It's Been a Minute...

"May you live in interesting times..." ~ Old Chinese Curse

The DH's home church in northern Iowa

The world has spun quite a few times since my last post and we've all found ourselves in interesting times indeed. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, none of our lives have remained the same. We all wash our hands more. We check in on elderly relatives more often. We stay home more. For a while, we tried to do church via Facebook and Sunday School using Zoom. It's not the same. Graduations, weddings, funerals--all those milepost events that call us to community have been transformed into shadows of themselves.

And, of course, our travel plans have changed. At first, we tried to stay optimistic about the Alaskan cruise on the Ruby Princess we'd booked for ourselves and 6 family members. 2020 was going to be our year of sharing our love of travel with our loved ones. Then when things got more dicey, we cancelled the May sailing and moved to a September 12th departure, still hopeful. The pandemic grew and the entire Alaskan season was cancelled on all cruise lines. So our 8 person holiday was squashed.

We had booked a 19 day Princess cruise out of LA at the end of September, but we canceled that, too, even before the CDC extended the no-cruising ban. We'd hoped to squeeze that cruise in because we were booked for the 2021 World Cruise on the Island Princess and we wanted to hit the elite level by the time we hit LA.

Then when we decided that the 2021 sailing probably won't go, we booked the 2022 Princess WC. We held onto the 2021 reservations just in case, but I liked the 2022 itinerary better anyway. It meant waiting longer, but without a vaccine, I don't think it would be safe to embark.

In the meantime, we waited for Princess to refund our Alaska cruise. 60 days went by after we canceled. 90. Still nothing. Repeated phone calls from our TA and from the DH, but all we heard from them is that they have to do all refunds "manually" and it's taking longer because there are so many. In the meantime, our final payment for the 2021 World Cruise began to loom on the horizon. We can't justify sending Princess more money until they prove faithful with what we've entrusted them with so far.

Finally in frustration, we called our travel agent yesterday and asked her to cancel both the world cruises we were still booked on.

So now Princess owes us for several deposits in addition to the fully paid Alaska trip.

It makes me sad, because we've always had only positive experiences with Princess in the past. I hope they'll get things together soon because we can't be the only frustrated guests.

But our travel woes are trivial compared to the suffering some are enduring because of the pandemic. So many have become ill. Even more have lost their livelihoods. I hope and pray we see the light at the end of the virus tunnel soon.

In the meanwhile, we've rediscovered the joys of our back deck. It's not a balcony looking over the bounding Pacific, but it's pretty good.

Here's the DH with our hibiscus, the little piece of Hawaii we enjoy at our doorstep each summer. This hearty plant really loves Ozarkian humidity!

And at least one member of our family is tickled pink that we're landlocked for a while. Charlie is ecstatic to have the DH, the Source of All Joy, home for the time being.

But Charlie is destined for disappointment eventually. We're cooking up some new travel plans I'm really excited about. I'll be sharing them with you very soon!