This morning, I woke up a little earlier and actually got to get dressed before going on deck. Today’s sunrise was cloudy and gorgeous. I got to talk to a couple of people while we watched the sunrise. At some point, I looked at my watch and realized it was 7:30. I’d promised Mal that I would be back at the room by 7:15, so I hurried back.
Mal slept a bit longer but woke up around 8, and we went to breakfast at the buffet with Nana and Pappy. Mal wanted to check back by the International Cafe to see if they had the chocolate mousse he’d had yesterday. They didn’t, but he got a doughnut and was pretty happy.
We went to the kids’ club at 9:50, but they weren’t open yet. They were supposed to be open at 9. We found a staff member and asked him about it… it was only 8:51! Apparently as we passed the Yucatán peninsula this morning, my watch reset to Cancun time, even though I didn’t have internet or cell service. I guess it just “knew” from GPS where we were. I reset my watch and turned off “automatic time set” and we “explored the ship” for an hour before trying again.
While Mal was doing a scavenger hunt, I went to my parents’ room to visit. We did my mom’s hair and my nails (my first set of stickers started falling off yesterday). Now I’ve been in the room getting some things together and catching up on this. I’m going to get Mal and we’ll head up on deck for him to swim again. It’s time for me to try some of that famous Princess pizza, and my body is ready!
(Later)
Success!
We were out by the pool for a couple of hours, while Mal swam and we watched the ice carving demonstration. The pizza was good!
We came back to the room to rest for a while and get dressed after swimming. There was a kids’ club event in the piazza, which started at 2:30 PM. At about 1:50, I opened up my phone to see what the dinner menu looked like. The app said that the ship’s time was 3:01 and that the event was in progress!
After the weird time thing earlier in the morning, I was confused. If it had said it was 2:50 rather than 3:01, it would at least have made sense. But what the heck??
Mal and I got our shoes on and went out to look at the nearest display in the stairwell. I guess we could have looked on the television, now that I think about it. The display in the elevator bay said that it was 1:51. A man heard us talking and said he’d gotten some weird times in his app, too, so we just decided to go run around the ship for a bit.
The family event was fun. They had face painting, glitter tattoos, a couple of games, and some arts and crafts. Mal made a ship out of modeling clay to enter into a contest. He played a game and won a sucker. And he made a button he can take home.
We got ready for and had a nice dinner, then Mal wanted to swim some more. He swam for a couple of hours, and we would have watched the water light show because we were in the vicinity, but the fountain seemed not to be functioning. They tried, and I could see the light show and hear the jets opening and closing, but… no water. Weird.
It’s looking like a bit over 5.5 miles and a couple dozen flights of stairs per day will be the norm. My watch has no idea how to handle tracking sleep on a ship. We’re near the stern, and I’ve always heard that you feel more of the ship’s “movement” at the stern of the ship. It’s not the rocking that’s been… interesting. It’s that it seems like I can feel the machinery running the ship from our room. It vibrates the bed, and because of that, my watch thinks I’m waking up every few minutes and getting no deep sleep. It had that I was awake almost 3 hours during the last night, which isn’t the case. Maybe Apple Watch should make a “cruise mode” to correct for that.
This morning, I woke up a bit later than I meant to, thew on a wind breaker, and made it up on deck just in time for sunrise. We have a balcony, but right now the sunrise is on the other side of the ship.
I walked around and enjoyed an empty ship, then got back to the room around 7:15, where Mal was just waking up. He got dressed, we found Nana and Pappy in the Princess app, and went to say “Hi” at the International Cafe. Mal and I went to breakfast at the Horizon Court buffet, then went back to meet up with my parents.
We walked to the library where we played some Taboo. At 10, Mal went to Club Discovery to make a T-shirt. I got to read some of my book before it was time to grab Mal. Nana and Mal grabbed a snack and came back to the room while Pappy and I did a Crab Shack pop-up. It’s the only thing on this cruise I’m paying extra for (except the 5-photo package), and it was WORTH IT! So much protein and so good. We had hush puppies, shrimp, oyster chowder in a bread bowl, lobster tail, crab legs, shrimp, muscles and clams (no, thanks), and a dessert. Highly recommend.
Mal was ready to swim, and we spent about an hour and a half out on deck. It was busy, of course, but the DJ was awesome, and Mal instantly got a tan because of the native pigment he definitely did not get from me (his late grandfather was 1/4 Cherokee, so Mal is 1/32 and although he is extremely light-skinned, when he gets in the sun for two minutes, it’s on).
We came back to the room to rest, and I read some more of my book. It was formal night, so I started getting ready an hour before, and somehow 45 minutes was over in 10 minutes! We got down to dinner 15 minutes late, which is something I never ever do (until now), but dinner was great, and Mal looked really cute in his suit.
He and I walked around the ship after we had a few pictures made. We weren’t interested in the Movies Under the Stars show, but it was cool to see the setup. We climbed up to the top deck and saw Orion and appreciated how quiet it is on deck when everyone is either at dinner or at a show.
On Monday, I walked 5.8 miles and ascended 22 flights of stairs.
If you'd like to see the full photo album, click here!
Having visited Space Center yesterday (Mal, Nana, and I; Pappy had to rest his bum knee), this morning we got up, had a very limited continental breakfast at the NASA/Webster Super 8 where we stayed for free with points (yay!) and made our very easy way to the Port of Galveston. We arrived at about 10:15 AM.
Mal and I dropped all of our bags, including Nana and Pappy, off with the porters and then made our way to the parking garage. A brief walk later, we entered the terminal and snaked our way through security pretty quickly.
We were in the “green lane,” meaning we already had our medallions, which Princess uses to track your every move, but not in a creepy way. They verified our passports, took our pictures, and we were clear to board the ship by about 10: 45!
Stopped in the terminal rest area to fill our water bottles, then up up up to the gang plank, and we were on board the Regal Princess for our first ever Princess cruise (Mal and me; not Nana and Pappy).
Our first stop was, of course, FOOD. Mal and I opted for the International Cafe, which is the one food venue on board opened 24/7. I got what was basically a Caprese sandwich, and a slice of pistachio pound cake. Mal, on the other hand, totally understood the vacation mission. He had a slice of strawberry shortcake (green, for some reason) and some chocolate mousse. He was a fan!
Next on the agenda was the muster drill. It’s DIY now, which is convenient and less claustrophobic than packing into small areas with a bunch of strangers. We found our muster station, and then planned to watch the safety video later on our stateroom television.
We walked around to try to start getting our bearings, and found the pools, the kids’ clubs (Camp Discovery), the sports decks, and shoulder aches from lugging around our backpacks! We had our electronics in the, so they were super heavy. Fortunately, our cabin opened up a bit before 1 PM and we were able to free ourselves from our technological burdens.
Our bags arrived in 2 waves over the next half hour, and by 2:15, we were fully unpacked and ready to relax! We ran some stuff over to Nana and Pappy’s stateroom, then went to make sure Mal was fully registered for the Camp Discovery. Also, we had to get him a replacement bracelet because I’d accidentally cut his in half trying to trim the excess plastic.
We walked around a bit and got to see part of the sail-away party. It was too loud for Mal, so I instituted a “carry your headphones around all the time, because I want to go to parties and hear music!” policy. We wandered around on deck a bit more, learning the places you can and cannot go through. It’s still kind of a mystery, but give us a couple more days and we’ll have it figured out.
We returned to the room to freshen up before dinner, and so Mal could experience sail-away from the quiet of our balcony. He ate the last of the granola bars he had in his backpack and was still hungry, so on our way to our first meal in the main dining room, we stopped back at the international cafe for a chocolate-chip cookie.
After a couple of false starts, we found the Concerto dining room and got seated just a couple of moments before Nana and Pappy showed up. Dinner was delicious and luxurious. I had a mojito ceviche, mahi-mahi on a plate of quinoa pilaf and vegetable casserole, and vanilla marscapone with blueberry creameux. Mal had macaroni and cheese, chicken tenders, fries, and a banana sundae. For some reason, his stomach started bothering him a bit.
We pretty much packed it in after that. We returned to the room to chill before the youth club family night, but Mal’s stomach was still pretty icky so he wanter to stay in. I got a shower, and we’ve just been chatting and hanging out.
Now it’s a bit after 9 and I find myself getting drowsy already! That’s fine. I want to see the sunrise in the morning; our dinner time of 5:20 means we’re going to miss most sunsets, so it’ll be my only chance to see the that star on the horizon!
Two sea days before Roatan, and hopefully by then we’ll have the layout more embedded in our brains. We walked 5.3 miles today and climbed 16 flights of stairs (we went down a bunch more than that, but my Apple Watch doesn’t track that).
If you want to see all the pictures (that I uploaded, which is about 1/3 of the pictures I took), click here!
A lot of my sock have holes in them. Not tears, but actual holes. Places that have broken apart before, and I've sewed them, and a micrometer to one side or the other, they've burst open again. They're pretty old. I should replace them. But I don't. Why?
The other day, I was getting dressed when I dropped something. I leaned over to pick it up and James said, "Wait a minute... there's something..." and walked over to me to see what was going on with my drawers. I already knew. "It's a hole," I said. "Remember I told you I needed to buy some more?" WHY DON'T I?
This happened a few years ago when all of our towels were unraveled and messy; but they still did the thing, which is drying us off. It was a trial for me to bite the bullet and just get new towel sets.
We are not poverty-stricken. But James and I both grew up in homes where we didn't have much extra beyond what we needed. I hadn't thought about how that might affect my attitudes toward replacing daily-use items until he mentioned it this weekend. I'd asked, "I don't know how rich I'd have to be before I stopped feeling icky about spending money." He said he didn't think either of us would ever feel that way and tied it to our respective youths. He's probably right.
Here is a holeless sock. Is it monogrammed for me??
Edited 1/20/24 to add: Also, James's car's trunk handle is broken so to get into the trunk, we have to pull down the seats inside the car. And my car's driver side door handle is broken, so to get out, I have to roll down the window and open the door from the outside. WHY don't we get these things fixed? Just feels like a lot of work! And expense. And we are working around it, so... *shrug*
My mom was telling me about the Advent series her church is doing, and mentioning how different that was to what the church of Christ (coC) has historically done.
When we were growing up, the coCs we attended all but ignored Christmas, since "it's not really Jesus's birthday, anyway," I guess? If Christmas fell on a Sunday, we went to church and heard a sermon that might be about Paul's travels, or about Nebuchadnezzar, or Jesus's friendship with Mary/Martha/Lazarus. There was some cognitive dissonance that I did not understand, but got the message that it was disingenuous to pretend Christmas was about Jesus's birth, since we know he wasn't born in winter at all.
I remember one winter when I was in 5th grade, we were drawing pictures in art class. We were supposed to draw a nativity or something, and I told my teacher that I didn't think I could do that. When she asked why, I guess I mumbled something about it being like lying, acting like it was Jesus's birthday. My friend Cindy Cole responded with, "Oh, Laura, don't be a fool," as she drew a spectacular three-dimensional star.
Later that season, I was asked to write a bit for the last school newspaper of the year. I barely remember anything about it, except that I ended it with: "We look forward to a break where we can celebrate Christmas and remember the birth of Jesus."
At some point later, my parents had received the newsletter and asked me about it. They might have just been interested to know why I'd written what I did, but since I was just a kid, I remember feeling like I was in trouble. So I did what I always did when I thought I was in trouble: I lied. I said I hadn't in fact written that, that I'd ended it after "celebrate Christmas" and that an adult in the office must have added on the end bit.
It never occurred to me as a child that my parents could very easily fact-check my story. But it never made sense to me that for some reason, a church would be anti-remembering the birth of their savior.
As an adult, I've attended a few more liturgical denominations, including Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Episcopal, and United Churches of Christ (which is decidedly NOT affiliated with the churches of Christ). And even the non-denominational churches in Las Vegas and Sherman had an advent season.
This year, I'm not taking part in any religious services as I've stepped away from church indefinitely. The further I get from it, the more I realize how traumatized I was/am by the way I was treated and the way other women have been treated by the way the church is structured and how "church discipline" is handled and how charismatic men can get away with murder, practically and maybe probably literally? And I get that none of this is Jesus's fault, but it's healing for me to walk the path I'm walking now so thanks for respecting that.
Speaking of the main man of Christmas, here's another one: Santa Claus.
Growing up, we did not believe in Santa. We LOVED Christmas, and it was a magical time. We always got a present "from" Santa but knew it was my parents. They still snuck around and saved the best surprises for Santa to creatively leave out for us to discover. We left milk and cookies out for Santa, and they'd be mostly eaten in the morning. We knew it was Dad who ate them, but it was a cool touch. This seemed an ideal way to treat a Christmas icon, so I did the same thing with my kids.
D was fine. Mal, at the age of 4ish, decided that there WAS a Santa, despite my telling him that Santa Claus is a fictional character based on Saint Nicholas, a gentleman who wanted to help children and needy families. I told him that Santa Claus is the embodiment of the spirit of Christmas, but not a real entity. He insisted that he was.
Last year, he straight up asked me, "Mom, tell me the truth: Is Santa real?" And I said, "This is NOT fair! I always told you the truth, but you insist that he is real, and now we're at this place where I have to break your heart by telling you the truth. THIS is what I was trying to avoid!"
Cut to this year; Mal is 9 and at the age that a lot of kids start growing out of Santa. I don't know if he blocked my revelation out or what, but he's still going strong. He wrote a letter to Santa and put it in the mailbox a few weeks ago. When I've mentioned that some of the stuff he's asked for is pretty expensive, he's said, "That's okay. Santa will get it for me!" (He's lucky because the most expensive thing he wanted WAS gifted to us by a friend who had an extra one lying around. Ho ho ho, Christmas miracle and all that.)
Do you have periods? Do you hate them with a burning passion? Do you wish you could STOP having them? Have you, in fact, stopped having them as often and are super excited that you're about to be done with them forever? Do you think that there couldn't possibly be anything worse or more demoralizing than having to deal with bloody bodily fluids for several days per month?
Good news! There's something that is WORSE! It is so dehumanizing and challenging that it will push you to the brink of depression in a mere 24 hours!
I can tell: You're chomping at the bit. You're ready to hear what this miracle torture is. Well, great! I'll tell you.
It's called a 24-hour urine test. And if you're a lady and you go to Quest Diagnostics, they'll just hand you the same thing that I assume they hand a man: a container that looks vaguely like what you keep in the trunk of your car for in case you run out of gasoline and need to walk to a gas station and bring a half-gallon of gasoline back with you.
No instructions.
No way to collect the sample at all except to figure out how to eliminate into a small circle on a large jug that you will have to lower into the toilet, resulting in your having to clean the toilet, around the toilet, and the jug EVERY TIME YOU GO TO THE RESTROOM.
______________
I started this blog post 2 weeks ago, just after I'd done this. It sucked. It also confirmed that I have hyperparathyroidism, so I'm going in for a throat ultrasound and a bone density scan this afternoon. Fun times. Even the surgery to remove any offending parathyroid glands would be better than that stupid urine test. Also, if I had to choose between doing that 24-hour urine test or colonoscopy prep, I'd pick the colonoscopy prep every time.
Furthermore, I went 155 days without a period and started up again the day before we left for Phoenix last week. Good times. It was 118 days last year; wonder what I'll get up to next year or the year after before finding myself pregnant at the age of 62.
I can't believe that it's already the end of October! Lots has happened this month, much of it the typical stuff that happens every day, week, and month of the year. But let's hit some highlights, shall we?
First, and I'm cheating a little bit because this happened toward the end of September, but we need to remember it: Mal has always had sleeping issues. First, he wouldn't sleep if he wasn't touching my body. This made his infancy exhausting; I couldn't even put him down for a nap for more than about 10 minutes because he'd wake up. I had to wear him, or have him lying on top of me or right beside me. As he got older, he just wouldn't settle at night and sleep in a different room (except that one time Grandma Patsy visited, and he slept in his own room with her!), so he was in bed with James and me. A few weeks after we moved into this house, I decided to get him out of our bedroom and train him to sleep on a futon mattress on the floor of his room... which I did, but I ended up sleeping in there with him, and have ever since.
For a couple of years, we've had a hard cut-off of 10 years old. I've told him that he needed to figure it out because I was going to return to my bedroom by the time he turned ten. (Because even if he wasn't ready exactly at 10, pretty soon he'd want me out of his room and likely wouldn't feel comfortable telling me why, if you get my meaning.) Anyhoo, a couple of days before his 9th birthday, he told me he thought I could go into my own room when he turned 9! So that's what I did!
One side effect of this is that I sometimes snore a little, and D can hear it through the wall. James used to wake D up, but since he got a CPAP (I don't have apnea, plus I am a tornado when I sleep and not a good candidate) he's pretty quiet. James had gotten into the habit of closing the bathroom door and the closet doors to help insulate against noise pollution going into D's room, but we have a small wall that's still the only barrier between the rooms. So we invested in some acoustic tiles, and I think they're pretty cool-looking!
Next up, we went to trivia night at The Good Lot for the first time as a family. Mal played with other kids while D, James, and I did trivia. We won one of the three rounds, and the prizes included a flight of beer (they had cider, too!) and a cute skeleton shot "glass" (plastic). We'll definitely go back; I might even make it an event for our Tuesday library/park group. (I just did. I'm such an overachiever.)
Since we hadn't been to the state fair since pre-pandemic, we went the next-to-the-last weekend it was open and, for the first time in about ten years, D went with us! It was a lot of walking (we stayed in an adorable 4-plex about a mile from the park, so we walked 4 miles just getting there and back twice the day we went to the fair), a LOT of people, and a lot of money, but what a great weekend!
First, I was trying to show Mal a video of Big Tex because he didn't remember him. We were surprised to see ourselves a decade ago in The Daytripper's recently-released (or re-released?) video!
We had our mandatory stop at the Hillsboro Braum's on the way up. We got to the fair just as it was opening on Friday, and we were able to try the fried sushi bombs before the food court got too busy (and no one got shot, unlike the next evening, where apparently two guys got into a fight in one of the lines and one of them shot three people, all of whom are fortunately okay).
As per usual, we enjoyed the Go Texan! sample area. My favorite was the flavored olive oils. They had salsa, chocolate, hot sauce, and this year the dairy sample was an ice cream sandwich instead of a small cone. I guess Bessie the Cow doesn't visit anymore, which is probably better for the cow, but I always loved seeing what I'm assuming is the most beautiful calf they could find.
Little Hands on the Farm is done, but the petting zoo is still around. They moved it into a much larger arena, which really helps both with the crowds and the smell.
Mal surprised us by wanting to ride the Texas Skyway, a gondola that runs from the front of the park to the back (and vice-versa). He never wants to ride anything, so James thought if there ever was a time to spend nearly $50 on a 7-minute activity, this was it!
We finished up our fair food purchases for the morning with tornado fries (for Mal, mostly) and a bao taco trio. Man, those were amazing. Definitely the best thing we had that half of the day. The taco "shells" were made of bao dough, steamed as bao buns are, and were each filled with a different meat: pork belly, pulled barbecue beef, and chicken. I could have eaten a whole plate by myself, but we shared because we do have a mortgage to pay off.
We decided to take a break as the park was filling up around 1 PM. We spent the afternoon at the AirBnB relaxing, and then went back at nightfall.
We hit most (but not all) of the things we'd missed in the morning; most importantly, the craft competition. I always love looking at the things the people of Texas create! Also, butter sculpture.
Then we tracked down the one food we'd been wanting to try but were too full to find in the morning: a strawberry cheesecake sopapilla. Aww, man. Definitely the best dessert I've ever had at the fair. Worth finding, fighting people in lines around the sopapilla kiosk, and sitting in an area with a bunch of gnats to consume.
I think the only thing we'd wanted to see that we didn't was the Dia de los Muertos museum, and maybe the carved pumpkins in the greenhouse with the trains (if they even still have those).
All together, a great day at the fair! I was happy to go back in the evening because whenever we've gone in the past, we've just left midday and gone home or back to a hotel on the other side of town. Definitely a benefit of staying in the vicinity!
D was kind of "peopled out" so stayed "home" to recover the next day. James, Mal, and I got up and took the bus to Cafe Brazil, where James used to have brunch when he lived in Deep Ellum. Delicious, as always, and we got to experience the solar eclipse with a bunch of other diners and staff. I was glad we had our eclipse glasses, as they got passed around throughout the dining room and kitchen. It was so much fun to be excited with everyone else.
We then took the train downtown to poke around a bit before taking the train back to Fair Park and walking "home."
Believe it or don't, we had dinner that night at Cici's Pizza. It was like a block from our place and Mal wanted to go. Since James hadn't been to one in a while, he was down.
The next morning, we packed up and hit the Dallas Arboretum before we left town. I'd only ever been during the week, and holy cow was it busy. But it was a beauty, as ever.
On the way home, we stopped at Mal's favorite Hat Creek Burger in Temple for a late lunch and to say "howdy" to Nana and Pappy before ending our weekend away.
This weekend was the first time we've used Rover, a pet-sitting app/website, and we were very pleased! Our sitter sent pictures and updates every day, and was super conscientious and clean. I was surprised that I didn't need to sweep or vacuum up Aish hair when we returned. When they were younger, we'd have just left the cats alone for the 3 days we were gone. Alas, they're all teenagers and need a bit more maintenance.
In other news, Mal took an online assessment and qualified for a the regional semi-finals of a geography bee. We were supposed to have done that last weekend, but they had to reschedule for December at the last minute.
We're rounding out the month with Halloween, of course. Our little town has done stuff for Halloween ever since we moved here, but the celebration is getting better and better. Last year, a guy from Public Works built a few spooky decorations that were in the main park area. This year, they really let him go wild and used a small path across the way to showcase a half dozen of his creations. It was perfect in that it was pretty macabre, but also not threatening so kids were having fun exploring the "haunted walk."
And, of course, they had games for the kids, who were able to "earn" candy. It's the first year they haven't had a trunk-or-treat, but I think this is good, as they probably never knew whether they were going to have 4 participants or 15.
They also had hot dogs and chips available, which James and I especially appreciated because we both finished outside work (him: building a bed frame, me: mowing the lawn) right as it was time to walk down to the park.
Some more quick Mal things: Yesterday, he burnt himself on our tea kettle, which SUCKS, but it's because he was making himself ramen. It's the first time he's done it start to finish on his own. He swore off of using the kettle but I told him burning yourself is just part of learning to "cook." Next time he's going to use silicone gloves.
This week, he had his first dentist appointment in which he had ZERO cavities! His teeth are just prone to being meh, so I don't claim this as a win in terms of his dental care... but it is definitely a relief!
Finally, Mal played Scrabble with me for the first time Friday night, and although he is still working on figuring out where it's legal to place a word, he did really well in terms of pulling words out of scrambled tiles! After we played, he played once with Nana. When we got home, he played with his dad. Now that he has three practice games under his belt, we'll start keeping score. He told me, "Don't take it easy on me, Mom!" He should know that I would never.
This morning, we have all of the windows open and are just waiting on the cold front that will bring the temperature down from the 70s into the 40s. Normally, if it's going to get cold, I'd just try to keep the warmth in the house to stave off the heater coming on. But, dang, it's been so muggy and gross, I really want to feel the cold in all of its glory. I am wearing bike shorts and a tank top and can't wait until I need to put on pants and a sweatshirt! BRING IT!
*That's a joke. Clearly, the earth is a cube and the scientists are just trying to trick us because there are other planets that are also cubes very nearby and if we knew this, we could just hop around like Q-Bert without the need for commercial space travel and since no one can make money off of that system, they obscure it from us. Stay high, brothers.
