Ventura Marina Cruise

Friday December 18, 1992

One week until Christmas. We sleep in until 9 a.m. after making love. We have a nice breakfast, call Kathy Murphy and arrange to meet for dinner here in Simi before the boat ride in Ventura Marina. Later I call Karen and Lew. We will all meet at Marie Callendar's.

Marty and Kathy ride with us. We have a great dinner. We arrive at Ventura Marina about 7:30. The boat leaves at 8 p.m. It's a fun cruise--pretty lights. After snacks on the boat and drinks we are cold so decide to go to a coffee shop for coffee and pie. Brenda and Denny make it 8 of us.

I feel great! We get home about 12:00. Marty and Kathy stay awhile looking at pictures.

How nice to be able to take a cruise in the middle of December at night! It does sound like everyone got a little cold though. What a nice way to celebrate the holidays with friends. I checked back in her journal to 1991 and their square dancing friends took this cruise the previous year as well.

Hand & Foot

Friday November 20, 1992

Frank is up early to make another cheesecake so he can take two to the potluck dinner at Pat and Jack's house tonight. I'm slow in the morning as usual but feel pretty good in the p.m. I read and dust the living room.

I call Roz in Palmdale. We talk over an hour. She has many complaints about their Mexican cruise to Mexico on Princess last week. Poor food and cabin service etc. Too bad, probably their first and last. Her bladder still falls out. She's new doing Kegel exercises.

Forty of our friends from square dancing show up for the card party/potluck. It's great! My partner Fred and I do very well as we play Hand and Foot. We have a great time and I'm tired when we leave at 10 p.m.

Roz was one of Mom's co-workers before she retired. Poor woman, I have never heard of a bladder falling out! I have never been on a cruise before, but always imagined if I did it would be wonderful. I don't know if Roz was a complainer or if the cruise really was horrid. I would never go to Mexico for my first cruise, but would like to try going to Alaska on a cruise ship some day. We have been to Alaska 3 times more than 10 years ago, but never on a cruise. I would love to take a cruise that goes into Glacier Bay someday.

I had never heard of the game Hand & Foot, so googled it and found they actually have a website called hand8foot. Here are the rules of the game from their website:

The aim is to get rid of cards from your hand (11 cards), and then from your foot (11 cards), by melding them. A Meld is a set of three to seven cards of equal rank placed face up on the table. A Meld cannot have fewer than three cards.

After a Meld of three or more cards has been started, you can add further cards to it until there are seven. Then it becomes a Book. You can meld cards of any rank from A, K, Q, … down to 3.

Deuces (twos) and Jokers are wild cards and can be used in melds, as long as there is at least one more real card than wild cards. You can not meld wild cards alone.

There are two types of melds:

A Clean(Natural) Meld has no wild cards and may become a Red Book.
A Dirty(Wild) Meld has wild cards and may become a Black Book.
A Meld of seven cards is complete and is called a Book.

Sounds like fun. Have you ever played?

At Sea

Thursday October 1, 1992 At Sea

Up early to have breakfast at 7:30 in the dining room. We both had waffles and ham. The ham was especially good. I'm having alot of stomach pain. I return to the cabin and lay down, sleeping off and on all morning.

We have lunch in the dining room with our table pals. After lunch we sit at the pool for awhile then check out the dance class. I watch Frank take a yoga class for awhile but feel so sleepy. I must return to the room where I sleep and try to watch a movie for an hour or so.

At 6:00 we are all dressed up for the captain's party where we have free drinks and snacks. I am careful to eat very little at dinner though the salmon is really good. We go to the Broadway show. I can barely stay awake. We go to the dance lounge until 12:30.

It sounds like a delayed reaction to the time zone change. Perhaps her body was running on adrenaline the first few days. I actually cannot believe she stayed up past midnight. Did she actually dance in the dance lounge?

Doubt

Tuesday September 22, 1992

I had much less pain last night and slept well. Frank has walked to his carving class so I take a walk alone.

Dr. Schwartz calls me back. I ask for some pain medicine. He is disappointed to hear I have not started my new treatment yet and upset that I am having pain. I now doubt that we made a wise decision to wait until after the trip. I pray to God that we have made a good decision.

We go visit Gene and Cathy at 6 p.m. Allison and Patrick are there so we have a nice visit. We see Guy & Lisa also. We're home at 9:30. I call Donna and we talk until 11 p.m. It's a good visit. We agree to go camping for Thanksgiving weekend.

See my post dated September 2, 2012 and her entry for September 9, 1992. That was the date that she made the fatal decision to postpone chemotherapy until after her Mediterranean cruise. I was furious with her. Looking back to her entry for that date, nowhere does she say that she prayed and asked God for wisdom and direction with this very important decision, yet this day 2 weeks later she is praying to God that she made a good decision after the fact. Proverbs 12:15 says, "Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others." Perhaps Dr. Senrad might have thought it was OK to wait, but clearly her long-time Dr. Schwartz who knew her best was very disappointed that she had not started her chemotherapy. She should have gotten a second opinion. Proverbs 15:22 says, "Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success." It is still 6 days before her trip to the Mediterranean, plenty of time to cancel. Did she think of buying travellers insurance? Surely she must have considering her health.

Guy Thomas is Uncle Gene and Aunt Cathy's youngest son. He is shown in the photo below next to Frank in the upper left corner and his wife Lisa kneels in front of Frank. Guy is holding his children Allison and Patrick.

We Board The Ship

Sunday April 5, 1992

We're up about 8 a.m. in our room at the Omni Hotel in Miami, Fl. Frank goes to Burger King and brings back breakfast for me. We wander around and do some shopping before leaving on the bus at 1 p.m. and arrive at the ship at 1:20. I'm feeling tired but OK. We enjoyed the Keys so much. I wonder if the cruise will seem anticlimactic. Bobbie and Anita are so excited it catches on.

We have our luggage and are settled in our tiny cabin with the big square window by 2:30-3 p.m. We stroll around with Bob and Anita to check out the ship. Lunch and dinner are swell and the evening show is get acquainted.

I checked the Norwegian Cruise Line's itineraries for the Carribean cruises from Miami and it looks like they were on the Western Caribbean cruise with stops at Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. 20 years later the cruise ship "Pearl" travels this route. It's oceanview rooms have 161 square feet. Their tiny room is pictured above. The Norwegian Pearl is pictured below.

Last Day at Sea

Saturday August 3, 1991

Didn't sleep well at all last night. Arose at 7:00 for 7:30 dining room breakfast followed by an exercise class. Then I came back to the room and rested for an hour, then got cleaned up.

Today was a talent contest and Big Bingo plus other activities. We each got a T-shirt and visor for active activities. Anita and Bob won bronze medals for a marathon.

Dinner was prime rib and two more wonderful desserts each. The farewell show was really wonderful. The song with gestures as they all stood shoulder to shoulder singing different words about what they'd be doing if not working on a cruise ship.

The general feeling that mom's posts evoke while on her cruise to Alaska is exhaustion. I don't know if it's because of the seasickness medication, lack of sleep, or the cancer, but this vacation sounds anything but restful. Is mom burning the candle from both ends, as the saying goes? Her body needs lots of rest to keep her immune system strong. It seems more like her attitude is to not let the cancer interfere with her life whatsoever, and to live every day like it's her last. She certainly does love adventure, and the cost of all the excursions she went on had to be expensive. Maybe she knew it would be her last opportunity to see Alaska and she was going to take advantage of every opportunity to see and do as much as she could.

Bob & Anita

Wednesday May 1, 1991

Feeling great! Took a walk.

Frank and I drive out to Judy and Paul's in Palmdale for dinner. Judy's mom and dad, Anita and Bob are there for the week to help out with the baby. Anita has invited us out for a turkey dinner. What a treat! Turkey with all the fixens. We both eat too much.

Baby Tayler is so pretty and is growing so we can tell the difference in a week and a half. We talk about the cruise to Alaska we are taking with Bob and Anita in July/August. It will be great fun! We really like Bob and Anita.

It's so easy for mom to make new friends and now she is reaping the benefit of having lots of support from them. The cancer is not slowing her down at all. She is leaving for Hawaii in a week and on an Alaskan cruise in a couple months. Two years from this day mom will leave us for her heavenly place.