March 2009

A week on the Ruby Princess

29 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 4

It was amazing! It's late and my head still believes it's on the ship... I feel like my body is still moving with the waves, but I'm obviously on solid land. Until I post more stories, here's a little recap of our Caribbean cruise: 

 

The good

  • For the most part our travel to the ship and back, and the embarkation and disembarkation processes were smooth.
  • The ship was absolutely spectacular, and its crew was amazing.
  • The food was delicious and definitely in abundance.
  • Jamaica, Mexico, Grand Cayman and the Bahamas were beautiful and exceeded my expectations.
  • Onboard origami lessons. We're geeks.

 

The not so good (which I will not dwell on, so I am inserting it in a 'goodness' sandwich)

  • At the Moncton airport they confiscated 2 brand new bottles of sealed sunblock, and a can of deodorant. Then I got chosen for random personal search/frisk. At the Newark airport they confiscated 3 bottles of Tortuga hot sauces and another can of deodorant. Back at the Moncton airport they confiscated a big beautiful Jamaican mask I had brought back. I'm still upset about that.
  • In Grand Cayman, the second port of call, despite alternating between 30, 45 and 70 spf sunblock, I got a monster sunburn that still hurts in one spot on my back today. I was crispy and tried to stay in the shade for the rest of the week.
  • On the very first day, which was a sea day, for our very first activity we went to a dance class. The shoes I was wearing were kind of hurting my feet but I ignored the pain because I was having so much fun. After the class I realized that actual chunks of skin were missing from my feet and they were bleeding. I spent the rest of the week buying and trying flip flops, putting bandages on my feet, and trying to make my feet hurt less.
  • On the second day I jammed my thumb in the wine bottle opener and took a chunk of skin off. (Told you I was clumsy!) 
  • I have realized that I'm not about to ditch my compression socks anytime soon.
  • The unfortunate xxx dolphin incident, which I will blog about later, or you can read the story in the 'dolphin kiss' photo comment on Facebook.

 

The GREAT!

  • Swimming with the dolphins, Regina and Marty!! 
  • The Bob Marley tour
  • Clear caribbean water
  • Movies under the stars on the Ruby Princess
  • Holding small and big heavy turtles! 
  • Steph agreeing to attend some dance classes with me. Okay I actually had to bribe him with sexual acts, but him agreeing to come to dance classes was nothing short of a miracle! 
  • Chocolates on my pillow every night.
  • Jesus, our room steward.
  • Ice unfolding and placing my napkin on my lap every dinner.
  • Beautiful weather : No snow!
  • Rick and Mary, our tablemates, were pretty amazing and genuine and nice people.
  • Swimming with the stingrays! 
  • Formal nights were so much fun! 

 

I will blog more about it later for sure. The pictures are on Facebook :)

Shattered Fertility

29 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 6

As you can read from my most recent blog entries, I have been thinking a lot lately about having children, or not. Or is it trying to convince myself that not being ever able to conceive could also lead to a happy life? 

We had an amazing week on the Ruby Princess and Florida, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Mexico and the Bahamas were amazing. Our table mates on the Ruby were wonderful people, and we had some conversations about what it means to have kids these days. (I didn't mention anything about our lack of fertility, the conversation just gravitated towards kids.) They have one child which they had when he turned 40. So it made me think that even though we're both turning 30 this year (Steph this week!) maybe we still have a bit of time. They are both in management and have an only child named Christine. Things have worked very well for them.

Remember the story of my African fertility statues? I had bought these Ivory fertility statues in a market in Cameroun, and my roomate Annick had accidentally dropped them on the ceramic floor, shattering my fertility statues. Last week in Cozumel, we spotted a merchant selling masks, which I naturally gravitate towards. I hate collections of stuff but I guess my souvenir masks could now be labelled a collection. He explained the different meanings of the different carvings, and of course when he explained the fertility mask, I bought it. I thought this was my new chance to have another 'fertility thing'. A new start. I made sure it was wrapped and wrapped and ridiculously wrapped. I wasn't going to take chances this time.  

When we got home last night, I opened the luggage it was in, unwrapped it.. yep. It's all chipped and broken. It's a beautiful mask so I think I'm going to glue it together.. but seriously? Should I just : 

1 - Not believe that the universe is trying to send me a message.
2 - Invest in a big roll of bubble wrap the next time I travel.
3 - Other.

Queen sized pantyhose and other random things

18 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 10

I've decided that the last I could do to try and jazz up my knee lenght cocktail dresses and make them look a little more formal, is to wear evil pantyhose with them. I asked a few of you for advice and all of you voted for the pantyhose. 

Pantyhose : 1
Nancy : 0

Once I had made up my mind about wearing pantyhose, and agreed that yes, they would make my legs look nicer, they would somewhat make my big leg tattoo less BAM in your face, I also remembered that when I wear pantyhose I seem to forget that I'm not wearing compression socks. I plan to wear dresses for dinner each of the 7 nights so I went out yesterday and bought 6 pairs of Queen sized pantyhose. I have this thing about not being able to wear pantyhose twice. They don't make them Nancy proof. If I wear them twice you can bet there will be a run in them somewhere. And I have short nails too. I'm just a clumsy girl. Last night while vacuuming I managed to hit my head really hard on a doorframe, and less than 10 minutes later, I bashed my forehead really hard on a pair of really pointy boots on my shoe rack! Anyway. All this to say that I kind of really like that term : Queen sized. I am not fat, I'm just a Queen. Avec un gros Q.

 

Did I mention that my wonderful husband fixed my blog, and that I no longer feel like I'm blogging in 1995 when I blog from work? Yay! To express my gratitude, I went out at lunch yesterday and bought him 4 pairs of shorts for the cruise (since we realized that he had a grand total of 1 pair that fit), and a gilligan hat (since his coco burns like *that*), and a bottle of SPF a gazillion just for him. With his money. Oh and I also picked myself up some gravol and some immodium. I'm covered on both ends.

 

On feeling stupid : Is it just me, or is there a word verification conspiracy to make me/us feel stupid? Maybe I'm just severely dsylexic or really in denial, but I 'fail' word verification at least 40% of the time. Maybe it's more like 45%. This morning while commenting on Alex's blog, my word verification was 'metro'. How can I mess that up? Sure enough, I failed it. Also, those things when you sign up for something and they ask you to write what you see in the box: letters, numbers, and random scribbles all mixed in? 30% of the time I can't even make out what's written. Maybe it's just me...

 

On being a horrible dog mother : My parents came over last night and picked up Chanel & Loki. As soon as they left I started cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, and scrubbing the floors. I finally sat down at 11h30pm, panting and in sweat. It feels SO GOOD to have a clean house. Well, at least clean floors. It felt SO NICE to not have to watch for shit on the floor when I got up in the middle of the night to pee. I even went out to look at the clean kitchen, living room, and especially clean stairs at 3am, and smiled. It's going to feel SO INCREDIBLE to get home tonight and knowing in exactly which condition the house will be. There won't be an overpowering smell of shit hitting you in the face as you walk in. There won't be bits and bites of turds in the Stairs from Chanel who likes to eat her poop in the carpet stairs. There won't be an explosion of batting from chewed-until-dead cushions or pillows or chew toys. There won't be drywall dust where Chanel chews the WALL. And there won't be shredded and torn up peepee pads all over the place. I can't wait.

At 3am, looking at my clean house with feelings of contentment, are when the fantasies started. What if we could live in a shit free, destruction free, pee free, smell free house ? What if the dogs could be happier living in a home where their two parents don't work 40 hours a week, go to the gym 5-6 times a week, and also dare to have a social life? What if? Is 2-3 distracted hours a day with his parents enough to make a dog happy? What if I told my mom to try to find them new homes in Bathurst? What would people say? How harshly would they judge me? Could I make up an elaborate lie about an unfortunate accident, just to not be judged and labelled a horrible dog parent? If we can't even raise dogs, why do we even expect that we would be good parents? 

Granted, as previously mentionned, we don't spend enough time home with them maybe to have them trained very well. And hopefully if we were able to have children, at the age of 5 they wouldn't still pee and shit all over the furniture, eat their poor, chew the walls and speaker wires, and chew on my precious Africa souvenirs, and basically eat and/or roll around in their own bodily excrements... but still. How can I love my dogs so much, want the best for them, yet keep considering putting them up for adoption every so often? Is it because in my mind I see myself happily playing with them and running in dandelion fields together, but that the reality is that I have to work 40 hours a week, run errands, go to the gym, see my friends and do yardwork? But I am an animal person. I've never not had an animal. I've developped cat hair allergies in the recent years, so the only way I could really realistically have a cat is to have one of those inside out hairless ones. Rephrase : I am a dog/cat person. Having a pet fish, or pet hamster *shudder* or a pet anything in a cage to me is just like having a pet rock. I'm just not a non-cuddly OR rodent teeth animal person.

I feel like such a terrible dog mother for thinking all these thoughts.. maybe all I deserve to parent is a pet rock!

My dogs are going on vacation tonight...

17 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 4

Chanel was sitting on my lap, trying to lick my face while I was trying to explain to her that tonight her and her 'brother' Loki are going on vacation. I told her that she was going to go live with my mother and her mother (my mother's dog, which is her mom) until the end of the month. She was looking at me, smiling (see her latest Facebook picture for evidence), wagging her tail of destruction all over the place. I'm still not used to her hard tail of destruction. Loki has a soft, curled up piggy tail, so I've never had to worry about getting him overly enthusiastically wagtastic in inappropriate places. When I told my mother that I thought I was cute for telling Chanel that our mothers live together, she just thought that I was crazy hehe. Maybe, but I don't see a big difference between someone who has 'human' conversations with their pets vs someone whose dialogue with their pets consists of phrases like "Whosagoodgirl? Awww whosagoodgirl, mommasgirl!, awwwgoogirl.". To each our own :) 

 

I'm so glad that not only my parents agreed to puppysit the dogs during our vacation, but they agreed to come get them today. Perfect!! That means that I can run the rest of the errands today during lunch, clean the house tonight and that it will STAY clean!!, pack tomorrow night, attend Acadieman's premiere Thursday night, which Steph's got VIP tickets for... whatever that means... And leave our clean house Friday morning! Woot! 

 

Apparently Aunt Flow reads my blog, and has decided to be nice to me. I'm tickled pink! (literally.) My period started like... BAM! this morning. Except there was no loud "BAM" noise. It was more like a *ugh I'm so..fucking.tired.. why can't I go to bed at a reasonable hour.. grumble WTF is THAT? OH.. Yay!" It never starts this BAMified. It always announces it's arrival with subtle hints. This is a period miracle. It means that it should be done if not close, on Saturday when we board the ship. W00T! I'm not going to apologize for speaking in such great details about my period either. It's my blog, and I'm that happy about it! I'm sitting here popping midols and making Igor look like prefect posture child. Yep, I'm glad it arrived today instead.

 

I wish Mother Nature read my blog, -19C this morning with wind chill, come on! Where IS that global warming, Al Gore?

"Believe me, you DON'T want kids!"

16 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 8

"You DON'T want kids!" 

- Kids are expensive.

- Kids are hard work.

- Kids grow up and become drug dealers and crack whores.

- Kids will ruin your life.

- Having kids is harder than you think.

- When you have kids you can't ever sleep in again! 

- Pregnancy is very very hard on your body.

- When you have kids you are no longer allowed to be fashionable or spend any time and/more money on yourself! 

- Why are you even thinking about it? You're SO young.

 

I can't help but wonder... if I DIDN'T want kids... would people be constantly be trying to convince me of the reasons why I should want them? 

Why didn't you comment on my last emotional blog entry, jerks!?

15 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 10

Ooooh yeah... it's because it vanished out of thin air! Sorry! (You know I'm only joking, I'd never call you jerks hehe) So... when was it? I can't even remember when... Thursday night I think? I posted an overly emotional 'woe is me' entry. I had just posted on the cruise forums I've been reading for a while, asking if Steph's only dinner jacket was dark enough for formal night. And they also asked to see pics of the dresses I was considering for formal night... Well.  Let's just say they were NOT very nice.

It makes funny noises, but I can finally breathe!

05 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 9

So I had my interview for that fed job yesterday at 12h45pm. I had a pretty good hair day, and after a frantic lunch hour of shopping and trying on every single top in my closet at night, and thanks to Holly, Katie, Dominique and Sophie, I ended up looking pretty cute too, I think. I took a bathroom picture and it's my current profile picture on Facebook :) 

Stupid cold!!

02 March 2009 By crazymrsnancy2 4

Plague, Plague, go away! I took a sick day today. It would be nice to at least appear to look normal for my interview Wednesday! At least one good thing from my Mary Kay days is the 'extra emollient night cream' which I thought was ridiculous when I first started with MK.