Hoping against hope

As Daddy said, life is 95 percent anticipation.  ~ Gloria Swanson

Every day I half expect an email from Viking cancelling our World Cruise. Especially with the arrival of the highly infectious omicron variant, it seems one thing after another is conspiring against this trip. But the first wave of passengers is still due to board the Viking Star in Fort Lauderdale on Christmas Eve, and we are only 21 days away from leaving home to being our two days of driving & flying that will take out to LA to meet the ship there. So as of today, we're still going. 

The DH has to pick the bag up to weight it

Our two suitcases (50 and 49.6 lbs) are all packed, locked and ready for Luggage Forward to come pick them up next Tuesday. We'll be taking our luggage scale with us because even though domestic flights allow 70 lb bags for first class, international carriers still cap the weight at 50 lbs. They also limit carry-on pieces to 17 lbs. 

Yesterday, I picked up four pairs of pants from the seamstress who was hemming them for me. (I'm not blessed with my mother's long legs, apparently! Family joke. She's shorter than me.) We have a couple pairs of cargo pants and an Aloha shirt on order for the DH. Supposedly they will all arrive before Christmas. All these new things will need to go into our third big suitcase, which we'll check when we board our flight to LA on January 9th. (Yes, yes, I know. I was going to pare down what we take, but the heart wants what the heart wants!) 

We were unable to obtain a vacation waiver from my Part D supplier, which is probably fair because I'm changing companies in January. So we bit the bullet and paid out of pocket for 130 days of my maintenance meds. (To my younger readers who don't need pharmacological help to function like a real person, all I can say is...just wait. Eventually, almost everyone needs help with maintaining a healthy blood pressure or cholesterol or whatnot. I'm frankly thankful for this type of medicine. It keeps me going...kind of like a classic car that needs a little extra TLC to keep purring along.)

We're still waiting to hear back from GenVisa, the service Viking uses to obtain the necessary visas for their passengers. Only India and Saudi Arabia require visas obtained ahead of time on this itinerary. As I understand it, there is currently a tit for tat squabble going on between India and Canada and Great Britain, something to do with denying Indian citizens entry during the time of Covid. So the guests who come from those countries are in a holding pattern for their visa approval. I think our delay is because GenVisa has been inundated with about 400 packets of requests at once.  

So while we are still doing the packing and planning and preparing necessary for leaving our land life for a third of a year, I find the mood is different from when we were just three weeks from boarding the Pacific Princess in 2018. Of course, I always fret that something will happen that will make the trip impossible. I've done that before every cruise we've ever taken, but now...it does seem  we're approaching the plate with two strikes already against us. 

If I somehow find myself standing on the veranda of cabin 4008 on January 10th, I'll be beyond thrilled and grateful. 

I'll be completely surprised...