Archive | October 2025

Lost At Sea

Oct29
There were so many places to look!

Expecting to see my daughter Tammie somewhere among the cruise ship passengers in the hallway, I stopped walking and slowly turned full circle. All the faces I saw belonged to strangers.

“What did Tammie say when we separated at the restroom door?” I wondered. Unfortunately, I now realized I hadn’t paid very close attention. When I entered the restroom, I’d seen her walking away down the hall.  

As I slowly walked in the direction I’d seen my daughter go, I glanced at groups of people sitting together enjoying drinks, some people sitting next to the large windows watching the ocean, and I even saw one woman busily working on a craft. By this time, I realized I was a long way from where we’d last seen each other so I retraced my steps.

Concerned, but not worried about becoming separated, I shrugged and pulled out my phone and dialed Tammie’s phone number. A message popped up on the screen, stating my phone was out of the network. Then I decided to text her. Surely, that would go through. It didn’t.

Suddenly feeling very alone, despite seeing many fellow passengers everywhere I went, I wondered how to find Tammie. Approaching one of the ship’s workers, I said, “My daughter and I got separated.”

She asked in a heavily accented voice, “Are you Miss Kathy?” I nodded, thinking. “Good, Tammie is looking for me. We should find each other soon.” The worker pointed down the hall and said, “She went towards the food court looking for you.” I turned in that direction and slowly walked the entire ship’s length but didn’t find my daughter.

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Suffering F.O.M.O.

Oct22
Our ship provided us with a 1,000 things to do. We wanted to do everything!

Getting up early on Sunday, the first full day of our cruise, wasn’t hard to do. I told my daughter, “Usually I hate hearing an alarm clock in the morning. Today I feel like getting up right away. Maybe that’s because I slept sound as a baby last night.”

Snuggling deeper under the blanket, Tammie said, “It’s vacation excitement. You slept like a fussy baby. Shortly after you dropped off to sleep last night, there was a sound and a flash of light in our window. You sat bolt upright and asked, “What was that, and why is there light in my bedroom?”

I protested, “I don’t remember doing that! Were you awake because you were having trouble going to sleep?”

Tammie sleepily replied, “No, I was just dozing off. When you sat up you pulled the blanket off me. After being startled and chilled, I had trouble going back to sleep. I doubt you were even awake when you sat up.”

Peering past the rescue boat machinery outside our cabin window, I apologized and commented, “There’re white caps on the sea this morning, but I don’t feel movement.”

My daughter comforted, “You shouldn’t get motion sick. The Scopolamine patch for that is in place.” Emerging from her cozy cocoon of blankets and pulling out her phone, Tammie continued, “Now, I have a list of all the ship activities available to us today. First, we will attend the church service, then go for the Sunday brunch held in the dining room.”

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Floating City

Oct15

As our taxi driver deftly maneuvered through Seattle traffic, I admired the iconic Seattle Space Needle standing tall among the city buildings. We were getting very close to our destination. I’d been told that cruise ships dock at pier 91, which is a bit north of Seattle’s downtown and the Space Needle. Finally, our taxi pulled to a stop near a large building that looked like an airport terminal. Handing over our luggage to a porter, we walked into the building where guests were ushered through customs.

Unlike at the airport, we moved through the check points quickly.  It didn’t take long before we walked out of the building onto the pier. I stared (gawked) like a farm girl from Wisconsin, which I must admit I am. Two cruise ships were docked on either side of the cruise terminal. They were so huge, they towered over us like tall buildings. The ship to our right, which we would be boarding, was the Eurodam of the Holland American Line. To our left, was The Royal Princess, a ship which appeared to be about the same size as ours.

Considered a smaller cruise ship, the Eurodam is 936 feet long and is equipped to carry 2,104 passengers and a crew of 800 to 900. Some large cruise ships, like the Icon of the Seas, carry 5,000 to 7,600 passengers and 2,300 to 2,400 passengers. I was glad that I had asked Tammie to book a smaller ship.

As we walked up the mid-ship ramp to begin our cruise, staff happily greeted us and used tablets to take our pictures for identification purposes.  Taking one of the six mid-ship elevators to the fourth deck where our cabin was located, Tammie and I wandered down three different hallways before finding our starboard side of the ship cabin, which was to be our home-away-from-home for the next seven days. We found a pair of room keycards and handouts in the small rack next to the door.

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My Two Vacations

Oct8
I eagerly jumped into doing vacation ‘work’

Niki pulled to a stop in front of her sister’s house. I took one look at the jungle growing on the front yard hillside along the sidewalk and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!” A list of things I wanted to accomplish for Tammie before leaving on our scheduled vacation marched through my mind.  

I had figured that my vacation started three hours earlier, when Niki picked me up to drive me to Tammie’s house in the Twin Cities. But technically, the vacation Tammie and I had planned wouldn’t really start until Friday afternoon when we went to the airport. Until then, my daughter had at least 16 more work hours to complete. I wanted to spend that time being useful.

 Within an hour of arriving at her house, I’d changed into work clothes and found a shrub lopper behind a chair on Tammie’s porch. Earlier this summer, she had told me that wild grapevine, invasive saplings and weeds had overtaken the steep, rocky, and hard to manage incline in her front yard. She hadn’t exaggerated.   

I cut down sumac, oak and maple saplings, and tall weeds. Grapevines had reached up into the lower branches of a mature maple tree next to the house and were strangling everything growing nearby.  Niki pitched in and dragged away the unwanted brush.

Thanks to all the chores I did for Tammie, time passed quickly. Friday afternoon finally arrived. My daughter signed out of work, finished packing, and called for a cab. We moved our luggage in stages to the porch, to the front steps and finally to the sidewalk just in time for the punctual arrival of our ride to the airport.

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Silo Playhouse

Oct1
My silo was real, but my playhouse was pure imagination!

Every tree I saw along the way on my way home from school was a blazing red, orange or yellow. The air felt cool and breezy, a complete reversal from the hot and sticky weather we had when school started a month ago. Warm sunshine sparkled as it hit the car windows and warmed my relaxed shoulders. My school day routine felt comfortable now. First day of school jitters were now just a memory. I knew which classroom to go to, who my friends were, and felt resigned to who my teacher was.

Once I reached our farmyard, I sprinted into the farmhouse. Mom greeted me from the kitchen. I sniffed and asked, “Did you make cookies today?” Mom nodded and pointed to the cupboard next to the refrigerator where a decorative tin cookie box sat.

Prying the lid off, I found chocolate peanut cookies with chocolate frosting. Eating one in almost a single bite, I took a second for eating-on-the-go. With my mouth full of soft, sweet cookie crumbs, I explained as I headed for my bedroom, “I’m going to change out of my school clothes and go outside.”

Like a typical ten-year-old, I flung my discarded clothing onto the bedroom floor and hastily pulled on what Mom called ‘everyday’ clothing. The second cookie I’d taken was long gone by the time I ran out the back door of the house. When the screen door shut with a slam behind me, I stopped to consider my options. A plan instantly popped into my mind: get apples from the orchard and watch Daddy chop corn for silage in the field behind the barn.

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