Giving Thanks
Day 3 – Mom and I are sitting in the café next to the pool. She is knitting, and I’ve been trying to get her yarn out of the zipper on my backpack. Four strands of yarn somehow got zipped into the zipper head. I suggested the obvious solution: “Let's cut it!”
Mom said, “No!”
I then spent twenty minutes trying not to swear. I was the victor in the battle with the zipper, but it wasn’t easy. I’m feeling a bit heroic at the moment, but I’m not sure Mom recognizes the valor as there are too many people to watch vacationing around her to think of her youngest daughter’s great act of disentanglement.
It’s crowded here by the pool because everyone is back from their daytripping in St. John, New Brunswick. Mom and I don’t leave the boat, so we develop a sense of ownership while our 3,000 shipmates are gone and then resent their return. Alright, Mom doesn’t develop a sense of ownership while they’re gone or resent their return because she’s busy napping in our room, but I like roaming the sparsely populated ship. My favorite part is all the cool art work they have all over the ship but particularly in the grand stairways. (Mom doesn’t do the stairs, so she misses some of this.)
When Mom’s not napping or knitting, we’re eating. But you knew this, right?
Today, during Mom’s second nap, I went down to the Schooner Bar to participate in a card making workshop. The “workshop” was a tall blond guy with a foreign accent dumping a plastic container of crafts supplies on a piano top and telling we four women who had eagerly assembled for card making that he doesn’t know anything about it, but we could use the stuff in the box. The stuff in the box included one pair of scissors and one spray can of Elmer’s glue along with various scrapbooking papers and stickers, a sheet a glittering gold bows, and the rather sizable Royal Caribbean Instructor’s Manual for craft workshops, which apparently no one on the Royal Caribbean staff had actually read.
I gently suggested to my fellow card makers that perhaps the ship folk really wouldn’t like us to be spraying glue on their piano. They seemed to buy into this idea and instead we turned away from the piano and sprayed glue more randomly throughout the bar where we were gathered. Perhaps not the ideal solution, but it was easier than the alternative that got bandied about – getting glue sticks from the kids’ space. We were sure that the children had better craft supplies and certainly more than one pair of scissors, but we were too lazy to find their craft cache. We’d make do.
It quickly became apparent that only three of the four of us were game as one participant made it clear that she was only there because of her Card Making Sister. The weak sister gave up quickly; after a few cuts and a few sprays, she declared that she was going to read her book, leaving three of us until a new woman showed up. We’ll call her Elevator Woman.
Mom and I had previously encountered Elevator Woman in the – can you guess? – elevator. It was during the interlude between our copious breakfast and Mom’s first nap, a period of time that you might be tempted to measure in nanoseconds. Elevator Woman, who was more than ample, decided to tell Mom and me in the few seconds one shares in the elevator with strangers that she loses weight during cruises. Her doctor asks her how she can lose weight on a cruise, and she happily explained to us that it is because she watches these large women with heaping plates of food and it makes her not eat as much. The “heaping plates of food” was accompanied with hand gestures, which I will leave to your imagination. Even though we were only going down four floors, she managed to repeat her observation of how much these large women eat and seemed to expect us to respond to this valuable insight in the same spirit of condemnation. I found myself unable to muster a response, feeling somewhat defensive of my fellow cruisers and inclined to question the pot trash talking the kettle. You can imagine my surprise when of the five women (of the 3,000 or so people on this ship) who showed up to the card making workshop, Elevator Woman was one of them. Statistically speaking, we are talking 5 in 1,500 chance.
“My husband is sleeping,” she said by way explaining her presence. She then proceeded to tell us that she has only made one scrapbook and her 90-plus mother is a hoarder. Her mother is now in an assisted living facility where there isn’t room to hoard, but she tries to get other residents’ visitors to bring her stuff that she can hoard.
The Card Maker Sister then shared that her 90-plus mother is a hoarder too. At this point, I am the only one actually making a card. Elevator Woman and Card Making Sister are just talking. Elevator Woman never actually started to make a card, and Card Making Sister seemed to quickly lose interest in hers. The Third Woman threw in a few card-making gestures but will soon leave us with a pack of card-making materials in her hand, which she will work on at home where presumably she has her own scissors and glue. (As an aside, there were comments made about how these materials are expensive, but are they really so expensive that you’d want to schlep them home from your cruise?)
I can’t remember if Third Woman’s mother was a hoarder, but I think she might be because I definitely had the sense that I was the only card-maker present whose mother wasn’t a hoarder. (We’ll let Mom off the hook for the yarn fetish. This time.) Perhaps the absence of a hoarding mother is what freed me to be the only card-maker present who actually made a card.
While the conversation moved beyond hoarding into other mother deficiencies, I was quiet and feeling rather appreciative of Mom. It was around this time that the Elevator Woman decided to tell us about her cousin (or was it an uncle?) who was a hoarder and lived in a storage container. When he died they only found him because of the smell and had to identify the body using DNA. Umm, how does one respond to this?
I’m thinking I should at least know someone’s name and their place of habitation before I find out their cousin rotted away in a storage container.
“So, where are you from?”
Mom said, “No!”
I then spent twenty minutes trying not to swear. I was the victor in the battle with the zipper, but it wasn’t easy. I’m feeling a bit heroic at the moment, but I’m not sure Mom recognizes the valor as there are too many people to watch vacationing around her to think of her youngest daughter’s great act of disentanglement.
It’s crowded here by the pool because everyone is back from their daytripping in St. John, New Brunswick. Mom and I don’t leave the boat, so we develop a sense of ownership while our 3,000 shipmates are gone and then resent their return. Alright, Mom doesn’t develop a sense of ownership while they’re gone or resent their return because she’s busy napping in our room, but I like roaming the sparsely populated ship. My favorite part is all the cool art work they have all over the ship but particularly in the grand stairways. (Mom doesn’t do the stairs, so she misses some of this.)
When Mom’s not napping or knitting, we’re eating. But you knew this, right?
Today, during Mom’s second nap, I went down to the Schooner Bar to participate in a card making workshop. The “workshop” was a tall blond guy with a foreign accent dumping a plastic container of crafts supplies on a piano top and telling we four women who had eagerly assembled for card making that he doesn’t know anything about it, but we could use the stuff in the box. The stuff in the box included one pair of scissors and one spray can of Elmer’s glue along with various scrapbooking papers and stickers, a sheet a glittering gold bows, and the rather sizable Royal Caribbean Instructor’s Manual for craft workshops, which apparently no one on the Royal Caribbean staff had actually read.
I gently suggested to my fellow card makers that perhaps the ship folk really wouldn’t like us to be spraying glue on their piano. They seemed to buy into this idea and instead we turned away from the piano and sprayed glue more randomly throughout the bar where we were gathered. Perhaps not the ideal solution, but it was easier than the alternative that got bandied about – getting glue sticks from the kids’ space. We were sure that the children had better craft supplies and certainly more than one pair of scissors, but we were too lazy to find their craft cache. We’d make do.
It quickly became apparent that only three of the four of us were game as one participant made it clear that she was only there because of her Card Making Sister. The weak sister gave up quickly; after a few cuts and a few sprays, she declared that she was going to read her book, leaving three of us until a new woman showed up. We’ll call her Elevator Woman.
Mom and I had previously encountered Elevator Woman in the – can you guess? – elevator. It was during the interlude between our copious breakfast and Mom’s first nap, a period of time that you might be tempted to measure in nanoseconds. Elevator Woman, who was more than ample, decided to tell Mom and me in the few seconds one shares in the elevator with strangers that she loses weight during cruises. Her doctor asks her how she can lose weight on a cruise, and she happily explained to us that it is because she watches these large women with heaping plates of food and it makes her not eat as much. The “heaping plates of food” was accompanied with hand gestures, which I will leave to your imagination. Even though we were only going down four floors, she managed to repeat her observation of how much these large women eat and seemed to expect us to respond to this valuable insight in the same spirit of condemnation. I found myself unable to muster a response, feeling somewhat defensive of my fellow cruisers and inclined to question the pot trash talking the kettle. You can imagine my surprise when of the five women (of the 3,000 or so people on this ship) who showed up to the card making workshop, Elevator Woman was one of them. Statistically speaking, we are talking 5 in 1,500 chance.
“My husband is sleeping,” she said by way explaining her presence. She then proceeded to tell us that she has only made one scrapbook and her 90-plus mother is a hoarder. Her mother is now in an assisted living facility where there isn’t room to hoard, but she tries to get other residents’ visitors to bring her stuff that she can hoard.
The Card Maker Sister then shared that her 90-plus mother is a hoarder too. At this point, I am the only one actually making a card. Elevator Woman and Card Making Sister are just talking. Elevator Woman never actually started to make a card, and Card Making Sister seemed to quickly lose interest in hers. The Third Woman threw in a few card-making gestures but will soon leave us with a pack of card-making materials in her hand, which she will work on at home where presumably she has her own scissors and glue. (As an aside, there were comments made about how these materials are expensive, but are they really so expensive that you’d want to schlep them home from your cruise?)
I can’t remember if Third Woman’s mother was a hoarder, but I think she might be because I definitely had the sense that I was the only card-maker present whose mother wasn’t a hoarder. (We’ll let Mom off the hook for the yarn fetish. This time.) Perhaps the absence of a hoarding mother is what freed me to be the only card-maker present who actually made a card.
While the conversation moved beyond hoarding into other mother deficiencies, I was quiet and feeling rather appreciative of Mom. It was around this time that the Elevator Woman decided to tell us about her cousin (or was it an uncle?) who was a hoarder and lived in a storage container. When he died they only found him because of the smell and had to identify the body using DNA. Umm, how does one respond to this?
I’m thinking I should at least know someone’s name and their place of habitation before I find out their cousin rotted away in a storage container.
“So, where are you from?”
posted by Nancy at 3:14 PM
1 Comments:
I notice by the lack of comments to your always entertaining blog that all of your readers are in the same boat (pun intended). We're all speechless, unlike Elevator Woman. You should avoid her at all costs.
Does your boat have a casino on board?
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