facebook updates that never came to be

last week, my little sister sarah got married on a beach in florida. she was born when i was ten and i've always thought of her as my little baby/toy/practice child/protege. seeing her get married was happy and exciting for me.

the day after the wedding, 26 of us from the wedding group of family and friends all piled onto a cruise ship and headed to key west, florida and cozumel, mexico for four days.

since i don't have internet on my phone and we were in the ocean or in a foreign country for several days, i had no way of getting online. i kept thinking of things that would have made good status updates, but i couldn't post them, so i decided to do a blog post where i share my great vacation through the updates that never came to be.

if we've got to do an 11 hr drive, this is the way to go about it. and why would anyone want the non-drowsy version of dramamine during a car ride? bring on the sleepies!

the hotel and beach are beautiful and will be perfect for the wedding tonight!

you know you've arrived at the beach when you've got a butt full of rocks and sand. let vacation begin!

how did i get selected to be in charge of the flowers for the wedding? so not my thing, but with my mom and sister-in-law's help, we managed to come up with some pretty things. those boutonnieres were tricky little wastards.

sarah made a beautiful bride and rich is a lucky man.

hmm, do you think she's a paid lady of the night or just some chick doing the walk of shame at the bus stop?

boarding the ship! this is all very exciting, even if brooke is starting to come apart at the seams a bit with all the crowds and chaos and line-standing.

this room is soo tiny and windowless for the three of us. anyone else feeling claustrophobic yet?

omg, we just had to wait for 45 min through the safety briefing at our muster station. no air conditioning, hundreds of people packed into one tiny, airless space, excessively loud speaker overhead, and a child who was letting her autism show.

thank God for this tiny, windowless room where we can take brooke. it's like a cocoon where she can burrow down in and get herself restarted as often as she gets overloaded. the towel animals help too.

cruises must be really great if you're traveling with no kids and lots of money.

"i thought cruises were supposed to be fun," noah, age 8.

"i had 5 ice creams, cheesecake and lucky charms for breakfast. and orange soda and chocolate milk. can i have a pizza now?" sure, kid, go get yourself a pizza. maybe this cruise is looking up for the kids after all.

we just dropped the kids off at a nightclub on the ship for a kids only dance. they say they're just going for the free soda. looks like we finally get some adult time!

while trying to decide where to go on our free evening, we were spying on brooke through the club window. we saw her walk to the door and saw a child care employee let her right out into the hallway alone, beside the casino that was filled with hundreds of adults, many of whom were drunk. holy crap, i think i'm going to puke.

after a few choice words with the kids staff, we let brooke go back in after using the restroom. but then we sat directly outside the door and didn't move until it was time to retrieve her. so much for a parents only night of fun.

if you accidentally use a family member's toothbrush, are you obligated to tell them about it or can you just let it be your own little secret?

is that really the ocean we're in or did we enter neverland and we're sailing in a sea of blue gatorade?

no matter how huge this ship seems, it's very insignificant compared to the ocean. God makes some massive stuff.

we got off the boat in cozumel and we're in a back alley with some mexican guys in hopes that they'll give us a great deal on snorkeling. fingers crossed that we don't get sold into human slavery.

no slavery, just fun. other than the multiple stings by jellyfish, my first time snorkeling was really fantastic!

how many times can i apply sunblock in one day before my skin starts boycotting it?

you know how sometimes you'll see a toilet brush hanging from the bottom of a gas station bathroom sink? well i just saw a sink that had salad tongs hanging from the bottom instead. i wish i'd had my camera handy!

you know you're home from vacation when you've got three suitcases filled with wet, nasty laundry, you're cleaning up cat puke off the rug and all you can think about is how happy you are that you're going to be able to use your own toilet again.

and with that, my friends, i bid you farewell. the laundry is calling my name and i've got to get back to the salad diet and say goodbye to the potatoes and cheese.

little known fact

i always like learning new things about people. i also like holding some things about myself back in reserve to whip out and surprise people at unexpected times. i have one friend, jana, who i've known for about 13 years and we've spent countless hours talking, laughing,  and crying together. she thinks she knows me so well, but then out comes something random about my life that makes her shake her head and wonder if she even knows me at all. like the fact that my brother has called me choc for most of my life. and no, it has nothing to do with chocolate.

i'd love to hear something about you. something that maybe is a secret or maybe isn't secretive at all. perhaps it's just something that you haven't thought of in a long time. or something that goes way back to your childhood and has nothing to do with you now, but you can still claim it as your own.

i'll go first.

in my childhood i spent a lot of time swimming. my grandparents had a nice pool and i was always up for any opportunity to go for a dip (not of the skinny variety). i'd taken some swimming lessons over the years and felt that i'd mastered the craft of the different strokes and the end of pool flip, along with some basic dives.

when i was about thirteen, i signed up for synchronized swimming classes to give myself a new water challenge and hopefully become like the awesome ladies in the olympics.



unfortunately, no other people wanted to participate in the class. i went every week for three months and received private lessons, which sounds nice and personal, but actually was a little bit awkward. my instructor never got in the water, so i was only synchronized with myself and my own inadequate rhythm. i learned a few cool pool tricks, like i can float on the top of the water with almost my entire body sticking out, as if i were lying on something just below the surface. and i can flail my legs about out of the water in some fun patterns that look almost fancy, and not so much like a 4 year old does when they first learn to go underwater with their face.

but i never learned the synchronicity part.

how about you? tell me something about yourself. something interesting or obscure.

i'm waiting...

behold the power of balls

while out walking with my honey last night, we stumbled into an amusing conversation. it was about power, or more accurately, the feeling of being powerful.

the first time i remember ever feeling that i was powerful was when i was about seven years old. i was out running around the neighborhood with my posse of elementary hooligans. i'm not sure what game we were playing, but one of the boys caught me from behind. he had his arms wrapped tightly around me, pinning my arms to my sides as i struggled to find a way to free myself. no amount of squirming could break me loose, so i started kicking. one grand kick straight up and backwards bought me instant freedom. the boy released me and i scampered away, giggling and squealing, but not entirely sure why he'd let me go.

when i got a few paces away, i looked back and saw him laying on his back, moaning and holding his crotch. i stopped running and cautiously walked back toward him to see what was wrong or if he was just trying to trick me. several of the other boys in the group ran over and stood around him in a circle with looks of horror and sympathy on their faces. they placed gentle cupping hands of protection over their own crotches and then turned to look at me. they looked afraid.

i wasn't entirely sure what had happened with my kick, but suddenly i had the begrudging respect of all the boys on my block and there was murmured talk of balls. i didn't see any balls around, but whatever they were talking about, i knew i'd found a source of power in myself. an unexpected chink in the armor of the more physically power males of the species.

and with that knowledge, i skipped off, arm and arm with my best girl friend, singing a silly ditty and pondering those mysterious balls.

what about you? when do you feel powerful?

i posed that same question to my husband and he said, jokingly, that it was when he knocked me up. i'm sensing a testicular theme here... is there power in the world that isn't linked to balls?!