Kathy's Blog: June 2005

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Sandbag Buddha

This evening, leaving yoga class, I saw this pile of sandbags on an electrical box on a street corner. Seeing the world with my fresh clean yogified eyes, I realized it looked amazingly like a little buddha. A little sandbag buddha.

I have recently rediscovered yoga. Or maybe I'm discovering it for the first time. I'm too serene to really care any more about this thing called reality.

I have always found yoga (a) too painful (b) too slow and (c) too boring to really get into it. I didn't try much in my earlier years. Then last year I discovered Bikram yoga and loved it. It's the one where they heat the room up to 105 degrees and you sweat and do the postures and feel like dying and try not to barf. I LOVED it. Mainly because it really made me feel great, and I felt that - whenever I'd survived a class - that I'd really accomplished something.

For various reasons - mainly schedule but also because it was so arduous that I'd have to commit a whole evening to it - my routine with Bikram stopped about six months ago. And since then I've just been puttering along with martial arts and a few trips to the gym per week to keep myself together.

Until about two weeks ago. I finally stopped by a local yoga studio to check it out. I took a 7 a.m. class and sailed through the day on this cloud of serenity. The next day I took a class in the afternoon. At the end of that class I went into a trance that took me out to Pluto... and then some. I was floating on these waves of euphoria for the fifteen minutes of post-class meditation that the teacher afforded us.

Afterwards I floated out to the front desk of the studio and immediately started plotting my next class. All I could think of was yeah...

Sex is what people do when they can't make their yoga classes.

I feel kind of tacky, like the last person to a party who finally shows up and says "oh my god, why have I been MISSING all this?" I also know it's a cliche to be a white middle aged cell-phone totin' computer usin' multitasking hit-it-hard kind of gal, and then start talking about yoga like it's OOOHHH so MARvelous.

So I'm wrestling with the touchy-feely-ness of it all. And I'm feeling like a poseur. And I'm feeling pretty physically sore. I also realize that - after only missing two days in the last two weeks - I am obsessively compulsively using yoga to combat my obsessive compulsiveness. Which is pretty zen when you think about it.

Is it a bad thing to OCD on yoga? God, I hope not. And all these amazing things have happened since I started. Money from my dead father. Money from my alive mother (WAY more astounding than money from beyond the grave). I will tell you these stories later. It's been beyond amazing. How when we turn to face the direction we are meant to be facing, suddenly we are inundated with blessing of all shapes and sizes and colors.

The world becomes filled with buddhas. They lurk in the corners and in shopping carts. They can be seen in my mother's face, flittingly but there. The buddha starts to form and show its form where we least expect it.

Whether it's yoga or a career change or just taking a moment to breathe and assess which direction puts the sun on your face... do it. Take that moment. The difference it makes is ridiculously big, and the effort surprisingly small. It feels so daunting to step off that cliff... but when you do, you realize it's only been a very tiny step after all. It's the fear that makes it seem so overwhelming.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:15 PM 0 comments

Is it live or is it Memorex?

Spencer provided me with a huge insight today. He had his first babysitting gig - watching over five (5) two-year-olds while a party was underway. His job was to keep things sane enough for the grownups to enjoy themselves.

Five two-year olds. Oh yeah, and two other kids... aged five and nine, I think.

Can you imagine? I can't. I barely survived my own children's two's, and I love them immensely. And the two's happened serially, so I only really ever had to deal with one two year old, ever, at a time.

Spencer was STOKED. Not only because of the money (he didn't really want to charge more than $5/hour, which I considered the deal of the century for his clients), but because he genuinely likes their son.

"Owen ROCKS," he's said, more than once. "Owen is OBSESSED with basketball." Apparently Spencer had met this little kid down at the park near our house and they had really hit it off.

Obsessed? Hit it off? In my mind I'm thinking, how can you know ANYTHING about a two-year-old? A two-year-old is an aggregation of hostility, neediness, random excretions and howling rage. A two-year-old is kinetic physics in action. A two-year-old is charming and sweet precisely as much as is necessary to keep surviving, and not a bit more.

But Spencer was seeing this kid as a PERSON.

I was struck by that. Spencer had this ability to see past the stereotypes that are formed around two-year-olds. Spencer saw the person and not the list of generic attributes. Spencer, maybe because of a lack of direct experience, or maybe because he's simply way more evolved than I am, was seeing the situation in exactly the right way.

He wasn't going to baby-sit five two-year-olds and a couple of other kids. He was going to go hang out with Owen and Mackie and Casey and some other kids he had yet to meet. It was going to be fun. They were just people who happened to be younger than he was.

After he went off to his babysitting gig, I stopped by the local coffee place to get a bite before my yoga class (noting with satisfaction the sweet turnabout of going to a playdate while my son trudges off to earn a few bucks). I paused to say hi to Jill, my ex-husband's girlfriend, who is working there parttime (which seems to me to be the coolest gig ever). And I realized as I left that Jill and Gavin and I, to varying degrees, had also mastered this ability to see past the archetypes and directly to the people involved.

Over the past six and a half years, Gavin and I have had the best results at being divorced when we talk to each other as friends, and people, and co-partners, rather than thinking of each other as the "ex." Early on I begged him to not introduce me as his "ex-wife," but to consider just saying my name or, if further definition were necessary, to call me the mother of his kids. In conversation, I never refer to him as the ex, but just call him by name. I've tried to take the "ex" out of expletive.

It works pretty well. Our worst times are when we're all caught in situations where archetypes are prevailing over real relationships. When his parents are caught between being "in-laws" to their son's ex-wife. When there are conflicting loyalties between the Girlfriend and the Ex.

Jill and I have talked about this and I am so appreciative of her ability to "get" it. I'm pretty sure she sees me, most of the time, as this other person in her partner's life who happens to have had children with him. I see her as the other woman in my children's lives; a woman whom I am deeply grateful to for her sense of humor, her whimsy, her fundamental goodness and her sweet temper. Yes, I could revel in bitter rivalry, but that would only be workable if I kept on the level of thinking of her as the Girlfriend, and not simply Jill.

My thought as we go through life is that we work a lot better with each other when we stay live to the moment and don't go all Memorex on each other. This is an exortation to myself most of all. I need to better give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and not assume that past experience - either on a personal or archtypical level - will inform future action.

So thank you to Spencer - for teaching me to look at things differently. And thank you to Gavin and Jill - for continuing to work out of our pre-conceived notions of how we should act towards one another and trying, as much as possible, to deal with each other as fellow travelers on intersecting journeys. I still draw the line at the two-year-olds, though. Maybe the next incarnation.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 7:39 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Fire in the Hole

Just finished fast-forwarding through Aliens with the boys. The coolest thing about the movie are that the characters and dialog are actually AS compelling as the great action and art direction. It's a movie whose priorities are in the right order.

I hunkered down to watch it right after tackling my mounting pile of responsibilities. Between the house, the kids and now the bok, I'm amassing a good mountain. These responsibilities loom over me with increasing menace. I have my credit rating intact. I can still live in my house. But I feel more and more like I'm getting away with something. Like I no longer own and inhabit my life. I'm racing against time, mortgaging off my future in hopes that the payback will be sufficient to justify my risk. I have these song lyrics running through my head at odd hours: And we'll have fun, fun, fun 'till Daddy takes the t-bird away-ay....

As I watch Ripley and the marines battle the aliens, I keep thinking: what's the worst that could happen here? What I'm going through as I wade through my lists and my piles of bills is really not nearly as bad as fighting huge creatures that impregnate you and come crashing out through your chest. I'm not battling for my life... I'm not even, really, battling for my comfort. I'm battling more for a sense of abundance. I'm battling for peace of mind, which will not come from any windfall or huge book sales. It will only come from within, so it may as well start now.

As always, I look at all adverse situations and figure out where the story value lies. For this I tell myself, and whomever will listen, that the story about writing a book, carving the time out of nowhere, staying up late and putting it all on the line, would be SO much more dull if I had a ton of money to finance it with. Who would care, really, if the punchline was "and then I had to dip into my Trust Fund! Oh it was awful!"

Still, I'm pushing the edge. I'm doing this alone. I'm taking unwieldy financial risks and putting my security and well-being on the line. And that feels a whole lot like Ripley facing her own towering fears and going back down to the planet that holds hundreds of manifestations of her worst nightmare.

And yet I'm conspiring with the universe to do a Great Thing. The evil aliens are the monsters of fear, inaction, trepidation. I am going forth boldly to fight those things. How can this mission possibly fail? Even if it doesn't succeed financially, it's already triumphed simply by virtue of being attempted and executed.

One of my favorite details in the movie comes when Ripley is ramming the big all-terrain vehicle out of the building after the first fight with the aliens. The aliens are swarming the outside, punching their nasty little fists in through the window, prying open the doors with their claws. Ripley has hijacked the vehicle and is driving outa there like a madman while the wimpy lieutenant languishes in the back. Exterior shots of the vehicle show blossoms of flame on the vehicle's outside, like napalm burning off on the exterior.

I looked at that and thought YEAH. Of COURSE. Add that fire in. Burn that sucker up, man. This is a balls-to-the-wall movie... of course it's totally right to throw fire all over that thing.

Hanging out later, Taylor asks if everyone has an interesting life (we were talking about the "may you live in interesting times" curse.) I said, no, actually, not everyone. He looked at me in disbelief. What would that be like? he asked. You'd just... wake up, have breakfast, come home, have dinner and go to sleep? Pretty much, I said, but even though that's what we do a lot of the time, it's not what you DO that makes your life interesting or boring. Having an interesting life is about being interested, keeping awake, paying attention. Going in there and kicking ass; and coming out with tendrils of flame still licking the hood.

The mountains of debt are the ammo I'm strapping on myself, like Ripley going down that elevator shaft. It's the protection I've bought myself, to do the book right, to raise my kids right, to pay it all forward. Yes, it's a heavy burden to carry. Yes, the great adventure could backfire on me. I could come out of this with nothing but a ruined financial life and the knowledge I did it all myself.

But I am not living timidly. I am not playing it safe. And at the end of the day I feel good about that. I can go into bookstores now and breathe in the smell of the ink and the paper, and not start crying because every single one of those volumes represents a risk and a commitment that I'm too afraid to take. I have dared. I have confronted. And if I go down in a blaze of fire, so be it. I did my best.

May you live in interesting times. May you have a life you're interested in enough to feel fear and triumph. May you come out of it with a little fire still burning on your hood. A little reminder that we never come out of the good adventures completely unscorched.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:56 PM 0 comments

Rocking the World

This blog has been culled from an email I sent last week. I sent it the morning after an emotional graduation day as my son said good-bye to the school he's been attending for the last eight years. It was a moving and exhausting day. And I wasn't ready to stop the conversation with the parents, teachers and administrators that had gone through the experience with me.

During the luncheon, we had all stood up to say something about what the years at Walden had meant to us. I don't remember anyone actually finishing their statements before tears overcame them. My friend Bridget summed it all up by simply imploring everyone to read my book (as a writer who could ASK for more?)

Then, when it was my turn... MY turn -- the articulate writer, the writer of The (Aforementioned) Book, the person who loves words and lives and breathes great beautiful sentences -- I stood up and completely froze. In front of my favorite and most trusted people in the world, after the endorsement of the century... I stood up, forgot the names of just about everyone I wanted to mention, totally blanked, and then sat down, only to relive the debacle over and over again for the next 12 hours.

To top it off, there was a nice-sized earthquake about 15 minutes later... something I could've used SO well to launch a brilliant metaphoric riff that really would have done justice to the moment. But it was too late and I'd had my moment of, ah, glory.

So this is what I wrote to everyone the next day. Because Walden is very much about conservation and economy of resources, I'm sure my fellow Walden people will forgive a little recycling of content...

I don't know what happens when I stand up to speak in front of people, but my brain usually goes one way and my tongue goes another; I have no control over what ensues.

So, with the help of a good night's sleep and a shower (where all good ideas occur), here's what I really meant to say...

Yesterday, we rocked the world. Literally. And in intent. I don't think it was the least bit accidental that we had an earthquake right in the middle of the luncheon. We were doing big things. We were ushering in the future.

What I thought during the earthquake (after "Yikes! An earthquake!") was along the lines of "OK, then, bring it on. There is no one I'd rather be smothered in rubble with than this group of people." Which really is a declaration of love and trust. The two things that are really what Walden is all about.

Henry David Thoreau did not start out to create a Movement. When he decided to go hang out by the pond for awhile he didn't wait for petitions to be signed or congress to say it was OK. He didn't do it so there'd be a school named after him or a blog invoking his name many years later. He didn't do it to change the world, and he didn't do it FOR anyone else. He just... did it. He followed his instincts, gave credence to his heart's instructions, and went to go think things over for awhile. And he had the good sense to write a lot of his thoughts down.

One person. One person created a legacy that we are still mining and getting juicy riches from. One person listened, and followed, and cared to share his experiences.

Yesterday, we sent 22 very similar people out into the world.

Twenty-two young people who, with the love and guidance of us as parents and teachers, now have a clue that it's OK to listen to their heart and follow its directions, with respect and decency and their wise minds. From Belle and her guitar, to Matthew Goldstein bringing politics to the podium. To the beautiful music of Jed and Amelia, to the tender heart of Julianne. Every one of those brave, articulate, caring young men and women who spoke yesterday have learned the beginnings of wisdom.

They are all individuals who know their individuality and worth. What an incredible gift to the world.

And it's not just the twenty two children. As Bob Inman said, he felt like a better parent just being around the community. We all got to share in that sense of wonder and decency and respect and care.

We all left the school play or the back to school nights feeling a little more like HDT and a little less like the unabomber (the other guy who went off into the woods). At least I did.

When people shake their heads and tsk about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket, I want to remember yesterday and have the force of mind to say No, it's not. I've seen where the world is going. And it's good. It's at least twenty-two people better than it was 12 years ago.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 12:52 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Stickin' It to the MAN

My oldest son, Spencer, is graduating from 6th grade next week. He has been at the coolest school in the world, Walden, since pre-Kindergarten. He is part of the largest class of 6th graders (22) ever to graduate from the school. Many of these he's known since he was four.

It's a remarkable school. Warm, smart, political, nurturing, challenging. It's a community of people you'd want to be friends with for the rest of your life (which hopefully will happen.) The kids come out of the school with love in their hearts - for themselves, for their fellow humans, for books and thinking, and for the planet.

They are taught to be kind and wise.

They are taught to like themselves.

They are taught to question authority.

Spencer has had a great eight years at Walden. The only problem he ever had with anyone is with the P.E. teacher, whom I will call Billy (mainly because that's his name and I can't think of a good alternate.) Billy and Spencer have been vying for the role of alpha-male for years.

Billy is an authoritarian and Spencer has learned the "question authority" part of the curriculum well. Push back if things seem unfair. Subvert if direct confrontation fails.

The only time we've had a call from the school about Spencer was from Billy. Spencer was having a little attitude and Billy was going to exert his prerogative to call the parents. Biilly was punishing the kids by making them pick up ten pieces of trash: Spencer went to the trash can and grabbed his ten from there. Billy - admittedly not having the easiest job in the world - was trying to get everyone to be quiet while he was giving announcements and had forbidden anyone to stand up; Spencer kneeled up on his knees. Billy played too hard on the basketball court; Spencer's dream was to nail Billy someday in a game of one-on-one.

Well, Spencer finally got his dream. Last Friday in assembly, and once again yesterday, the sixth grade class put on a brilliant play, written and directed by an incredibly talented mom of one of the girls in the class.

The play was about the kids' journey through their years at Walden, the experiences in the various classrooms and what they remembered about their teachers. Anna, their first grade teacher, was like the sun presiding over a garden of little Teletubbies. Mark, the second grade teacher, was a zen Buddhist imploring his little grasshoppers to "breathe and read, breathe and read." Lori was a mellow combination of Earth Mother and Janis Joplin. The kids took turns portraying the teachers, enacting the skits. The women teachers were played by boys in drag; a girl played Mark.

Spencer played Billy.

Spencer came out with swagger and proceeded to torment the kids by making them run 536 laps, do 240 jumping jacks, 650 hamstring stretches. He purposefully garbled his language when explaining the rules of a game. At the end, when one of the kids he was ordering around said it was torture, Spencer put his foot on the prostrate kid's back and gave an utterly priceless Dr. Evil laugh, filling the community room with his version of Billy's maniacal personality. He was ruthless and gloried in his power - both in character (as Billy), and as Spencer, the graduating pre-adolescent who finally got his moment center stage at the expense of his nemesis.

It was sweet. Not that I have anything against authority (I'm supposed to be something of that myself). I had to side with Spencer for many of his issues with Billy. But I was grateful for Billy as well. Not only for watching over and keeping my son alive for all these years, but because he gave me a chance to talk to Spencer about how to deal with people in authority that we just don't like. We will have bosses that won't always treat us fairly. We will chafe under their rule. We will want to pick up our quota of trash from the trash can. We will hate the fact that we have to kiss their ass. And we may not have any choice but to continue doing so.

Without confrontation, and without destroying himself in the process, Spencer found his voice. And I got to watch the true nature of art being played out in front of me. By channelling his anger and powerlessness into priceless minutes on stage, Spencer transformed the situation into one of glorious humor and parity.

Art transformed him.

Art enabled him to speak his anger.

Art saved him.

What a great thing to understand as we live powerlessly in this world ruled by men so completely unfit to rule. What a great thing to know as we go to work every day and do things we don't want to do so we can afford to write books and sing songs and create sculptures.

To Spencer and to the Walden Class of 2005: I bow with respect before you. The world is a much better place because the twenty-two of you are in it. I pray you can do something with the mess we've left for you. Thank you for showing me that hope in the future is neither futile nor misplaced.

Go forth and live deliberately, each one of you. Keep your laughter and your bright internal light shining. Keep your moral compass at hand. And never ever forget to transmute anger into art, to find your voice in this world in ways that are breathtaking and true.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:53 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Fun Fun Fun

I'm sitting on the back of a Carnival Lines cruise ship heading north along the coast of Baja California. The ship is so outrageously large that I tend to forget it's circumscribed by water. It's more like a huge Las Vegas Casino than anything else.

There are parts of this weekend adventure that have been magical, no doubt about it: Horsebackriding in the hills of Ensenada with three kids feeling the wonder of being astride a horse for the first time, finding their mastery, seeing the world with a new perspective; the amazing ability of humans to create a world no matter where they are, from building a nest for four in a 10x10 interior stateroom, to creating a microcosm of life in a moving building.

I had a wonderful hour with Taylor early the first morning as we stood at the rail and watched us dock in Ensenada. We all had a great snuggle one afternoon, huddling around my computer in the cabin, watching The Bourne Identity. I shopped in Ensenada with my girlfriend, Kathy, and we wrangled deals and copped a quick cerveza. So it wasn't ALL bad. It really wasn't.

One of the strongest impressions this trip has made on the kids, however, is how completely stupid people look when they're drunk. Sadly, the prevailing observations and conversations have been about the drunk people on board.

There are a lot of them.

They all are acting so unbelievably stupid.

At one point last night, when some grown men were running up and down the aisle outside our stateroom around 2 or 3 a.m. I just wanted to crawl out of my bed, open the door, and tell them with pure and scathing sincerity: you are a complete disgrace to the human race.

People seem to have a compelling urge to identify themselves clearly to the world. If they are going to be stupid and drunk, they have an urge to proclaim it to the world. If people want to get laid, give them some beer in sufficient quantity, and see what happens.

I saw two guys - one wearing short red corduroy shorts and the other a large white physician's coat with the word "gynecologist" embroidered over the heart. They were walking around, I suspect pretending to be more drunk than they were, and rubbing their crotches on whatever female would hold still long enough to endure them. They were dancing and ogling and picking up on everyone. One woman talked to them for a few minutes and they sandwiched her in a gyrating dance, the red corduroy shorts guy rubbing himself on her repeatedly, while she just stood there basically laughing at them. When she left they conferred, rather soberly, and went bobbing off to find the next woman.

They weren't that cute. And last I heard, red corduroy short shorts on a white guy was not the be-all of sex appeal that he apparently thought it was.

The need to be stupid and self-proclaim boggles my mind. Here are some examples of t-shirts I've seen this weekend:

"I'm only here for the lap dance."
"I learned from lesbians." (That one at least takes a half a second to register.)
"The problem here? You're stupid."
"Sex instructor: Free lessons."
"A skater guy broke my heart." (This on a girl of about 11 years old.)

And my favorite, especially in the midst of all the guzzling and nuzzling:

"I love church."

Which this guy apparently did, as there was a huge cross necklace dangling around his neck.

There is an assault of noise here. A live band plays by the pool. Loud speakers jut out of every corner. There is so much alcohol consumption, I heard someone this morning demanding of a bartender where you could get a drink on this ship - at 8:15 in the morning. He was not willing to wait until 8:30 when the bar opened up. "You mean there's nowhere on this ship to get a DRINK?"

Up on the 11th deck, the Veranda deck, with its pricey staterooms and balconies, we came across a guy laying in the middle of the aisle around 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon. I asked if he was OK. "Just taking a little nap," he said, quite coherently. Nice looking guy. Just, you know, passed out in front of his expensive stateroom door.

A kid we met who was staying on that same deck heard someone one night yelling down the hall around 1 or 2: "I want me some BITCHES!!!"

Lovely.

Today someone dropped their glass into the pool where the kids were sliding down the water slide. They had to close the pool, clean it out, and refill it. Broke my son's heart. He was having so much fun and was just about to get his little brother to try. But no. Some drunk guy has to drop his glass in the water.

That's when I got a little militant.

Come ON man.What is UP with all this obliterating CHAOS???

Can these people not last a minute with silence? Can they not stand to think their own thoughts? Is their pain SO painful that they simply cannot stop and breathe a second in silent clarity?

It must be. These lives of silent desperation are fucking noisy. And I must come off as so judgmental and holier-than-thou. But I'm not. I'm NOT. I did my time being stupid in public when I was younger. It was fun while it lasted but it really pretty much sucked. It was stupid and it made my head hurt. And even though you feel like a god when you're that drunk, it just doesn't take too long on the bathroom floor to realize that, in fact, that's not a reality.

God. I'm sounding so OLD.

I don't mean to sound like that. I don't. I think back to my days of partying like this. And even though I knew I was wasting a certain amount of time and brain cells, there was something cool about it. And that was comparing notes the next day. I did WHAT? And then I went home with whom??? It was the story that was juicy and gave the whole thing meaning. That was cool. I loved the stories afterwards; I still do.

So what the hell is this about?

Like my blog about the Star Wars line people, let's give these cruisers a break: Let's assume they have a life. And let's assume that their life isn't that great, actually. I have to suspect, with compassion, that they just can't be that happy and content and self-actualized in their real daily existence if this is how fast and hard they have to escape. There must be a LOT of pain in the world to consume so much beer. Seriously.

I have compassion for these people. About exactly up to the point where one of them takes a super soaker squirt weapon and shoots Taylor with it while we're navigating through the poolside bar back to our chairs. Just points and shoots, at close range. Har har har har har, the fat guy roars. Isn't that FUNNY? Yuk yuk yuk. I just shot me a nine-year-old.

Taylor did not want to be shot. He looked pleadingly up at the man, and then was shocked and scared when the water hit.

This is exactly the moment when the compassion vanished. I still am so angry at the guy that I'd like to deck him.

There were more stories. People at 4:30 in the morning the day we got home, yelling and laughing in the hall outside our cabin door. When I tell them to PLEASE give it a rest, they looked honestly sorry. Like they just realized there were people behind the doors and that the people occasionally had a face and one or two needs of their own.

These were not bad people. Just loud ones. Having a good time. At 4:30 in the morning. Outside our cabin door.

I came home and started writing Carnival Cruise Lines. I told them about the situation. During the time I was there, I kept blaming the people themselves. You know, personal responsibility and all that.

Then I looked up at the bigger picture and started thinking - ya know? The cruise lines really do need to take some responsibility here. They can enforce a Code of Conduct. One of their 900 crew members could be authorized to SAY something to these dickwads.

I wrote a comment card, a long email and finally called them. Apparently I did not complain enough on the trip (which is true, we only complained once about our table). I did not go to the Purser and tell him that his entire ship was being taken over by drunkenness. I didn't actually think he could do anything about it - what's he going to do, turn the spigots off? The spigots that were running gold for him? Not bloody likely.

I SHOULD have told him about the fat guy with the super soaker. That one was a crime and there was a face to it.

But the rest? I didn't complain because - short of upending the boat, washing everyone out to sea and starting over - there wasn't really much to be done.

So be it. Carnival Cruise Lines offered me and my adult companions a hundred dollar ship credit, next time we sail. I told them that would be never.

They said they were sorry, but I should have complained more.

So noisy desperation it is, then. Sometimes I guess you just have to be noisy back.

Carnival Cruise Lines: If you want a red corduroy crotch rubbed against your thigh they've got just the vacation package for YOU.

# posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 6:34 AM 0 comments

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