Escape!

It's August.  Four months until the holidays get underway, maybe less.  My plan is to step out of the fray somewhere, somehow.

Last night Jerry and I were having fresh salmon, zucchini, quinoa, and sliced heritage tomatoes with basil, a mid- to late-summer kind of dinner (and yes, I'm going to get underway with the Recipes for Worn-Out Cooks). Buoyed by a couple of glasses of wine, I had a flash:   We want to cruise through the Panama Canal someday, so why not go this Christmas? Whoa!

Jerry was dubious, but I ran with it.  I parked my laptop on the dining table and looked up a cruise I'd read about in a brochure.  Sixteen days, LA to Miami  And it cost less than the cruise we took for ten days in the Mediterranean, same cruise line.  A bargain! I e-mailed a cruise specialist, and for a couple of hours I was seriously caught up in this idea.

But there were problems:  Turns out the cabins for that cruise are fully  booked (why were they advertised as recently as last week?).  There were ports-of-call in Mexico, where we have no desire to go.  We could be wait-listed and hope for the best, but that seemed too uncertain.  Plus I could picture big family groups, all chummy and exclusive, and  little old us at a table for two,  far from home on Christmas and New Year's.

More damning was the length of time: Sixteen days, many of them "at sea."  That's okay for people who go to the spa, drink in the bars, lounge around the pool,  and sit on their verandas holding hands, but we don't (too chilly on the veranda for one thing).  On last year's bucket-list cruise around Italy, we spent two consecutive rainy days when the ship couldn't make port sitting in our cabin working on blogs/journals (me) and manuscripts (Jerry).  I couldn't see a string of expensive days doing that.

This morning I calmed down the cruise specialist, who was flinging ideas at us by e-mail and voicemail.  I came to my senses.  I hope that end-of-summer lengthening-shadows kind of August day doesn't come too soon. Then I know the season's turning, and fall, which is fine, is inevitable.  But we all know what comes after that.