Luna Tail

So, I’m thinking of taking a week trip to Germany this year. I have relatives there, and can probably stay with my Uncle… or at least at his house that he has renovated into apartments. I think I might have enough skymiles for two tickets, so I might drag my friend Marie with me! Maybe someone will give me a gift card that I can use in Germany, for some fun stuff!

I also hope to get some settlement money from my car accident. I should know in a week or two, I think. I really hope to get enough to pay off my mortgage, but so far the other insurance is only offering me $8,000. That is not enough to pay off the mortgage! We owe $23,000 on the mortgage. Dangit, I really want to pay that off. We are so close, I can taste it!

And speaking of money, I was balancing my checkbook today and found out that I’d been calculating my new minivan loan wrong… I actually wasn’t even taking it into account! Crap! So that’s why I’ve been so freakin’ short of money lately. And the Husband isn’t working… he does work occasionally for his brother-in-law, enough to buy food for us and some dog food. But I pay the mortgage and the utilities and such now… plus dog sports and taxes. So I have a pretty major budget I follow.  And when it’s messed up, I’m messed up. So next paycheck will be tight again, but after that, I think I’ll be much better off as I finally figured it out!  Bleh.

So anyway, Germany would be fun.  Maybe we’d take the train around too and see some other things.  We’d stay in Bingen in Germany… and there is a ton of things to do just there, and we could walk, and it’d be completely fun!

Flooding in Belize

One of the things I felt most of all when I was on my cruise to the western Caribbean through Carnival cruise lines, was gratitude for what I have at home. We are not rich… well, not be western definitions anyway. But by other countries’ definitions, we are very, very rich. Even being middle class as my husband and I are, we own our own house, three cars (trying to sell one lol) we are able to support six dogs and they don’t really do any major work for us, they are just to love and be a part of our family.

And although I am very angry at our current president (Bush) I’m thrilled that our country finally got it’s head on straight and elected a new president, Democrat Barack Obama. I am thrilled! And I hope he does very well in the coming years.

Anyway… we have so much here in America and we hardly even appreciate it. As I said in my cruise posts, I was getting tired of the poverty. Belize City was the worst. I guess I feel bad about it because I feel helpless about it. And I feel decadent here in the states, as I did on the ship. So much food I felt stuffed all the time. Even on the excursion days when I didn’t eat, I felt stuffed.

Levi and Chase

Here at home I worry about things that most people in the world would find as complete luxury.  I do competitions and training with my dogs and I pour a lot of money into those.  We try to make our yard pretty and we buy things we don’t really need. We don’t have an xbox 360 but my husband has his computers and so do I, and we have our nice big 42″ HDTV that I watch quite a bit.

Mainly I concern myself with the health and well being of my dogs. And, of course, the health and well being of my human family, too. I try not to create stress in my life that I don’t need anymore. I used to make stress up. I didn’t know how to relax and be happy. Now I do. And every day I wake up and I see my bedroom and I am so grateful I have such a nice house and such an amazing family and such great friends.

Most of the time I have no idea how I got so lucky, especially when I see all the poverty in the world. I am grateful for having been born where I was. And every day I try to live in gratitude.

How fun! I threw this together last night… before my nap that started at 6pm and lasted until 6am this morning. LOL which a short break.

It’s the first day only… I hope to make up little movies for each day with a subset of the pictures I took. Since one day I took almost 600 pictures, it would take hours to look through them all!

I am home. I like being home. This pictures is from me on the ship… in a Carnival bath robe and sitting on my bed, that doubled as a couch.  I don’t have any pictures of me at home yet.  I’m tired… I’m working from home and I think I may just take a nap at lunch.  Zzzzz.

The dogs are playing and outside barking, which is nice and comforting. My husband is taking good care of me and letting me sit on the couch all day with my laptop and concentrate on working. Yeah I’m taking a wee break here to post this.

We also have some sheltie visitors which I love! My friend let us watch Glitter and Chip, a couple of shelties, for a week while they are on vacation. I’ll get some pictures of them up in a while, probably put them on Tip Tail.

So I’m back to normal posting, checking out term life insurance rates so maybe I can make some money to pay for all my darn cruise bills! Actually I didn’t do too bad. I have less than $200 on my credit card to pay off. For a week, that’s not bad at all. And I got some nice stuff, trinkets… and great memories.

I want to put my pictures in a slide show with some music… not sure when I’ll be able to do that, but I’ll try!

Well how cool is this. The Tampa Airport actually has free wifi. I’m impressed. In Utah you have to pay for it. I like free better. I was reading for an hour before I took a walk and read the brochures about it being free. And so here I am posting and charging my battery.

I’m dead tired, of course. And so NOT hungry. Though part of me walks around the airport and wants to buy food. I think I’m just thirsty so I bought a bottle of water and that is helping me feel better. I don’t want to eat for a week. Please don’t make me eat!

As an eating example, below is Mark diving into his dessert yesterday. It was our hour before dinner dessert.

I have been reading in the airport. I’m too tired and brain fried to knit. Though I’ve decided to start my latest project over again. I haven’t liked how the edges were coming out. I don’t have a picture of it yet though, maybe this week sometime.

And here is just a shot of the small hallways that we walked through on the ship. Though after a few days we got the idea that walking downstairs on the lower decks, through the lobbies, was more interesting than walking through the cabin hallways.

Did I say I was tired? I’m dead tired. I work from home tomorrow, so that will be nice. Though I’d rather sleep in. It’s 10:23 am here in Tampa.. which makes it 8:23 am in Utah. I don’t think my husband is awake yet or I’d give him a call. I sent some texts but I don’t think they were received.

I just managed my spam here on my blogs, gads I got a lot. Please stop posting comments if you are just trying to get a link back to your site! I will delete it.  Grrr…

Well, in twelve hours I’ll be home and snuggled into bed with my pups. I miss them all. I miss my husband too.  I’m so glad to be back in America! The good old USofA.  Dangit, I am really tired of the poor countries. It’s sad, for sure, and they can be fun to visit. But the last time I was in Mexico and drove to Veracruz with my ex (which was an amazingly fun vacation for two weeks) was 13 years ago. Back in 1995. Dang, I was 13 years younger! I can’t believe it’s been 13 years.  Wow.  So now I’m older, I’m 41, and I like my luxuries more. I didn’t understand my parents when they used to talk about that. Now I totally understand! LOL I love my soft clean bed and my messy house and good drivers and safety and the rules and laws I’ve grown up with.

I love the USA. I dislike the current president (Bush) but I do love this country.

Speaking of the president.. only a couple more days until we get a new one, that’ll be exciting. But since it’s all over the news I wont’ post more about it, I’m tired of listening to all that stuff for now.

Well, maybe I’ll go nap or read some more. I think I’m too tired to be online. 

This will be my last post from the cruise… I’m going to shut down the laptop and put it away. But I’ll post again when I get home!

I can’t believe it’s already 5:22pm on Saturday. This day has flown by and I don’t even know what we’ve done! We slept in, for sure. Then we had breakfast… then we wandered the deck for a while.

We then had some lunch. I had mostly chocolate cake. I have to eat enough to store up my winter fat for when I get home! LOL Okay not really, it’s gonna be a pain to drop this weight when I get home. But hopefully I’m not going to be hungry.

We did have a tour of the kitchens, which was pretty cool. And we learned how to fold towel animals. Sounds exciting, huh? LOL it was actually fun.

Now we are sitting here waiting for dinner at 6pm. We did just have an ice cream snack, and I had some ice cream with my toppings… it was yummy and chocolaty. (Crap, I’m wearing the shirt I bought for my husband below… don’t tell him!)

What I will miss most about the cruise, I think, is the feel of the ocean as we ride on the ship. Walking makes me laugh… we all sway with the ship and it’s funny. And comforting. I love sleeping with the sway. It reminds me of the times I slept on the Great Salt Lake in our little 22 foot sailboat. I love the water. I love being in it and on it. Maybe I was a sailor in a prior life. I actually like rum too! I hope I can get my rum home that I bought. Kinda worries me, living in Utah and all.

We dock tomorrow at 8am. I am still not sure how the debarkation will work for me. I’m going to have the cruise line handle my bags… I’ll put them out (after my rum gets delivered to my room) tonight, and they should be wisked away for me in the morning. And the next time I should seem them is when I get home.

So, this is Cynthia… signing off from the Carnival Legend. The seas are fairly calm, the weather is nice, and I am tired, and very, very full.

Well, we are at sea again, and it’s our last day. I’m ready to come home. I realized this morning that driving around the countries really stressed me out. Driving stresses me out anyway, and going fast on twisty turny roads with no seat belts and maniac drivers… oh yeah, done with that! LOL

We have a lot of stuff to bring back. Hopefully it’ll all fit. I’m going to check two bags, the big bag I brought, and the little carryon bag… since I have rum to bring home and various other sundry stuff.

I’ll probably post once more tonight, and get my email. We get breakfast in the morning… but they take our bags tonight. So tomorrow we’ll just have the clothes on our backs and our carry ons.

We are going to go have lunch… I’m thinking chocolate cake for lunch will be good.

Well, today we docked at Isla Roatan, which is part of Honduras. It was our last day ashore. It was fun. We were able to go snorkeling and that was awesome. It was so nice to be back in the water again. Mark lost the underwater camera, but fortunately the snorkel guide found it and snapped a bunch of pictures for us! LOL. It’s film though, so it’ll be a while until I post those.

We got some after snorkeling pictures, here’s me and Leann. It was raining but when we were in the water we couldn’t tell. The gulf water was nice and warm, warmer than the rain.

—picture—

We were on a catamaran. They put the sail up, the Jib, a little bit at the end of the cruise. But mostly we motored which was boring. I wanted to sail!

There was a great deal of broken coral under water, which makes me sad. I still wish I could go back to Bonaire someday. They were so good taking care of their coral and coasts. Swimming and floating was just nice, though. And the mask and snorkel I had actually worked quite well. Though I kept forgetting I was using as snorkel and thought I’d think I had a regulator and dive and forget to clear it. But I didn’t, I was okay.

I hope to get back in the water again soon sometime.

After the snorkeling we went to Gumbalimba Park. It was fun but it rained and rained. The rain was a nice change from the hot dry desert of Utah, and the snow of Utah that we are going to get soon. So even though we were just as wet out of the water as we were in, we still had fun. Mark had this Macaw on his head!

– picture deleted –

The colors of the flowers were very pretty, too. This picture is with Mark’s camera (above). I took some with mine, but since it was rainy and wet I was worried about my camera getting too wet. I had it wrapped in my rain jacket and my rain jacket got soaked on the catamaran. Fortunately my camera is okay, though.

Above is me with a white faced monkey on my back! He was cute, though they said he was young and being trained so he was on a leash. I hope they treat their animals well at the park. I don’t know what training methods they use… so of course I worry.

Above is Leann with the monkey on her. Later one a larger monkey jumped on her and wanted into her back. When she wouldn’t let him, he bit her! Not too badly but it hurt her quite a bit. When we got back to the ship she got a tetanus shot at the infirmary and the doctor said to watch it as monkey bites can get infected. Maybe like cat bites.

Above is the larger monkey on Mark.. I think that’s the one that bit Leann. I’m not sure what kind he was… maybe a howler monkey? They were around the trees and they were very cool, indeed. This one had no leash!

There was this cool bridge that Mark ran out on. And yes, he did run, and stomp! But it seemed pretty solid.

Above is me at Gumbalimba Park. Mostly wet from the rain, too. There were these little caves, they seemed man made, that had tourist spots in them. Kinda fun.

We rode around the island in this school bus. AKA the beach bus. Leann and Mark are pretty wet in there, even though it was the driest place we found during the day.

On the way back from Gumbalimba Park the driver stopped at this spot… it was very high on the island and we got some fun pictures.

Honduras seems very poverty ridden, too, unfortunately. Though maybe not quite as dirty as Belize was. I think I’m done with the poorer countries… I am grateful to live in the USA with my family and loved ones. Maybe the next cruise will be in Europe or to Alaska. Though my next vacation again will probably be dog camp in Tahoe next September with the pups!

I’ve had to delete some pictures because the internet is being way too slow….

Here is our ship pulling away from the dock. We are headed north now, to Tampa. I may get online tomorrow briefly with ship pictures. We don’t dock tomorrow, we go straight north to Tampa and then Sunday we go home. Tonight we are changing our clocks… not sure why we are doing so tonight on the ship instead of Saturday / Sunday, but I guess maybe it doesn’t matter much.

As I type this it’s 5:07 pm and as soon as I connect and upload, I am supposed to get 50% off internet costs. I hope so… though I haven’t been online much at all. I connect, load, get and receive email, then disconnect. Only takes me a few minutes. Though there are a lot of pictures in this post it might take a couple minutes to upload them all.

Last picture for today… above Leann is snuggled in bed relaxing in her robe after her shower. We rushed to the showers after our day trip. Mark is outside taking pictures off the balcony. The balcony is awesome! We love standing or sitting out there and watching the sea and land go by.

Well, I’m gonna upload this now and check my email. I am still ready to be home. Even though it’ll be cold and snowy soon. Home is a nice place to be.

Oh and happy Halloween! I have my Harry Potter Ravenclaw robes on and we’ll probably get some pictures tonight.

And today we had a trip to Belize. I’m tired… I’m just about ready to go home and snuggle with the husband and the dogs. Belize City was not very impressive. Very poor, and dirty, and, unfortunately, flooded. Our excursion of cave tubing and a zip line were cancelled so our tour guide drove us around the city a bit and then to a Mayan Ruins.

They were very interesting, and the guide did a good job of telling us all about them. It was called Altun Ha. Above is the three of us on top of one of the temples.

They were surrounded by forest which was very pretty, too. Though we did not go very far into the rain forest.

On the way back from the ruins I tried to snap some pictures of the homes around Belize City. As I said, the city seemed dirty, there was trash everywhere. And a great deal was flooded, here is only one of the homes we saw that was surrounded by, and invaded by, water. The tour guide drove like a maniac back to the dock… which scared me a bit but I had to just not look. Driving in these countries, Mexico too, can be quite scary.

The best part, for me, was talking to a lady who has been living in Belize for the last 14 years and she’s one of the people in charge of the Belize Humane Society and Animal Shelter. The Shelter looked really nice, better than many of the shelters up in the States. I bought a t-shirt to benefit their cause, and I hope to mail them some of our old collars and things from our old foster dogs that we just don’t use anymore.

Their website is http://www.belizehumanesociety.org … I hope I got that right. Since I’m using blog desk to blog this I probably won’t check the URL. But I will when I get home.

After chatting with the lady doing the animal rescue we caught the last tender back (okay it probably wasn’t the last tender) to the ship. The views from outside our balcony were very pretty… though a bit hazy. It looks like it might rain again. We don’t know what we will be able to do tomorrow in Izla Roatan off Honduras. We’ll see… we have a catamaran scheduled, and a park. I hope to take the camera with and get some nice shots.

Here is me on the patio. The water is very pretty, a light blue. As we were motoring out of the Belize waters they changed from this light blue to a darker blue, probably as we went to deeper waters.

I’m tired, headed to bed… again I kinda am ready to go home now. Snuggle in my own bed and spend time with my wonderful husband and pups.

Good night.

Today our ship docked in Cozumel. We didn’t have to take a tender boat, the ship got right up to the dock.

Above is me in front of our ship, the Carnival Legend. Ignore the fact that I’ve probably gained about 10 pounds already on the cruise. The desserts are just so good! I’m going to have to do a cleanse when I get back, and not eat for a week. I probably won’t be hungry as we have been having breakfast, and second breakfast, and lunch, and second lunch, then dinner with two desserts every night.

Here are Leann and Mark and you can see another ship over to the right also docked in Cozumel.

We took a taxi to down town Cozumel. We were going to do a parasailing excursion, but it was cancelled because of winds. The winds are about 34 knots and that is just too much wind. Most of the water excursions were cancelled, including snorkeling and scuba. Though Mark and Leann are going to do the Dolphin swim this afternoon. I’m not sure how the dolphins are treated and so I didn’t want to join them.

It was very fun to be back in Mexico again. I love Mexico, I have had many good experiences… this is my third trip to Mexico and I hope to come back again.

When we got back to the Legend, we saw we’d been joined, on the other side of our dock, by the Carnival Imagination. Wow these captains sure know how to dock these huge ships!

The water is not as wavy today, but still a bit rough. It might be time for a nap.. or for our every half hour feeding!