Have Crutch, Will Travel

When's the good time to say I'm on crutches? Now-ish? It was a ROUGH week physically, and Monday night I ended up using crutches to get around the house. Lanny is not a fan, and Winnie knocked them over and broke part of their food bowl within the first 5 minutes of usage. Perfect.  I mentally prepared to take them to school with me on Tuesday, and then of course got pig headed and refused to do it. But once you whip the crutches out, if your mom is the travel manager, you can't go back. It's like putting toothpaste back in the tube. She had a good point -- it's 8 miles at PDX from checking your baggage to the Alaska terminal (lol), and a cruise ship is no better. So here we are. 

And I'm so glad she made be bring them, because....dang! I'm falling apart! If you're playing catch-up, I don't have a new and interesting injury, I'm still limping along on my left knee. Recently my right knee, hip, and calf have thrown in the towel. There was a brief point on Tuesday when I was wearing two knee braces.  Thank goodness for long dresses! In summary, let's not all point and gawk at pictures with crutches. I'm hoping after a few days of chilling out and not walking incessantly around my classroom that everything will just relax. :)

We are on another marathon day here in March to get to a cruise! Thelma has been up for roughly 36 hours. Louise slept for a hot minute on the plane, but basically we're exhausted! Our flight was delayed out of PDX and we didn't ending up leaving until almost 11:30pm. In the rain, obvi. 

We got dinner at Hank's or Henry's or whatever the pub-like restaurant is at the airport. Mom was in the bathroom when I got an alert saying our flight was over an hour delayed. The woman next to me looked at her phone at the same time and audibly said, "damn." I looked over, and said, "Fort Lauderdale?" She nodded, I ordered a real drink (an exotic mojito, don't you know), and from there we found out that we were both educators on spring break headed for the Caribbean. Small world! We swapped war stories,  laughed a lot, and were genuinely glad for said delay. 💓

We lucked out again on the plane and had an empty seat in our row so we could spread out. And then there were just many MANY hours of hanging out. I actually think the delay made our flight a little smoother as a storm had rolled through the Gulf. I didn't sleep much, but watched a movie and checked my watch obsessively. Sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico was alright. 

Where are we headed, you ask? Aruba, Jamaica, oooooooh I want to take you. Bermuda, Bahama...  You know those aren't all together, right? We are going to Grand Cayman, Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. It's going to be fabulous! Tomorrow is an at sea day. On tap? A whole lot of whatever we want to do! 😃