May 25

Woo hoo! Last you heard, I was stuck in the damned hospital again losing prep time for my cruise and feeling like crap from the pneumonia I managed to catch. I have so much to catch you up on it's not even funny!

So, Sammy rocks. I just want to put that out there. She had her meeting with the lawyer and got me all sorts of good information. I've been worried about the whole deal with giving Jamie my house/mortgage. I couldn't figure out how to word it in the will, wasn't sure it was even allowed, blah, blah, blah. Sam asked the lawyer about it and here's what was said:


3.  You CAN bequeath a home with a mortgage to someone... no problem!  They get the house AND the mortgage.  The title gets transferred:  As long as Jaime keeps paying, there will likely be no worries, at least for a while or until tax time (for him).  More on that for you/him if you want it, but not necessary now.

She also asked a funeral home about vessels for my ashes. Turns out there are no specifications or requirements for the vessel or where it is purchased so Pottery Barn, here I come. I wonder if I can have my ashes put in a piggy bank.....heck I wonder what size container you need for the ashes of a human body. Going to have to Google that one......

JBB has kindly offered to spread some of me in Hawaii and some of me on Mt. Kiliminjaro. Baby doll said he would spread some of me on a cruise. There's going to be a little bit of me all over the place!

So, I was finally sprung from that infernal hospital and started the job of cruise prep. Baby doll made the mistake of telling me he was really in need of a new shirt to go with his suit that he wears on the "elegant" nights on the cruise. He knows how I get when I start shopping for him. $150 later, I'm not sure how I feel that I'm spiffing him up for the next chickie he dates! Ha! So, I bought him a plain, white shirt since that was what he had requested but I also bought him a lavender shirt just to shake things up. Tell me how hot this man is!! YUM!

He was trying stuff on when we were packing and he showed me the choice of shoes that I had to pick from for the suit outfit. I was not a happy camper. 

 

 

What's up with all the shoes and loafers with ties?? Back to the store and another $150 later I got him set up with appropriate footwear as well. Steve Madden! One of my fave shoe brands! Money well spent to have such delicious arm candy to show off!

 

 

As far as my own prep, I wasn't in need of purchasing much, it was just a matter of packing. I almost bought myself some sunglasses because I couldn't find mine anywhere but I finally stumbled across my stash and found that I own five pairs already so I was good with those. I know that somewhere I also have a stash of 4-5 sets of headphones ranging from really cheap $5 ones to some really nice $30 ones with microphones and whatnot. Do you think I could find these ANYwhere?? Nope. So, I did have to go buy myself a new cheap pair of those for my nano which I never ended up using, of course. I also decided to buy myself a little one cup blender to make my milkshakes in my room instead of packing my handheld immersion blender. I found a super cute blender for $24 at Walmart. It was perfect!

 

So in between all of this running around prep, baby doll and I had another couples date. Best date yet! We had Toby and Pamela over for dinner and some Euchre. Great conversation, fun couple, we're definitely having them over again, and soon. Wish we had found them last summer when we were looking for a cool couple to hang with but hey, we found them now so we're going to take advantage of it while we can!

 

Speaking of couple dates, baby doll and I had signed up to do the City Solve again this year, way back last fall. Kunkel and Joe had actually signed up with us this year but then quite suddenly moved to Florida, so we had dig up a couple of new suckers to join us. Luckily, Sam was a pretty easy sale. She and Mark are going to drive over from Liverpool that day to do it with us. I just ordered their Team Simpatico t-shirts last night. I can't wait! It is going to be so much fun doing it with four people instead of just two!! We're going to see if we can beat our time from last year since we'll have four brains working on puzzles.

 

I've been hearing from a lot of unknown relatives recently. Incredibly sweet and thoughtful e-mails, and friending on Facebook. When it first started I was like WTH? Turns out my Aunt Dora sent out a super sweet note to my extended family. 

      

Hi Family,

 

Aunt Paralee's daughter Cathy Quinn has been fighting cancer for over 2 years.  She has kept a blog about her fight and you are welcome to read about her plight at  www.owmytongue.blogspot.com

 

She hasn't spoken in 2 years, or been able to eat, taste etc by mouth, due to having two major surgeries of her tongue.  Read her blog to see what a courageous, positive attitude she has maintained throughout her ordeal.

 

I think she would appreciate hearing from family members in an email, or card to show her the family cares. or email her at birdybbq@yahoo.com    put Mighty Quinnster in the subject line or friend her on facebook.

 

If you never met her just introduce yourself as it has been many years since she attended the family reunion, but let her know the family cares.

 

Thank You All

Love Dora

How awesome is that?? Aunt Dora rocks. :-)

 

I'm still hearing stories about the playdate I had with my friend Addison about a month ago. I was told that the day after our playdate she decided that she couldn't talk and was communicating by all hand gestures. What a hoot! And she was telling her 'Yaya' (grandma) about all the games I brought her and Yaya asked if we played the games and Addison's response was that we played A LOT. I have to agree. Not that we played the games I brought but I think I handled just about every toy that child owns. LOL! I'm hoping to continue having some energy in the short term and get one last play date set up with her. She and I both had such a good time together. I want a do-over.

 

Okay, I'm getting distracted over here, back to the cruise. Baby doll and I were up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning, excited to get to the airport and get things moving. Turns out a lot of luggage is needed when you're ill. We checked 5 bags. Yes, 5. Yeesh. My hope was that since one of them was filled with food, it would be empty by the end of the trip and we would only need to pay to check 4 bags because let me tell you, that last bag is like $125 all by itself! I ended up having to check 5 bags again for the trip home but that's later in the story.

 

The day of travel went okay. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly at the airports. They didn't like my PEG at Rochester and had me step to the side and get my hands sprayed after running them over the PEG site. Weird. I had ponied up some extra money for our flights the night before to upgrade us to "Economy Comfort". These are the bigger seats right behind first class. I was glad I spent that extra dough because for once I didn't feel like a sardine on the planes. I had a little breathing room and no strangers leaning against me like my flights to visit JBB in NYC and back a couple of years ago.

 

We arrived at the ship and set off to find our balcony room. Woo hoo! Some of our luggage had already arrived so we started to unpack but soon we were interrupted to go do the safety muster which lasted a little over an hour I think! Man, what a pain in the butt that thing is. We got back to the room and more of our luggage had appeared. The only bag I was missing was the one with all my meds and medical supplies. Uh oh. AND I discovered one of my bags partially empty. They confiscated my cute little $24 Walmart blender. Huh? So now it's off to Guest Services to find out what's going on. This is where we met Mario. Or as baby doll refers to him, Super Mario. He was by far the best customer service person I have ever met in my life. Such a doll! He saved my life! Or at least my cruise happiness. Here's a pic of us with Super Mario:

 

 

We told him about my most important piece of luggage being MIA and about the reason for me needing a blender and could I please have it back. He immediately started looking for my luggage. He took us down to where the last few pieces were staged for delivery. It wasn't there. Then he took us over to the medical bay to see if we could talk to a doctor but he was unsuccessful rousting one. At this point he sat us down in a lounge and said he would go do some footwork for us and report back in. And I started crying. What can I say, it had been a long day and I was fed up. I was so screwed if they couldn't find that bag. Mario ended up sending us off to dinner and said he would work on the problems and get back to us.

At dinner we discussed my special needs with the serving crew. They went and got the manager, Irena, she was a total sweetheart. She worked it out so that I got to see a preview of the next night's dinner menu and could pick out which foods I wanted them to "blenderize" for me. That way my food could be done up ahead of time and I could eat with everyone else without a hitch. It worked out really well and I got to eat all sorts of cool bisques including an escargot bisque!

Not that I can taste any of this but it's a mental thing. I like imagining what it tastes like based on the description on the menu. Meanwhile, I was really worried about the food sitch in regards to my mental state. I seriously miss eating. Knowing that I will never eat again is an absolute torture. Watching other people eat is both fascinating and painful. In the end, it ended up being one of those good thing/bad thing situations. I was jealous of very few items that baby doll got to eat because in all honesty, most of the food looked like crap. I think it was the very first night that baby doll played it safe and ordered some herbed chicken. Pretty much the most boring thing on the entire menu and when it came out it looked greasy, chewy, and tough.
 

 So, good for me that most of the food looked tasteless and not of a stellar quality. Bummer for baby doll. He was joking that he was going to be fasting from 'good' food for a week while on the cruise. Most people look forward to the food, he was bummed that he wouldn't be dining at Chez Quinny. And sure enough, upon getting home last night I nuked him some of my lasagna and the moans of pleasure coming from the kitchen table as he scarfed it down were some of the most heartening sounds ever. Have I mentioned lately how much I love to cook?!?

After dinner we discovered that my medical bag had arrived in our room but I still didn't have my blender and now they had left a note saying they confiscated my hammer that I brought to crush my meds. Say what?? 

Back down to see Mario. So, security was being a dick about the hammer. They felt it could be used as a weapon and refused to let me have it. This led to baby doll and I struggling to crush my meds half the trip. We tried shoes, we bought a pill crusher, we bought a mortar and pestle. Which by the way, made for a hilariously dirty looking picture when I snapped one of baby doll grinding some pills for me. Mr. Price is sure to get a kick out of this:

 Anyway, the blender it turns out is a fire hazard so legally they could not let me have that in the room. They said that I could stop down to Guest Services any hour of the day and use it though which is what I did. There were some really cool things on the lunch menus that I had fun blenderizing and eating such as pear cobbler and bacon/bean soup. I also did a ton of yogurt and fruit smoothies. And after trying all sorts of different ways to crush pills, I started visiting my hammer over in security to crush pills ahead of time. This annoyed them so they handed the hammer over to Guest Services as well and I got visitation rights to both my pieces of equipment. And when all was said and done, Mario was telling me he used to do nothing but drink smoothies back at home but he hadn't had one since coming aboard the ship. So, I gifted him the blender at the end of the cruise. Saved me room in my luggage and made him happy so all ended well.

So that was boarding day of the cruise. Other little tidbits. Right before baby doll brought our luggage downstairs to load into the car, I decided that I should toss in a couple of pairs of jeans, a couple of sweaters, and a couple of hoodies. Just to be safe because all I had packed were cute little short sets, tankinis, and summery dresses. Yeah, thank god I threw those in there. I froze almost the whole time on the ship. They kept that tin can way too cold for my little 103 pound body. I even bought two more hoodies as souvenirs while I was there! And I was so proud of myself for realizing that I couldn't syringe drinks if I was wearing a one piece bathing suit but then dummy that I am, I packed dresses for dinner every night. I can't syringe in a dress either! Doh! Although I did wear a dress for the first elegant night and I just hooked my syringe up ahead of time and taped it to my body so that it came out of the arm hole of the dress a little. Looked kind of stupid when I ate but I made it work.

Day 2 of the cruise was our day at Carnival's private island called Half Moon Cay. On my last cruise, the private island stop in the Bahamas was my fave stop so I was really looking forward to this one as well. And it would have been wonderful because it looked EXACTLY like the other private island but it rained off and on, all day long. We were lying on the beach and it was overcast but at least we were on the beach, and then it would start to rain, and it was freezing. Then it would stop 10 minutes later and you'd start to warm up, and then it would start again. Forget that. After a couple of hours we gave it up and went back to the ship. Seemed like a good day to see what was happening at the casino (I lost $75 overall). At one point I noticed my PEG was leaking and I didn't feel like going back to the room so I thought it fitting to use a casino napkin around my PEG while I was belly up to the bar. Ha!

 Baby doll and I also played a ton of cards. We're getting so that we know each others' strategies so the games are getting very cutthroat. And he's starting to kick my ass more and more often!!

This was the night that I met Emma who was selling the drinks that come in the coconut monkey. I don't know how we ended up talking/connecting but we did and she ended up telling me her mother passed away from cancer when Emma was 13 years old. But if anyone asks about her mom she tells them that her mom is great. She says she tends to get too emotional talking about her mom's death. I told her that didn't seem right. It's okay to cry in front of people (yeah, never thought I'd be saying that!) and that she should celebrate the joy her mom actually did bring into her life as well as how much love she has for her. So, Emma and I 'clicked'. She watched out for me the rest of the cruise. She was walking past one of those quarter machines and a bunch of quarters fell and nobody was around so she came over and got me and brought me to the machine so that I could score the quarters. SWEEEEET! Here's Emma and I:

 
Baby doll and I also discovered on Day 2 that we were seated with another couple for dinner. I was wondering why they had put just the two of us at a 6 seater, guess I found out. Harold and Wandy were great. They're both pastors too which we all got a kick out of, like it was meant for them to win that cruise and be seated with us. I liked them.

Not too much else to note for Day #2. I discovered there was a launderette right across the hall from our room. Which was a really good thing because I'm kind of a messy marvin and ended up doing three loads of laundry on the cruise. Yeah, go figure. I also pulled a 'Karen Barraco Little'. I had taken a shower and washed my hair and couldn't figure out why an hour later I looked like a total grease ball. Turns out I packed conditioner, not shampoo. Yeah, I blame Karen. She just did this exact same thing a week or two ago so it got imprinted into my brain and carried out. I'm gonna be giving her a good talking to the next time I see her!

Okay, we're now up to Day 3 which was a day at sea but I'm blogged out at this point. I've been working on this thing off an on all day today. It was way too nice to stay inside for any length of time so a lot of yardwork got done today. I should take pictures tomorrow and show you what's going on around the homestead. Meanwhile, I will continue with cruise stories tomorrow. 

Hope everyone has a fantastic Memorial Day!