8 days.
7 of them are going to be at sea.
The crossing looms ahead of us like some giant wall that we must scale or burrow under, but one way or another we must face. Understand that this is not personal fear, my personal fear of the crossing paled a great deal when I was granted a much more positive thing to focus on in regards to it – but that’s beside the point. The point is, the Crossing is a lot of work on the part of the Event Staff. All the big events go up this week, the last of the headliner entertainers goes up this week, the Grand Masquerade Black & Gold Ball…is this week. The last Murder Mystery (which I am, once again, not in…don’t ask, its’ a sore spot…a major sore spot), goes up this week.
If you think of the cruise as a three-ring circus, this week? This is the grand finale, the ship-board equivalent of the lion tamer laying his head in the great beast’s mouth while the aerialists turn flip after flip on the rings above his head.
The positive side of all this is of course that I’m already mostly packed, which leaves me with plenty of time to read, and sew and attempt to recover from this cold I picked up somewhere along the way. It’s mostly broken up, but has continued to sap my voice, reducing it to a growly alto which I’m sure would be considered appealing in some circles but doesn’t sound like me and makes it somewhat difficult since my job involves a lot of communicating.
We got our second quarterly shipment of books in the last port, a most unexpected windfall as we weren’t expecting them to arrive till Fort Lauderdale. This means that the guests have new reading material, and so do I. Having devoured half of Dance With Dragons, I realized that I was going to need something else to read with 7 straight days at sea coming up, particularly since my computer is on its last stumbling legs and internet time is at a premium.
So at night I sit curled up with a movie and my sewing, or a book and a decent soundtrack, and I try not to think too much about what’s in the past or what might be in the future.
No day but today…and all that.