My Life Is Over

Before I start this post, let me preface my remarks by saying that while my granddaughter Emma's photos are interspersed in here, she can actually speak and write as eloquently as me, if not better, and she does not use teen-talk like this.  I just liked that photo of her and thought I would include the text from a paper I wrote for an online class I'm taking, of trying to speak in someone else's voice.

It is so unfair.

How could they do this to me?

I mean, have you ever seen "Project Runway?"

What's PR?

It's this ancient show where this old Betty who looks pretty-good for a grandma judges "cutting edge" fashion ideas that are all, like, so 2012.

It's like, I mean, can you imagine?

I'd never pop those tags!

"Do better yourself you can!"

That's what my inner Yoda told me.

(Yeah, there have been lots of old history movies on TV, too.)

I sketched some ideas before bed.

When I got up, Mom was looking at them.

"What are you doing snooping through my stuff?"

"Wow!" she said.  "I had no idea you were so talented!"

Moms can still surprise us sometimes.

"This one is so cute!"

Of course, she's as old as PR Betty and dresses even older, so what does she know?

But I thought, "Hey.  I could totally make this outfit myself."

And now, not only do I have no place to wear all the back-to-school clothes I scored, but they've cancelled the prom.

I mean, like, where else could I get that dressed up and not seem like a dweeb?

My life is over!

Well, maybe it's not quite that fatal...and there is no prom for me.  In fact, I'm not concerned with my wardrobe, which changes styles with the frequency of geolithic ages.

When it comes to my frustration with delays of cruise restarts, however, I'm a teenaged girl.

A couple of posts back, I raised the question of whether cruising would be shutdown until the end of February.  I wish I could definitively say no.

Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the COVID-19 task force, took the side of the cruse lines and CLIA against the CDC, which wanted to push the possible re-start date to March 1, 2021.  Pence complimented the cruise lines on their innovative new protocols to prevent viruses on board cruises.  Those protocols are making cruises safer than ever.

But a meeting scheduled to officially resolve the issue had to be delayed a week until October 9 due to President Trump contracting COVID-19.  That event alone threatened to dramatically shift the scales in favor of the CDC position.

Trump recovered quickly, so November returned to being theoretically possible.  VP Pence championed the cause of cruise restarts on November 1, 2020, which alligned with the deadline proposed by CLIA lines.

Because it takes at least 30 to 45 days to prep a cruise ship to sail, including calling up the crew and training them for new protocols, cruise lines have decided on December 1 as the updated re-start date.

That means Carnival's announcement from just a couple of weeks back to cruise exclusively from Port Canaveral and Miami in November and December has now been altered.  November has been cancelled altogether, as it has for other cruises.

At least this means cruises now seem likely to resume in December.

Still, we're a long way from December, and the world will not only turn round and round but can also be turned upside down and shaken a few times in the year 2020, so no one is certain if we will all be cruising in by the time 2021 arrives.

I can say I am hopeful.

If you have some special formal wear or cabana clothes lost in your closet, you might want to freshen them up.

I'm hoping we'll be able to go on our cruise to Cabo in February, though admittedly I think cruises from the state of Florida, as indicated by Carnival, will be easier to count on, because Florida's port cities seem much more interested in getting back in business than Los Angeles County, or at least that's what my inner teenaged girl says.  Julie and I nonetheless hope to cruise from L.A. early next year.

As sophisticated adults, we rest assured knowing if the cruise is cancelled, we'll be able to re-use those travel dollars for an alternative cruise, so in any case, all would not be lost.

My friends Brion and Rita are counting on L.A. County allowing their Christmas cruise to the Hawaiian Islands with Princess to go as scheduled.  That should be one of the first Princess Cruises to sail after the reboot.

Princess long ago announced that their cruises would not resume until December 15, 2020, so they have had plenty of time to plan their moves using that schedule rather than the military-like SNAFU of "hurry up and wait" the rest of the industry has lurched through.

Princess used the time to install Ocean Medallion, which had been rolling out slowly prior to the shutdown, in operation on the entire fleet.  Ocean Medallion allows remote food and beverage orders with fewer face-to-face contacts and remote casino games serendipidously works very well during COVID-19.

It seems likely to me that regardless of how the election turns out, Los Angeles County will lighten up once that is behind us.  The head of the Department of Health, Barbara Ferrer, has essentially said as much.  But there's also Blue Hawaii.  Could Hawaii reinstate the 14-day quarantine for travelers instituted a half year ago?

How will new cruise safety protocols on cruises and in port cities play out?

I can claim no certainty until the cruises actually get going.  That's one reason we want to go on a cruise as soon as possible: to experience it all firsthand and share what we find.

It's not the main reason.

The bigger reason is we love cruising.

Precious life is.

Wisely use it, you must.

By the way, while those are photos of my granddaughter's Emma above, those are NOT her thoughts and definitely not how she speaks or writes.  Besides, she's only 10-years-old but already more emotionally mature than I was as a teen.

At least her photo probably seems more relevant to the text than those of my ukulele in my last post.  The $41.99 I spent for that was the biggest splurge I've had lately, a purchase justified because, as the title of that last post reads, You Can't Take It With You.  The old adage also refers to my guitar that I've owned for decades (also pictured in that post), which I have started playing regularly during the shutdown but wouldn't fit in my carry-on suitcase.  You see, there's often method to my madness, or does believing that itself constitute madness?