I was on The World’s Shortest Cruise this week (Thursday to Saturday morning) and have to remind myself for future vacation ideas of the following points.

1. Cruises can be very easy: unpack once, see a bunch of places. Food - and lots of it - and big meals with no bill at the end of each dinner or lunch. Activities, or the opportunity to find a quiet place and hide and read. So relaxing.

2. Cruises can be a royal pain in the ass.

a. Tipping cultures suck and I hate them. I totally understand that the employees have to hustle for tips, but it’s just irritating in the extreme, especially for 2 nights.

b. Other passengers suck and I hate them, too. For the love of all that is good and holy, COULD SOMEONE PLEASE SAY “PLEASE” WHEN ASKING FOR SOMETHING?! Is it truly necessary to be a boorish assmunch at every moment? It was disgusting.

c. WATER. I drink a lot of it. And since everything you drink outside of water is expensive ($5.95 for a soda, $4.95 for orange juice) the bartenders get annoyed at me when I ask for glasses of water, but after an influx of coffee in the morning, that’s all I drink. And I CAN’T GET ANY without having to BUY a bottle or without ASKING the bartender for a thimble glass of water. And with airline regulations, I can’t bring my water bottle aboard.

I have to get better, should I cruise again, about bringing a camping collapsible water bottle and making friends with a bartender or finding a good water fountain (that’s CLEAN OMG) and avoiding the whole mess entirely. By the end of the first day I was irritable.

d. Can I just say again that every time I heard some assmunch ordering the staff around without so much as a please, I wanted to commit a felony?

3. Given the size of the ship I was on, in the future, once both dudes are completely comfortable with the whole potty thing, it might be a great vacation for us. If, and this is a big if, I can get over my deep and painful sense of guilt at the terms of contract employment for the staff on board (why are they so child-friendly? mostly because they’re on the ship for a year and they miss their own little children at home) and the terrible impact on the ocean, the ports, the local culture, and the overall cleanliness of the areas in which cruise ships travel.

Really, it’s all the fault of the people who don’t say “please,” the more that I think about it.

At some point, Freebird learned what those balloon wobbly things are on my belly.

“Boobalies!”

Sounds like a Japanese candy, don’t it?

This morning I got an email from our day care/pre school that one of the teachers, one we liked a lot, died this morning suddenly. I can’t even describe how sad I am. I’m crying at my desk - now I’ll look blotchy and red for the rest of the day.

She was a teacher who paid such attention to our children, who told me stories about the things they did during the day, and who noticed then both. She loved my children and they adored her.

I can’t even find the words for how sad I am.

And embarrassed and mad at myself that I never told her how much I appreciated the love and care she gave my children. 

Yesterday, Freebird was down for a nap, and I was in the shower. When I was done, I heard him saying, “I have to pee, I have to pee!” We’re still in the phase of potty training wherein any announcement of the need to go is met with hurrying, so I went into his room, scooped him out of bed and brought him into the bathroom.

I was without apparel at this time, which isn’t a big deal to me, except for the following conversation:

Freebird: Mommy! What are those?
Me: What are what?
Freebird: Those! On your tummy!
Me: What?
Freebird: They are wobbly!
Me: Wobbly?
Freebird: They look like balloons!
Me: Balloons?
Freebird: Yes! Wobbly balloons!
Me: Yup.
Freebird: But what are they! They have a red on them!
Me: A red?
Freebird: It’s a circle!
Me: I see. Ok, back to bed with you.
Freebird: MOMMY! YOU HAVE A GIRL ON YOUR TUSHY!
Me: Yup. Sure do. (a tattoo if you hadn’t guessed)
Freebird: Wow.

I didn’t want to tell him the name because I knew he’d walk up to all the women around him and tell them they had wobbly balloons that are called breasts, so I let me focus on my tattoo instead. Yeah, I’m a wussy.

With wobbly balloons. 

Enough about my acne, though, I will say: when I was the Accutane a bunch of years ago, name brand or generic didn’t make a difference for my insurance. I paid $5. Now? Accutane would be nearly $1700 a month, with $700 of that cost falling to me. Generic: not so much a problem. 100% covered. Holy shitecrackers.

But this is more about Baba O’Reilly. Really? No, O’Reilly. He’s 16 months old, and entirely, extremely, hugely verbal. And I take for granted all the things he can say. So I figured I’d try to write down all his words so I don’t forget them when he’s older.

His brother’s name (first said that at about 7 or 8 months, though it came out without the final consonant)
Mommy
Daddy
Logan
Kitty
Meow
Moon
Chicken
Nom
Please
Thank you
Bless you
Here you go
Up Please
Shoes
Feet
This
TV
Wiggles
Dora (said as DORADORADORADORADORA!)
Diego
I did it! (said both as accompaniment to “Dora the Explorer” and also independent of the show. “Did you finish your dinner?” Baba: “I did it!")
That’s Not Nice! (Said whenever we say no to him)
Don’t want it.
Bottle
Jacket
Milk
Hello
Bye bye
Grandpa (Pee-pa, actually)
Grammy
Jess
Bear
Color
Book
Poop
Super Why!
Hot dog (hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog!)
Doggy
Carrot
Cheese (said when I hold up my iPhone to take a picture)
Car
Elmo

Got my prescription. That was no sweat. But the quiz?!

I had to take a freaking QUIZ on birth control options. Holy crap. Male condoms, IUD inspection schedule, and my personal favorite, “I can get pregnant any time and anywhere I have sex, especially unprotected sex. Yes/No.”

Well, yes and no, people. Yes, SOME people can get pregnant any time and anywhere. But I’ll bet you four Intrauterine Inseminations and a bill from my endocrinologist that not everyone can. So put that in your uterus and smoke it.

Now to the pharmacist, who will have to special order the drugs, and then I have, like, 12 minutes and 42 seconds to pick them up. Sheesh.

In a few weeks (after a short vacation that will take me directly into the sun, pretty much) I’m going to be starting a 20 week course of Accutane. This is my second treatment. The first time I went on it, it was 2002, and all I remember is being insanely attached to my lip balm, and being so free of the normal amount of oil my head produces that I could go 2 days without washing my hair. Believe me, this is nothing short of a full miracle. Normally I can only go about 24 hours before I start getting itchy and irritated.

Tomorrow I go to get my prescription, and holy hopping shitcakes you would not BELIEVE the insanity that is getting an Accutane prescription. I have to sign up for some exclusive registration number and present my ID for the prescription oversight program to the pharmacist each time I fill and pick up the prescription. AND there’s a window within which I must fill the prescription, and if I do not, I have to go through the whole routine again, from my dermatologist squeezing me in (Ha! Squeezing! Zit joke!) to getting a pregnancy test AND a blood test, to getting to the pharmacy, etc. It is a LOT more difficult this go around. And the root cause: I’m a woman of childbearing age. No matter that I’m 33 and have an IUD and no desire to have additional children. To anyone having anything to do with Accutane: I’m 17 years old and stupid.

I won’t be starting till nearly the end of the month but I must say: every pimple that ever thought of being a pimple on my head must have been given the red alert (ha! zit joke!) because JESUS am I broken out. What, I ask, the fucking hell? Every time I see a new blemish I’m thinking, “Just you wait. You’re all going to molt at once and then I won’t see you again. Hopefully ever! HA!”

--

Holy shit! I just found my old journal link in an Acne for Dummies book on Google:Books. HA!

Guess I better put the old journal back up, eh?