Confinement....

I am cheap.  Just ask Don.  He is always accusing me of being a tightwad.  Well, I refused to spring for a suite on this cruise because I really didn't think that we would spend that much time in our inside cabin.  Don begged me to upgrade several times, but I was sure that there would be plenty of space.

Boy, was I wrong.  Our room was approximately 185 square feet and consisted of two twin beds, pushed together to make a queen/king, a pull-down bunk bed, and a baby crib.  Add a teenager with dysentery, a baby in diapers, and a husband who was attempting to "get his money's worth" by eating as often as possible and suffering the consequences, and that severely limits the amount of oxygen in a room of any size.  By day three, I would have paid any price for a room with just a porthole!

The kids were pretty good, for our kids, who are seldom good.  The baby learned to lie and tattle.  She did both incessantly.  Even when no one else was in the room, she claimed that someone was hitting her or taking her eyebrows (yes, eyebrows).  She prowled in the low drawers and pilfered through the luggage zippers.  When asked what she was doing, in poor English, she would reply, "I ain't doing anything."

The teenager was a slob.  She refused to keep her clothes picked up and before long, the floor was littered with both clean and dirty discarded garments.  I just walked on them after awhile.  I refused to play housekeeper on my vacation.  I must acknowledge that she came in at a reasonable time each night and limited her perfume spraying within reason.  For the most part, she also held in any backtalk that threatened to surface during the trip (She knew it would be hard to escape me in such tight quarters).

My niece, who shared a cabin with my parents next door, found it necessary to get ready in our room twice a day so that she could use my hair straightener.  My husband became so sick of the girls that he began walking around the room in his underwear.  This grossed them out and helped to speed along their "primping" time. 

The kids were good, like I said before.  But after spending ten days in their continuous company...in the car...in the cabin....in the car again, I began to realize why some mother's eat their young.  Being confined with your children for that long is trying, to say the least.

This was our last big vacation with Skyler as "our child at home".  She will be leaving for college in a few months and we will never have to share another cruise cabin with her again.  It makes me kind of sad.  Maddie will grow up as Skyler did, as an only child.  My daugthers' relationship with one another will change.  As adults, they will most likely remember their individual childhoods, separate from one another.  The close confinement with one another during the cruise might have been miserable at times, but hopefully the togetherness that we shared will endure as a pleasant memory for us all.