A Three Hour Cruise

My husband took me out for a romantic dinner date last night.  A three hour dinner cruise in the San Diego harbor.  Awesome!!  It was rainy and windy, but that wasn't bothering me any - I was super excited to have a first class romantic date with my husband.  He's more of the "let's order a pizza and watch a dvd" kinda guy.  I'm very comfortable with that laid back home style kind of date, but a dinner cruise! Wow!

For days, I worried about what to wear. What does a frumpy mom wear on a cold rainy harbor cruise? I rummaged around in my closet and decided that my entire wardrobe looks like thrift store rejects. And why do I still have maternity dresses hanging in there? Only one solution: shopping!

My teenage daughter went with me to keep me in control and make sure my selections were appropriate and in style.  It's good to have someone along who is so honest and keeps me out of the frumpy stuff. She steered me to Ross.  Really? Ross? Fine, but then we are going to Macys.  I rarely go to Ross since the store is usually such a mess and the merchandise is dirty and has missing buttons and all, but we were pleasantly surprised with a nicely stocked store, very neat and tidy and the inventory all looked great.  I ended up buying 4 shirts and two dresses for myself.  Ginger and Mrs. Howell took plenty of luggage on their 3 hour cruise, now I can too!

It was way too cold to wear a dress, and I would either have to shave my legs or braid them.  I decided to wear dark jeans and one of my new tops, tossed on a sweater and I was all set.  Except I forgot to buy socks. How is it that I don't have any socks?  I have white socks, and nothing else. My feet are half the length of my husband's feet, but I was desperate so I raided his dark sock drawer.

My husband has two sock drawers. A white sock drawer and a dark sock drawer. Seriously, who needs that many socks?

I rifled through his dress socks looking for something black and shrunken but I couldn't find anything. I grabbed two of his thinner black socks and put them on, folding the extra length under. Hey, cushiony! Nice! The socks don't match, but maybe nobody will notice.  I was wearing my mary-jane style tennie shoes.  I know, romantic footwear, right?   Are mis-matched man socks with tennies frumpy?

We got the girls ready to go, loaded up the van with their pajamas, books, toys, a potty chair and blankets and set off for our romantic evening in San Diego!  Libby brought along her Justin Bieber doll. He wanted to have a fun date too.

Oh great, I just remembered that I forgot the potty in San Diego. 

We went straight to our daughter's house to drop off the girls for their "date".  Our oldest is all grown up now, 22 years old and living in a nice duplex; it's pretty convenient for us! Free babysitting!  My husband had never been to her place. As soon as we walked in, I thought for sure I'd lost him and our night was over.  Because.. like father, like daughter.  She has a "jam room".  The first room you see in her house is a big room full of guitars, drums, piano, tambourines, ukuleles, and who knows what all kind of noise making stuff is in there. My husband was like a little boy in a toy store. Luckily, I pried him away and we were on our way to the docks.

After hitting 20 red lights, Keith pulled into the best parking space! Free parking to boot!  He was pretty excited about that even though he has the best luck with parking everywhere he goes. Since it was raining and windy, an up close free parking spot was especially appreciated!

We met up with our friends right at the dock; nobody was sure if we were boarding the Lord Hornblower or the Inspiration Hornblower. The dinner cruise was aboard the larger boat, the Inspiration. My husband immediately started saying very loudly in a Saturday Night Live sort of way, "Lady and Lord Hornblower". Oh boy, we're in for a silly evening and I thought it was going to be all mushy romance. I should have known! We got our boarding passes and compared them to see if we were all sitting at the same table.  Nope.  Three couples and three different tables: 10, 74 and 112.  Not even within shouting distance of one another!  After we "walked the plank" and boarded the boat, we were given a glass of champagne and the host reassigned us to a table for six.

The ship was nice!  Like an elegant floating restaurant.  Both of our older girls attended prom in 2007on this same ship and they said it was very nice. They weren't kidding!

The cruise was supposed to set sail and float around the San Diego harbor at 7pm and dock again at 10pm.  Shortly after 7:00, the captain's voice came over the loudspeaker and announced that we would not be leaving the dock due to inclement weather.  We all decided they were wimps.  What's a little wind? It was only blowing at 30 mph!  One of the waiters told us it wasn't actually a problem for leaving the dock or cruising on the water, the problem was getting back into the dock. The wind would slam the boat up against the pier and everyone would spill their drinks.  So, we just bobbed while tied to the dock.  A dinner bob.

This is the view out of our tableside window.

The meal started off great!  Yummy rolls and a nice salad. We also ordered an appetizer of spinach and artichoke dip with crackers.  That was delicious! I had a glass of white zin which was also very delicious! The main entree looked nice, but it wasn't the best meal I've ever had.  The steak was tough and the portions were small.  I'm not complaining, but I do think that Chef Gordon Ramsey would have been cussing out the cooks on that dinner. Half of my dinner ended up stuck in my braces, good thing I brought along my travel toothbrush!  I flashed a broccoli grin at the hubby and went off to find the ladies' room..Braces and broccoli are not romantic friends. We were served a chocolate raspberry cheesecake and coffee for desert.

Dinner conversation was anything but romantic! We laughed our heads off mostly. The two couples we were with are also South Dakotans. One couple lives in Southern California like we do and the other couple was from Sioux Falls. They were on vacation, trying to escape the cold South Dakota weather for a weekend - so they came to sunny California and got nothing but rain.  These three boys grew up together and had a good time reminiscing about all sorts of things. They talked about pranks they pulled, driving their big sisters crazy, driving Ford Pintos, cussing in Catholic school, and all sorts of stories were told. The whole time they would interject with comments about how we should set sail.  It was really funny to listen to the boys talking about the old days, how any of them survived to become adults is beyond me.

After desert was served the DJ started to play and he announced that the dance floor was open.  When did we become the old people that sit way in the back drinking coffee and asking each other, "have you ever heard this song before? No? Me niether! Look at 'em all dancing. How do those girls stay up in those shoes? Good Lord that guy's shirt isn't tucked in. Who sings this one? I don't know, do you?"  And then we decided we weren't old, this DJ just didn't know what he was doing!  Yeah, that's it!

The time had come to cruise around the cruise boat. We wandered around to see if we could see more. We were seated on the lower level, so we went up to the second level which was pretty much the same, then up to the top deck which is open so that you can see the stars and all.  We bundled up and put on our heading into a blizzard wind faces and out we went. Holy Cow! It was super windy and freezing cold!  No wonder we didn't set sail! We looked over the railings and saw enough in the minute or two that we were out there.  Back in we went! 

The tourist couple purchased our boarding photo as we left and then we all made a mad dash for our perfectly parked mini-van. We gave our friends a ride to their car which was three blocks away. This was hilarious, as I have three car-seats buckled down tight in the van!  I got one undone and put in the trunk, but it was too cold for everyone to patiently wait for me to remove all of them and they all climbed in.  So, two of us ended up sitting in carseats. What weight limit? Keith drove with the four friends all navigating. Even with four of them telling him where to go, he turned a block too soon and had to make another loop around.  Here we were cruising around downtown San Diego in a mini van full of adults in car-seats!

We saw two people wrestling with inverted umbrellas.  Thought that only happened in comedy movies! I felt sorry for them, but we were all in such a giddy giggling mood that the comedy of it really shined!

We dropped our friends off at their car and went on our merry way to pick up the kids and head home. Turns out that they had a great date with their big sister. She had fun with them too. A great rainy evening out for everyone!