Negotiating the Perfect Vacation

You can blame it on my daughter who took her time deciding on what colors she wanted to feature in her wedding. Because of this, I decided to take matters into my own hands when it came to the mother-of-the-bride dress and I began to frequent Ebay for good deals on fancy dresses. OK, I also shopped the sales at stores here and I must say, I came up with some super outfits -- all of which were bargain priced. I soon had a closet full of "special occasion" dresses in various colors. I was hedging my bets, hoping that at least one would go with the colors she would eventually pick for her bridesmaids' outfits and the wedding flowers.

Eventually we hit the jackpot because she went with a deep eggplant purple and I got to wear one of my favorite outfits from my closet. This was not before several people had made the comment to me that George and I might as well go on a cruise because I now had plenty of outfits to wear onboard a ship. Listen, you don't make comments like that to obsessive-compulsive people! It doesn't take long before a flippant comment takes root in my brain and soon grows into a full-fledged, all-or-nothing, "let's do it" obsession.

So I've been launching opening "cruise" salvos across George's bow for several months now with no discernable effect. He has just continued to sail solidly along on his normal course with no attempt to change direction. Imagine my surprise then when he casually mentioned the fact that we were going to get a tax refund this year and that he thought it might be nice to use it for a cruise. You could have sunk me with a feather! Not to worry though. My natural buoyancy soon had me righted and my mind was off and sailing to at least a hundred ports of call.

That was the easy part. Now we are in the negotiating stage. Where will we cruise? When will we cruise? What type of cruise do we want to take? I rather liked the idea of a Canadian/Maritime Provinces cruise. My reasoning was that it would be gorgeous in the fall but more importantly, we wouldn't be too far from any coastline in case of trouble. Hey, I'd see the movie "Perfect Storm" and you don't watch something like that with an imagination like mine without it affecting you. I couldn't even watch the movie "Titanic." I wasn't alone. As a friend of mine says, "Boat sails, boat hits ice, boat sinks, people die. What's to watch?" My sentiments exactly. To put it another way, who wants to invest emotional energy watching people cavorting around knowing that most of them will be dead by the end of the movie? Not me! So I'm a little leery of ships that go out into the really deep water.

When I suggested a Canadian cruise to George, his response was "We've already traveled to the Maritime Provinces. Why would we want to go there again?" I thought about this. To be fair, I don't like reading books or seeing a movie a second time. Maybe this was a similar quirk. OK, a Canadian cruise was out.

I did some sleuthing on the internet and discovered a gem of a cruise. There was going to be a special interest cruise through the Panama Canal with an added land tour in Peru with stops at Machu Picchu. These were places I had learned about in my beloved archaeology classes in college. But even better yet, the cruise was a "knitting cruise." Yup, they would be offering knitting classes onboard and special trips to alpaca farms in Peru. Wow! This was fantastic. What could be better than a 12-day Stitch and Chat session with like-minded knitters? I showed the itinerary to George and waited for his response. It didn't come. I looked over at him and noticed that his eyes seemed to be glazed over. In fact, he looked to be in distress.

"Heartburn, Honey?" I asked.

"I'm NOT going on a ship that's filled with knitters," he sputtered. Scratch that cruise.

A family friend had gone on a Christian music cruise and had loved it. George and I both love gospel music and a theme cruise like that wouldn't be bad. There was only one sticking point. I really wanted a chance to learn some dances on a cruise. Since George doesn't want to dance, I had read that there are usually cruise staff available on ships to partner travelers who wanted to take dancing classes but didn't have a dancing partner. Somehow I didn't think there would be salsa dancing on a gospel music cruise despite the fact that David certainly danced up a storm in the Scriptures even going so far as to throw off his clothes and dance naked. Now I wasn't planning to disrobe while dancing although I have been known to get up and dance on tables in my heyday but I really wanted to learn some moves beyond "stand and shuffle."

Since we seemed to be "dead in the water," (ooh, bad choice of words) I decided today to go over to the local AAA and pick up some cruise brochures. They're sitting on our dining room table right now waiting for the next installment of "pick the perfect vacation." On Sunday, we'll be visiting a big travel show and that should give us some more ideas. Somewhere out there is the perfect vacation for the two of us where George can relax and check his email while sipping his Shirley Temple and watching the waves slide by and I can sit in a quiet lounge area out of the wind and knit to my heart's content.