vacation

A Trip To the 412

After a 20 year hiatus, I returned to Pennsylvania this past weekend that we made a long weekend. It was strange to be back at first. There is simply so much that has changed, but duh, it’s been 20 years since you’ve been there. With the whole pandemic thing going on, we didn’t end up taking the anniversary vacation we really wanted (an all-inclusive, likely in Mexico) oh, and my passport issue, lol, but we still managed to get out of town and we had a great time.

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Your virtual tour awaits…not really.

See how nice I am? I even gave you pictures that you don’t have to work hard for. I give. What can I say?

I’d been hesitant to return. I had a picture in my mind that I didn’t want to see. The day that we were going to head out to the country, I was antsy as all get out. Basically, I didn’t want to be depressed by the area. Fortunately, it looks pretty good. I mean, I definitely stayed in the areas that I knew wouldn’t suck (so I didn’t go to Monessen, Donora, Smithton, Charleroi LOL) but I did drive past the old house. I was really expecting the nostalgia to hit me once we started down our road but there was nothing. It seems that I have fully moved past everything about being there. That chapter is closed. I didn’t even have a desire to have our land back. The whole book is closed and I might have thrown it in the fireplace. See ya!

Going back to PA made me realize that no, I definitely don’t want to live there, but visits are good. There really is a lot going on over there these days, but I just don’t think it’s enough to make me want to be there 24/7/365. That is NOT to say that I love it where I am. I do not. But it is where we are and it is where we’re staying so I deal with it.

After seeing all the everything over there, it has certainly made me want to see what the fuck is around here besides elderly folks. I think I’ve reached my limit of nothingness. I think that now is the time (after being here for like 2.5 years) to find some local parks for some morning grounding. Hopefully I can avoid fire ants. Ugh. I just. Ugh. I hate it here.

Anywho, it’s just a couple days into the new month and that’s always a good time to keep things poppin. Got my long string ready for lots of wand practice and a little hoop challenge thrown in there too. I’m feeling the flow arts I do believe. I gotta be feeling something, ya heard? Things have a tendency to go downhill fast (like I’m on roller skates….I have those too, lol) if I don’t have some sort of something to place my focus. I wouldn’t say I’m ADHD but I certainly have some focus issues. Case in point, I had this open in two windows and I thought that I lost all of this post. I was super mad and wasn’t going to re-do it. HA! Glad I found it.

Ok, I gotta go. I’m very behind schedule for my day and sitting here trying to pound out more words ain’t helping. Hope you’re humping on hump day.

Way Back Wednesday

Maaaaaaan, I loved this show when I was a kid. Yeah, parts of it were sad (I don’t really remember it as such, but looking back at it and listening to the lyrics, yeah, it was sad) but I still loved it. They stayed drawing my man like he was high as a kite too.

This wasn’t even the video I was going to start with today. I was leaning toward another song that was John Denver and then Peter, Paul, and Mary showed up and I knew I had to hear Puff. Cue the Barbara…*memories…of the times we left behind…*

It’s another rocking busy day here in SpinzLand. What do you think of that to encompass everything? Or perhaps SpinzWorld. I kinda like that. The brand is always at the back of my mind, y’all! So the busy and the John Denver come together with leaving on a jet plane. Typically, I wouldn’t say hey I’m going on vacation and my house is empty, but the way we are set up here, we basically can’t fart without the neighbors hearing it, so I am unconcerned about anyone trying to get in. Also, none of you know or care where I live.

Today, I’m going to try to make my packing lists and then get stuff in bags. Of course, finish this post. Make sure everything is charged up. Gonna throw some work in there as usual. Ah, and some WordPress. Oh, and the chiropractor because my hips and knees are on my last damn nerve. That should pretty much push me right through to 5 o’clock when I chill for 45 minutes before diving into making tonight’s beef and mushroom risotto. Hardly ever sitting still. Ooooh, I also need to restring my leviwand because longstring love!

Ok, back to the natal chart from yesterday. We talked sun and moon. Today, let’s look at some planets, namely Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Everything has its own meaning. Mercury is about communication, Venus is about interests and attractions, and Mars is about that action. Let’s dive on in.

Mercury, as I mentioned, is about communication. Your style of it and your negotiation skills/tactics. Here we go with the good:

  • Humorous
  • Believes everything teaches you something
  • Detail-oriented
  • Great organizer
  • Good manual dexterity
  • Enjoys speaking and writing
  • Loves to debate
  • Prone to exaggerate

The meh:

  • Mind always “on”
  • Misses bigger point
  • Hypochondriac
  • Critical
  • Argumentative
  • Provoking

Now, I don’t know what my manual dexterity has to do with my communication style unless it’s directly related to my middle finger. But yeah, the meh stuff is correct again. I do like to poke the bear for shits and giggles. But let’s not dwell. Moving right along to Venus. The goddess of love. Which then makes sense that Venus is about the emotions. That encompasses a really broad range of stuff, but values and desires kinda sums it up. Let’s see where we stand with the good:

  • Happy abroad (NOT a happy broad, lol)
  • Passionate
  • Highly creative
  • Generous
  • Approachable
  • Trustworthy
  • Reputable

And the yikes:

  • Appears standoffish
  • Rule breaker
  • “Grass is greener” mentality
  • Socially awkward
  • Need to learn moderation
  • Frivolous

Well, I mean, yeah kinda? Forever generous with my money but very stingy with my time. I’m not gonna go point by point and explain how these things fit me, but just know that they do. Let’s finish up for today with Mars. The god of war. Knowing that really makes it fit that these traits are about how I take action and all my crazy energy. Ready to rock:

  • Spontaneous
  • Enjoys challenges
  • No hidden agendas
  • Resourceful
  • Has strength to overcome hurdles

And the maybe take a nap:

  • Impulsive
  • Bad at follow through
  • Impatient with slow action
  • Rude/impatient
  • Lacking desire to put myself or my interests first
  • Erratic energy levels

Yeah, well. I am who I am, lol. There is a lot of truth in these words. A LOT. It’s amusing to me that when I’m typing this out, different scenarios come to mind that relate. I’ve lived a LIFE lemme tell ya. It probably deserves a book. And maybe I’ll even write it one day. I guess blogging regularly is the best way to go about getting the writing juices flowing again. The ideas are there, just that fifth bad bullet point for Mars is kicking my ass all the time.

The list of things to do isn’t getting any longer as I sit here chatting with you, so I’ll likely see you tomorrow. But no promises, because vacation.

All Good Things Must Come To An End

I knew that when I was writing the Cozumel recap, I should’ve done the last day as well, but I didn’t and now it’s a day late, but that’s ok as yesterday was oh so long. I won’t be doing a recap of the travel day because that’s just boring.

Last day on the ship seems like the day that everyone tries to do everything, us included. Ok, maybe not everything. It was quite a leisurely day. We laid around on pool chairs, listening to the band and then had some BBQ they were making outside on the deck. Went to bingo and won absolutely nothing (thankfully not another cruise on Royal and I don’t have to go there any more).

FlowRider FailThe highlight of the day was getting out and trying the FlowRider. Now we all know that water activities and I are not friends. However, Lovey wanted
to try this so I acquiesced. That is me falling down. I did manage to stand up for a few seconds, however, my cameraman didn’t get that on digital media. I, on the other hand, got an entire video of him on it. Three times I got up. Three times I feel. Three times that damn horny FlowRider pulled my bathing suit bottom and shorts nearly all the way off.

We had booked a private lesson because there was no way I was going to humiliate myself in front of the crowd that always gathers to watch people bust their asses on this thing. They call private four people, but I was okay with that. So, it was Lovey and me along with Phillip who works on the oil rigs and said he saw the ships go by all of the time and wanted to be on one, and Mariah, a teenager from Houston. We all worked well together and had a blast. And we only had Phil’s wife and Mariah’s mom and grandparents (maybe, I couldn’t quite catch the family dynamic on that one) to see us fall all over the place.

In the awwwww department,  towards the end of the session, Mariah, who is a little on the overweight side, some still baby fat I think, but plenty of time to work it out, came to me and said, “Can I ask you a question?” all super shy. Of course you can, there Mariah. And her question: Do you work out? 😀

Yes, dear, I do. Nearly every day. I wish I could stay bikini ready without working out, but I’m 40 and shit starts to fall apart as you get older. I shoulda figured out how to do long distance personal training for her. She’s a beautiful girl and taking some weight off would probably help her realize her own beauty since kids these days are total dicks and I wouldn’t doubt that she gets teased back at home. You kids need to cut the shit because one day it’s gonna come back to get you. Karma boomerang kids!

Anywho, thanks to our phones, we can see how many steps we took every day. For the week, we walked just over 53 miles. How crazy is that? Squats? I don’t need no stinking squats! I am pretty sure my ass lifted up a bit just from walking up four decks to eat and then down four to the room and then up four to the pool and up two more to the FlowRider. We almost never took the elevators, even on formal nights. When we got up to 11 from 3 one day, there was a crew member there and he asked if we were tired. We told him that we took the stairs from 3. 3?!?! he said. Yes, 3. He told us we were crazy and he wouldn’t ever do it, lol.

And that, my friends, is the week in review. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Go on a cruise. It’s a good time. I’d just recommend Carnival. 🙂

 

Day Five Adventures in Belize

Ahhh, Belize. You beautiful third world country, you. I’m really not saying that as a dig, our tour guide said that they’re considered a third world country. It’s possible to see the truth in the statement as you move around, but it’s more fun to see all of the neat stuff that they have instead. Like mangoes. I think they said 100 varieties. So super awesome.

Belize City was the only place we were going to do an excursion (since in Cozumel, we can just walk around and do what we do), but we didn’t want it to be all day long. We chose A Tale Of Two Cities which showed the highlights of Belize City as well as a trip to Altun Ha. How beautiful and peaceful it was at Altun Ha. We walked and walked and walked, just taking it all in. We climbed up to the top of one of the structures for an even more spectacular view. Altun Ha is in some way related to or structured after the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon, so this completed the circle since I had visited the latter when I was in Mexico City.

As with most places when you’re on vacation, the locals are trying to sell their wares. The tour guide had made mention of a blackberry wine and I absolutely knew that I was going to need to, at the very least, taste some of that. After we finished with our photos and were heading back towards the bus, we decided to see what there was. We got to taste three kinds of wine that they made there: a flower wine (which taste a lot like dandelion did), the blackberry, and a cashew wine. The cashew one was pretty strong. It’s said that on super hot days, it will sorta ferment in your stomach and get you drunk a second time. It was not hot enough, nor was I brave enough to consider giving that a shot. The nice gentleman who sold us the wine was also kind enough to offer us weed, and when we declined that, thought maybe we were a little more hardcore so offered us some coke instead. Umm, thanks, but no thanks, dude. If I decide that I’m going to ingest some illegal substance into my body, I sure as hell ain’t gonna do it in a foreign country where I’ve gotten it from some dude I’ve never met before. Is this what the 80s were like in New York? Total madness.

The kid in the next booth over didn’t really care if we actually purchased anything. His main focus was Lovey’s Miami Heat hat. The kid wanted to trade SO badly. Even though the hat was full of sweat, the kid was over the moon to get it and it only cost him the necklace I was eyeballing. Mmmm, turquoise. You’re so pretty. Also, guess I need to replace that hat for Lovey.

Before getting back on the ship, we stopped for some lunch at a tiny place called the Smoky Mermaid. I had a lemon butter red snapper that was the best piece of fish I’ve had in another country. While we were eating, we met an older couple that we want to adopt us so we can go travel with them. They were telling us that this was the second of their back-to-back cruises and that they had ALSO just recently done an overseas cruise. Ahh, to be retired with what appears to be a heck of a dispensible income.

Back on the ship, we had Izumi, the sushi place, for dinner. Man, they never fail to be awesome. From the awesome rolls to the perfect miso, it’s just fantastic. We called it a somewhat early  night after being bummed out by Lebron and his cramped up ass not leading the Heat to victory and because tomorrow, I return to the motherland. Mexico. Hasta luego.

The Downhill Slide To The End

Hello, Roatan. I missed your SalvaVida. Such a lovely beer you are.

We really slacked hardcore in Roatan. We didn’t leave the port although we did get off the ship, because, how else am I gonna get a SalvaVida?!? Yeah, I feel a little bad about making it all the way back to Honduras and not really going out and seeing anything, but man was it nice with practically no one on the ship.

There’s no segue here. In the land of perfume, I had phases that I went through. Avon perfume, cheap stuff, and I got into a Donna Karan Cashmere phase as well. The latest perfume I’ve fallen in love with is Gucci Guilty. Not all perfumes work well with my personal chemistry, but this one, yum. For that, I got off the ship. I was quite happy to find it for quite a bit less than I’ve seen it anywhere else and I shall now live in it and it shall be my signature smell. Huzzah. And that was our trip to Honduras.

I mentioned yesterday, on our actual anniversary, that it was our anniversary. During sail-away, we crushed the bottle of champagne we won on the first day. Happy anniversary to us!

Since I’ve talked about it every other day, yesterday was another day of lots of walking. I finished the day at right around nine miles. It’s madness the amount we’re walking!

Ok, that’s it for yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll tell you of today’s adventures. J

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