe and realized we had given him waaaay too much insulin. We have been so spoiled with his insulin pump doing all the calculations and administering the doses that we were out of practice with the old-fashioned method of diabetes control. Naturally, I started to panic as we gave Trent all the fruit snacks I had in my bag. Neal was doing some quick math in his head and determined that Trent would need about 3 bottles of Sprite and a couple of bags of Skittles to offset this insulin dose. That probably sounds good to a 10-year-old boy at first but then halfway in, he realizes why too much sugar is not a good thing. Same theory behind making your kid smoke a whole carton of cigarettes if you catch him experimenting with smoking except no one can afford to do that now.

As we sat at the picnic table being sugar cheerleaders for Trent, the guide approached and told us we needed to head down to the water to get ready to raft. We explained what had happened with Trent and she took the Jamaican approach of "it'll be alright, mon". I kid you not. Stereotypes exist for a reason and the phrase "It's OK, mon" or any variation of it was repeated to us numerous times throughout the day, totally reinforcing it. The guides were extremely nice and they really wanted us to have a good time but we had to keep explaining why our 10-year-old having a seizure in the middle of a river in Jamaica was NOT ok. One of them said "All he has to do is lay in the raft. He be fine, mon." And actually, after an hour, he was fine mon but we couldn't take the chance that he wouldn't be fine mon and our group was long gone by then. We filled our time until the next bus departed by counting the amazing number of feral cats roaming the outpost.

We took another death-defying journey in the shuttle bus back down the mountain. This time, it was while sitting in jump seats so that made it even more memorable. The folks we hitched a ride with were coming off the zip line excursion which I could kick myself for not choosing.

The next day we arrived in gorgeous Grand Cayman. This was by far the most naturally beautiful island of the three we visited. The folks in Jamaica were very gracious but the folks in Cayman were gracious AND were rockin a British accent. Mmmm.....love those accents!

The excursion for the day was "Reef-n-Rays Snorkel". We boarded the little boat about mid-morning and were transported to a huge barrier reef, all the while freezing to death. When I started trembling from the cold is when I realized we had forgetten our towels on the ship. I gave myself an internal pep talk -- after all, how many times in my life would I get this opportunity? So, after a short talk by the guides to which I paid no attention to the content because I was so mesmerized by the accents, we were issued snorkel gear and instructed to jump off the boat and snorkel around the front side of the reef. I made everyone else jump in first because I'm a baby when it comes to being cold. One by one, the other members of my family jumped into the water and reported their experiences back to me. Finally, I clenched up and went for it. Whaaa! That was some cold water! I've been in colder water but on a much hotter day.

I eventually acclimated to the temperature but I couldn't seem to get the hang of snorkeling. I must be claustrophobic because I had all kinds of problems breathing through that tube. I spent the majority of my time practicing above the water and being overcome with jealousy that Megan took to it effortlessly. It got to the point where she was instructing me. "Mom, you're moving too much. Just relax and float and put your face down!" Wouldn't you know it? When someone explained it to me in a non-British accent, I totally got it. I followed her instructions and started to enjoy it when I realized I was trembling from the cold. Since I wasn't thrashing around anymore, I wasn't able to maintain my body temp. I was so fed up by then I just swam back to the boat. Luckily, 5 minutes later they sounded the horn for everyone to come back so I didn't feel too slighted.

Once I climbed back aboard, the misery multiplied. I was soaking wet, no towel, and the boat started cruising toward Stingray City at a brisk clip. Neal couldn't believe how cold my skin felt. I couldn't believe I was still conscious.

When we arrived at Stingray City, I was finally dry thanks to the frigid air whipping around me. Even the thought of petting the stingrays was not appealing to me at that point. Nothing short of al-Queda was forcing me into that water again. The sun was finally starting to warm things up and I was determined to bask in it. I gleefully watched as Neal and the kids swam among the stingrays and one of the guides caught one for me and the other weenies to pet from the ladder of the boat.

Once back to shore, we headed over to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for some lunch. Trent was fascinated that another restaurant actually went over-and-above the fun factor of Chuck E Cheese's. He quickly ordered his food and went straight over to the water slide. Megan stayed with us as we drank our yard-long daquiris and watched unseamly middle-aged people try to hang with college kids in the ring in the center of the restaurant. Watching the shenanigans, we soon realized why a "cheeseburger in paradise" cost us $15. They use that money to recoup their liquor costs. I kid you not...people were doing conga lines past the bartender as he poured tequila straight from the bottle down their throats.

The final excursion day was spent in Cozumel swimming with dolphins. I highly recommend this for anyone who doesn't have a deathly fear of dolphins. They're like ocean-dogs...cute, smart, and trainable. Megan and I decided that if we ever get "Oprah-rich", we're buying a dolphin habitat. This was our favorite excursion...so much so that we purchased several photos and the DVD of us swimming with them. They're so persuasive, I just handed Neal's wallet to them and told them to take whatever they thought they needed.

We had some time to kill after the "dolphin confrontation" (as Hank Hill once called it) so we walked to a local public beach. It was totally unlike how I thought it would be. I pictured white sands, blue water, and tropical fish. We got blue water alright but we also got a rocky ledge, litter, and a dog that almost peed on our bag had I not yelled at him as he was lifting his leg (I've used the word "peed" twice in one post. Wow.) Neal was the only brave soul who dove from the ledge, following the lead of two young Mexican men who arrived on a moped with the dog in tow. Trent desperately tried to find a safe entry into the water but there just was nothing available. So the three of us baked on the rocks and guarded our stuff while watching Neal swim. I couldn't take his gloating after about 5 minutes and told him it was time to go.

The next day was spent trying to pack the suitcases strategically so that all the souvenirs could fit and generally just lounging by the pool. I was ready to be back in my own bed again. I was sick of everyone else on the ship. As I was taking inventory of the week, I concluded that we all could have lived fulfilling lives without ever visiting Jamaica and that I would have traded that day to get home a day earlier to get a jump-start on the laundry.