Tired businesswoman with telephones and pen in her mouth sitting
You can lull yourself into forgetting what a crossing is like; until you’re back in one and the memory comes back with frightening force. Embark day for a crossing feels almost like embark day for a world cruise, only slightly less crazed.
Trying to handle filling up shelves that have been completely plundered within the first hour of my being open – I’ve checked out 138 books in under 48 hours – , completing the sign-ups for book club (thankfully only 20 of the 30 books went, so the group may actually be manageable this season), coping with the fact that three-quarters of the cruisers are multi-return cruisers and more than a handful of them know me from the flagship (I can never get away….sometimes I think I could switch lines and never get away), and fueled completely by one extra-strong mocha at 7:50 in the morning, which by the time I finally got to drink it was ice cold. Bleh
And it’s not even 12 o’clock yet.
Sometimes I feel like the hindu goddess that has 8 arms, one is handling the book club sign-ups, the other is keying up someone’s internet account, one is answering the phone, one is checking the safety schedule…and on and on
Plus, it feels like we’re in for a bumpy ride. I’m unsure whether or not they had the stabilizers out this morning (I just don’t know enough about the engine room to tell) but in the wee hours of this morning it was rocky enough to wake us. This is not uncommon for the trans-pacific, there’s two extremes for the trip to Hawai’i: it’s either smooth as glass, or it tosses us like a cork in a hurricane. Right now it seems to have settled down to something in the middle, but the roll is still somewhat noticeable.