The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 A little bit of music to get all y'all into the mood.

Liked the movie back in the day.  But...

This post has nothing to do with gunslingers.  Rather, it's been a week to remember.  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly put in their appearances.  In short, it was a very tough week. 

So...To put things in the proper categories.

The Good

All in all, it was a pretty great (though tough) week.  Got to go on a little get-a-way vacation on a ship with three of my favorite ladies.  (AKA Mrs. J, MBD and Mg) .  Set sail out of Galveston on Royal Caribbean (more to follow) on a 5 day cruise to Costa Maya and Cozumel.  Been to both many (many, many) times, but time with my ladies....So, a good thing.  

First, we got some good news.

Arrived at MBD and SIL's house in College Station.  She was just pulling a sheet of Chocolate Cookies out of the oven.  Offered us one.  In addition to the chocolate chips, there was also Blue M&M's mixed in.  Me, being not overly astute, enjoyed the cookie, but did not pick up on the nuance.  Mrs. J however, did and after a punch on my shoulder conveyed the message to me.  

We are soon to have a Grandson.  Thank you, Lord!  We will share middle names.

The best part of "The Good" was "hanging with my Babes!" on the cruise.  We had a blast!

 

The Bad

So, we're on board,   Me, Mrs. J, MBD and MG.  It's June in Texas, it's hot.  Unfortunately, MG is not completely potty trained, so she can't go into the swimming pool.  I got that.  However, I don't get why other children of the same age and diaper expertise level are allowed.   Could it be...some folks play by the rules, others don't believe the rules apply to them.  Who knows? (Ok...I do. More info to follow.)

All that having been said, Mrs. J  went out of her way in making sure we all had fun.

Turns out  the deck does pretty well at having a one person pool. Yeah, we had a great time with the pool.  Unfortunately there were additional complications.

You may have noticed in the above, one of her feet is wrapped in a plastic bag.  Well..."The Bad" had put in his first appearance.  The morning we left for the Port, MG was strolling around the back yard barefoot.  You may have read that Texas is under an extreme heat wave.  Unfortunately, MG stepped on a piece of black rubberized plastic that had been solar heated by the Texas Sun.

Second degree burns on your feet are officially "Not Fun!"

Spent a couple of hours trying to decide whether to sail or not.  The decision boiled down to if MBD and MG stayed, it's MBD and SIL, so...It's just the two of them to care for MG. But, SIL has to be at work, so effectively it's MBD by herself.   If they go on the cruise, it's MBD. Mrs J and I to take care of things.  So, We went.  

Worked great, by the way.  MG did a little fussing when the bandages were changed, but...not too bad.  She did a little walking on her heels, but we changed the bandages daily and she adapted.  Win/Win.

 

First stop on the cruise was Costa Maya.  Got off the boat, headed into the VERY small town.  Found a margarita bar (Hard to believe!!!) and ordered a three some.

Folks...I have discovered the only place on Earth where Margaritas are "undrinkable".  Good Lord! Apparently, they didn't use lime and most likely not Tequila either.  We were back on the boat within an hour of leaving it.  Went to the onboard bar to refresh our palates on what a Margarita should taste like. 

But...We've got those cool palm tree glasses to remember it by.

 

Another part of "The Bad"...We've cruised a lot of different Cruise Lines and been on Royal Caribbean  quite a few times.  Top of the list of our "Best Cruise Lines" is Silver Seas for Ocean cruising and AMAWaterways for river cruising.  On the other extreme, Carnival is by far the worst.  It's target market appears to be folks that will get very drunk, very fast and stay that way for the duration of the cruise.

We will NEVER cruise on Carnival again.

Royal Caribbean has been somewhere in the middle of the top half.  However, on this particular cruise it appears that a large portion of Carnival passengers upgraded.  To quote a movie, "...Drunk and Stupid is no way to go through life."  

 

These were also the folks that took their diapered children into the big people's pool.  No, Beans, upon noticing that, I elected to not go swimming. We may be re-evaluating our allegiance to Royal Caribbean based on this cruise.

 

 However, as we're waiting for the boat to sail, we get a message from LJW asking us to call her ASAP.

 

Well...Nothing good is going to happen after that.  We call.

Apparently a VERY large storm has blown through our area.  Rainfall has flooded our road and made our normally dry wash impassable.  It's hailing, somewhere between golf ball and base ball sized hail.  

All those white spots are hail impact.  It's amazing we still have windows.

Additionally, our neighbor's fence has blown down blocking our drive.

Which wouldn't be a problem since one can't (and shouldn't) cross the (non) dry wash.  Except...Shortly thereafter we get a call from our guests.  They had gone into town and on return were in our drive when the wash flooded.  Fortunately, they stopped prior to entering it.  Right about then was when the fence blew down, trapping them.

Not being able to teleport myself to the rescue, I called our neighbor (it was his fence) and explained the situation.  He said he'd go check on it.  Meanwhile, Mrs. J is on the phone with the guests, partially relaying status updates and mostly trying to allay panic.  

She's extremely good at that sort of thing, thank goodness.

 

Apres le deluge and after the fence has been moved.  The mud line across the road is about 30" deep and water was moving quite fast.  So getting out was "sporty".

Takes about an hour, but our neighbor gets his fence clear enough that the guest can back out and head into town.  We refunded their complete stay.  

5 Days later when we got home, the rain gauge looked like this.

Story was that was in about 30 minutes.

When we got home, our normally dry stock tank looked like this.

When dry, it's about 15' below this level

And it flooded our road.  So, staying put was inconvenient, but wise.

 

Bad. but not as bad as it could have been.

The Ugly

Mrs. J did a great job organizing the cruise.  Managed to put us up in a pretty nice suite, so all of us could be together.  It was pretty high up and nicely located near, but not close, to elevators and stairs, so getting around the ship was relatively easy.

However...

Third night of the cruise, we've gotten MG settled down and sleeping.  The rest of us are getting that way, when the doorbell rings.  (Yeah, Royal Caribbean has doorbells on rooms).  I get up wondering WTF would the ship's crew need us for.

Opened the door, nobody there.  

Well, that's a piss-me-off.  Go back in the room, MBD is trying to settle a crying MG down and get her back asleep.  It takes a while.

Next night, same thing.  Now, I'm really pissed.  The next morning, I head down to look for someone to yell at inform of our displeasure.  I'm walking down the stairs as the elevators are mobbed with folks leaving the ship on excursions.  I see a crew member with shoulder braid and stop him and ask him who do I need to see to get help with this issue.

He answers "Me".  Ok, I think I got the head of security.

Nope, I got the Captain.  I explain the situation to him and that I've got a young injured Grand Daughter and a pregnant Daughter and they need their sleep.  He says he'll take care of it.

Final night aboard, around Midnight, the doorbell rings again. Again, nobody there.  Now, I'm furious.  I immediately leave the room in my gym shorts, t-shirt and bare feet (Yes, Beans, I dress up for sleeping) and head downstairs to the main lobby.  As I round the corner, I run into a security officer.  I explain the situation.  He asks me what I want done.  I mention that I'd like to see the perpetrators hanging from the yardarm in the morning.  He says "Well that probably won't happen, but they're in our office awaiting their parents arrival." 

Turns out there was a closed circuit camera about 10' from our door.

I mentioned that I hoped they and their families will be black listed by the cruise line from future travel forever.  We'll see.

Pour encourager les autres!

Hence, "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" and, in this particular case "The Good" wins!

Peace out y'all!

Addendum 1.

Miss B checked into the Hospital today for a scheduled minor surgery.  Mom and Dad and the Dr's agreed that it was time for her nasal feeding tube to be replaced with feeding tube inserted into her belly.  She had reached the point where she was fussing with the tube in her nose and managing to occasionally pull it out.  As one might suspect that could be a problem, so...She'll be in the hospital for a couple more days.  Mom is staying down in San Antonio with her.  Waking up post-op, she seems to be doing well.  Well see.  Mark this one up on the Good side.