Seven weeks and counting ...

Ok, so I created this blog and I have ambitious plans to update it on the cruise. I've asked Zman and lil Z to participate and enter their thoughts and impressions. Hopefully, they will.

I think I'm over the guilt I was feeling a few weeks ago because of a co-worker. I'm just too open. I was talking about the cruise with another co-worker and this OTHER co-worker, a family man working two jobs, asked how much we were spending for this cruise. He was like, Do you know what I could do with that amount of money? And I started feeling guilty that we were spending too much on a vacation. Yeah, we will owe some money afterwards, especially if we go on shore excursions - but why go on the cruise at all if you're not going to take shore excursions (or at least some) and see some of the world you're cruising? And we deserve it. We've spent the last four and a half years catering to my mother; we thought our happy positive attitudes would rub off on her. Nope, it went the other direction. Why shouldn't we have the opportunity to create some fun, happy memories that we and our daughter will share? We only have two more years until she's eighteen and, if what she says comes to pass, moves out on her own. Our time with her is dwindling ... too fast.

In less than two months, we will be living at sea. And I can add three more countries to my list of countries I've traveled to.

But first, I have to make sure the caregiving of my mom is covered. What do you do when your mother tells you, I want you to go on your cruise, I want you to have a good time ... and then you find out she's telling everyone else (behind your back), They can't afford the cruise, I don't want to go to [where she's supposed to stay while we're gone].

We're definitely going. The last time we planned a cruise, it was a Caribbean cruise and I blew it by telling Zman, We can't afford this, How are we going to pay for this. It completely crushed him. I did the worst thing a person can do to another: stole his dream. It's taken years to recover. This one we're not cancelling, for any reason. If we go into debt up to our eyeballs, so be it. We'll deal with it.