she's only happy in the sun

i'm sitting in a condo in miami looking out at a delicious cerulean blue ocean. i hope cerulean is a shade of blue. it might not be. but i like the sound of it, so it's staying. i could have looked it up on the wonderful world of the interweb in all the time it took me to ponder whether it is, in fact, a shade of blue. but that would have meant opening a new window. searching. finding out i was right/wrong. and then losing an entire paragraph of pointless babble. so i won't be doing that.

while you were all spending your week doing whatever it is that you do, i was on a carnival cruise ship doing one of the below things:

hanging out with 32 members of devon's family
eating entirely way too much
wowed by the tackiness and gaudy glitz
soaking in the sun
staring at the vast ocean
staring at the sky
reading
deciding what to eat next
cringing at the 'entertainment'
ordering room service when not hungry in the slightest

the highlights were finding a dark nook on the ship where we could curl up and look at the stars, unhindered by any lights. i learned why pluto is no longer technically a planet, and what a shooting star is. i learned about meteors and galaxies and i was surprised to find myself fascinated by what i was learning. this either means that my high school science teachers were really crappy, or that i now have the maturity to sit still and listen to facts about the universe instead of practising my signature and deciding what i was going to wear on saturday night at the next keg party.

i loved the day we spent in cozumel. we all rented rickety little scooters and drove around the entire island, stopping to snorkel or eat or get directions. i haggled with the shady snorkel equipment rental men which started off as cutesy eyelash fluttering flirtation and ended with threats of defamation. i saw dozens of brightly patterned fish and spied a barracuda. we ate plates of shrimp nachos made of real non-processed corn chips. drank virgin pina coladas at some random rasta bar while lazing in hammocks. ocean surf lapping at the tide, marley blasting...it was bliss.

here is a list of things of things you should know about cruises:

1. all you can eat lobster tails can lose their novelty
2. the cabin might have a fake window. they even put a blind on it. but push away the blind and there is nothing. a plastic beige wall. not even a faux scene painted on to ease the claustrophobia of being stuck in a tiny 2 foot cube.
3. the waitstaff are friendly for the most part. we did have a waiter called 'bagus' who was a little highstrung. one minute he was mad at us for ordering seven hors d'oerves and the next minute he was dishing out hugs.
4. if you are high or intoxicated you are probably going to have a lot more fun. or at least 'think' you are having fun. i'm not recommending that you get trashed on a cruise. i'm just saying that if getting wasted isn't on your agenda you might want to pick a different type of holiday.
5. vegas style decor (think lots of gold plated light fixtures, mirrors everywhere, purple sequin curtains, black marble) doesn't really appeal when you are sober.
6. you will eat more than you should and because room service is 'free' you will really believe that you want a BLT at four in the morning.

in conclusion, i've decided cruises are not really for me. i don't like being restricted to a boat. even if that boat is the size of a small country. i don't like set meal times. or buffets. or lots of middle aged oiled up naked people drinking too much and sitting in a swimming pool cesspit. i didn't get in the pool on the deck one time because i'm pretty content not having hepatitis thankyouverymuch.

i did love being with devon's family. his grandmother recently turned 80 - she is sharp witted, elegant and understandably proud of her five children and all the offspring they have spawned. dev's cousins were all a blast - some now parents, wrangling with altogether-too-beautiful-and-too-intelligent-for-their-own-good-kids. i heard lots of 'you should have known devon when he was a child' stories and we all forced frozen smiles through one hundred too many family 'group shots'.

now i've got a couple of days in picture postcard pretty miami with devon hugh. then he takes off for iceland by way of california, and i go back to nashville. this summer has been so full of adventure and newness. i'm still reeling from it all and it will be nice to have a few weeks of stillness to let it all sink in and take a moment to think about the full-to-the-brim-wonderfulness of life right now, and yet to come.

p.s. in lieu of a souvenir from my trip i've taken several hundred pictures just.for.you. but instead of making you sit through my slideshow that i have created with powerpoint and set to native american flute music, i'll just post up some of my favorite pictures. that is my gift to you. i know, i shouldn't have.

p.p.s. i hate powerpoint and i'm not the biggest fan of flute music either. if you believed that i had a slideshow with these elements we probably don't know each other as well as we should.