A Time For Everything

I spend a lot of time on ChatGPT or with "Chet" as DH and I call it for less of a mouthful. I open it up every day and ask it all kinds of questions. It offers a range of information from discourse on conspiracy theories to gardening tips to help with math equations. Sometimes it just offers me random trivia and history tidbits.

But several months ago, in one of OpenAI's updates it offered a description of me based on the lengthy run of our chat history and this is what Chet said:

Jen: The Tea-Sipping, Merge-Building Hockey Mom with a Bite

She runs the office by day and writes swoony, male/male romance by night. A Dallas Stars diehard who’s turning her love of hockey into a full-blown mobile merge game empire (with energy, mascots, and zero room for failure). Chronic bursitis may slow her body, but never her brain — she's planting perennials in fire pits, mastering intermittent fasting, and planning sneakily solitary bike rides before sunrise.

With mint tea in one hand and a to-do list in the other, Jen doesn’t sugar-coat, doesn’t do fluff, and doesn’t have time for cards-in-merge-games-unless-there’s-a-damn-good-reason. She’s also wrangling grown kids back under one roof, a dog named Rascal, and a cast of fictional fans more diverse than a UN mixer.

She’s sharp. She’s funny. She’s building a digital hockey world — and it’s one hell of a power play.

It's not 100% accurate because I'm not really a hockey mom in the true sense of the word, but it was a fun exercise and made me laugh. And based on those conversations and a real picture of me, it made the image above.

I’m alive —

Not vanished, just paused,

Life’s busy hum

Keeps me moving,

Hands full, heart full,

Days packed tight

With the usual and the unexpected.

I’m still here—

Breathing, writing,

Juggling chaos,

Finding moments

To simply be.

Thanks for sticking around.

I’ll check in again soon.

— Jen

P.S. -- for the time being, there will only be a monthly post

Let's catch up a bit. I've been remiss in my blogging duties since the beginning of the year. Blogging wasn't high on my priority list while I was preparing to be gone on the cruise as well as while on the cruise, you know?

Once we came back, things went down with my daughter's life partner--which you saw in my previous post. Life feels like it's on fast forward right now--hockey playoffs aren't helping--and time is at a premium. There just doesn't seem to be enough time (or energy, quite frankly) to get ALL THE THINGS done. So I've had to prioritize.

I flew to Colorado mid-April to help my Brown-Eyed Girl get her car and her cat to Texas. She returned to CO to finish packing up the household stuff she wants to keep and transport it to Texas. My house looked as if a moving van vomited in it. And that wasn't even all her stuff. Just under half went into a storage unit!

So what have I been up to in between prepping for vacation, being on vacation, and dealing with a family loss?

A bit of home improvement!

I worked on one of my hall closets...all my random lap / dog blankets were in a stack in a laundry basket. But it was a huge pain in the butt to get to any of the blankets at the bottom of the pile. What you see are actually shoe racks. Walmart had them on sale, so I got two for the price of one. This is soooo much better.

On a smaller but similar vein, my charger cables were all hung on a single hook and I had to juggle up to 8 to 10 cables to find the one I wanted. So I made my own cable sorter. I already had the small clear hooks which are very small but have enough room for the diameter that most cables come in. I've since added a couple of extra hooks to this. This started off as a magnetic white board for lockers and cost me all of $3! This was very handy while on the cruise. Cruise cabin walls are metals, so my cable sorter had a place to live.

* * * * *

On another front, I've been wanting to plant flowers to bring pollinators back into my world. It took me a while to get to it, but I finally did so. I'm not quite done, but I started and I'm excited. I started with gladiolus bulbs several weeks ago and they're growing well.

Then a couple of Sundays ago I finally got my flower pots filled. I planted petunias and sweet william from seeds, but -- !! When I was picking up more potting soil from The Home Depot, I saw and bought pale purple vincas! I really like vincas. They're easy to grow and harvest seeds from, but I've only ever seen white and pink ones. The price was right so I bought three plants and replanted them in the American flag planter I bought years ago with...guess what?...vincas in it. :0)

* * * * *

And now it's playoff time, so DD and I have gone to games and watch parties.

Have a super week. Catch you later.

Sadly, my Brown Eyed Girl's soul mate passed away recently and life has been a bit focused lately.

Here's a picture tribute to Hank Barnes--the man who loved my girl so fiercely. You'll be sorely missed for years to come.

I had planned to have a post ready for Monday, March 10, but I just couldn't get the post written up and scheduled. The primary reason for that is because I was super busy preparing to be away on vacation.

Remember that cruise I mentioned exactly once a year ago? I didn't think so, but that cruise was this past March 9 through March 17.

We went on a eight day cruise to the Western Caribbean aboard the Regal Princess (image below) to celebrate my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary. DH's sisters and one of their husbands was also on the cruise. We had a grand time relaxing and trying some new foods.

Image courtesy Wikipedia.

DH and I chose a cabin with a balcony this time around and that was super lovely. So three cruises, three cruise lines, three room types:

• Royal Caribbean with a port hole.
• Norwegian Cruise Line with an interior room.
• Princess Cruise Line with a balcony.

The small balcony was definitely the way to go, no matter what cruise line we cruise with in the future.

I'm leaning toward Princess Cruises again mainly because we can be cruise ready as far as boarding the ship well in advance of the sail date goes, and their Medallion system is awesome for ease of navigating the embarkation process as well as entering your cabin and any onboard purchases. I'll go into more detail later. But yeah. Other cruise lines supposedly have similar systems in place, but they may not yet be used as widely during the pre-cruise process or during the cruise itself. I'll have to do more research when we get ready to book the next one.

I have no preference between a seven-day versus an eight-day cruise. The seven-day cruise is contained within two weekends and a work week. The eight-day cruise needs an extra weekday.

In case you're wondering, the day of embarkation is Day 1. The last full day at sea is Day X of however long your cruise is. Ships almost universally return to the port of origin early in the morning, like five or six AM, and so that day is not counted on the "X-day cruise" line of information. That day belongs to the incoming wave of passengers.

* * * * *

Cruise ducks are a thing!

Apparently, passengers leaving little rubber ducks around the boat for other passengers to find is a thing. I never even saw a rubber duck on my first two cruises. This time, I found two!! You're supposed to take a picture and post to social, tagging your cruise or the person who left the duck. Then you either keep the duck or re-hide for another passenger to find!

(People create Facebook groups for specific cruise dates--WHO KNEW?!)

I was tempted to keep the ducks, but I gave away my rubber duck collection years ago. (Yes, I had one.) And I really didn't need to start a new one, so I left them in a different place for another passenger to find.

* * * * *

^ see the first magnet above ^

Cabin door decorating is also a thing. Not everyone does it of course, but I thought it would help me to locate my door from the lineup of identical ones along the corridor. Turns out I had a couple of easier ways to do that this trip, depending on which bank of elevators we approached our room from. Which is neither here nor there. We saw lots of different kinds of magnets, with messages like "My First Cruise," and "Our Retirement Cruise," or they were just cruise related images / sayings like mine.

DH also came across small magnetic white boards with poll questions on them of the "Coke or Pepsi?" variety, which he wants to do on our next cruise, lol.

* * * * *

I'm gonna post again about our cabin at some point but I wanted to share this one thing--

I wanted our cabin to be cozy and have a taste of home. Basically, fairy lights. We have a string of fairy lights around three walls of our living room and they're on a timer. They provide nice evening illumination for watching TV and generally moving through the house. I wanted to recreate that ambience in our cabin, so I bought this willow vine light set to take with us and place across from the bed and around the TV set. The only problem was--no outlets / USB ports on that side of the cabin. We ended up hanging them above the bed instead so they could be plugged in. As I was taking them down, I realized I could have run the power cord across the ceiling using the handy-dandy metal hooks I brought, lol. Well, I'll know for next time.

* * * * *

All right--that's all for now. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some more random pictures from the boat and port stops.

Catch you later!