February 4 – “The declaration”

Chris has made a declaration.  Not of independence, but at the time it was just as strong.  And she has repeated it several times since that first one.  See, she woke up coughing throughout the night and declared – on more than one occasion throughout the day – “I’m never going on another cruise.”  As you might recall, she came home from our first cruise and promptly got sick the next day as well.  It is perfectly logical for her to make the assumption that all cruising is bad.  I have done the same thing in my relationship with camping.  Except of course that my experiences with camping were actually verifiable encounters with a Satan-inspired attempt to make me thoroughly miserable.  At least she did enjoy the actual cruise.  It’s just the coming home that gets to her.  At this point it appears to be just the cough and a general feeling of being wasted, and not something much worse.  No China flu or Montezuma’s revenge that we can tell. 

As she worked her way through the illness, she dove right in to washing clothes.  That was kind of a necessity, though.  After two weeks we had pretty much used everything up.  I booted up the computer and started back in to my usual Monday tasks as well.  I did have some extra stuff to take care of … the pile of mail and stuff that accumulated over the course of the last two weeks.  I gotta say another thanks to April for taking care mailing the bills that were due while we were gone.  At least that was one less headache. 

Oh, we had an interesting phone call last night.  Caller ID indicated it was from Shell.  That’s the company Nathan works for now.  It only rang two times, and when I answered they had already hung up.  Odd.  Just to make sure nothing was amiss - since we knew Nathan was working – I texted him to check.  He was fine.  He was just as intrigued as we were, though.  We texted back and forth for a bit before I let him get back to the exciting tasks awaiting him on the night shift.

With Chris down for the count and me being just tired from the jet lag (Is that a “thing” on a cruise ship?  “Ship lag”?  Maybe “Time Zone lag”), everything feels like it’s going in slow motion around here.  I think I need to get to another Sunday at church before things will begin to feel normal again …

Romans 5:3-5 says. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Father, please heal Chris quickly of this cruise crud or whatever it is she has.  Amen.