The Poosey Digest... by Freida Marie Crump
Enjoy the trip
Greetings from Poosey.
"Herb, the shoes go."
"The shoes go, I stay."
"Fine with me. I can take anybody on a cruise. There's nothing in the Royal Caribbean contract that says you have to room with the person you married."
"How on God's green earth, Freida, are we gonna co-habit a stateroom for seven days if we can't even agree on what to pack?"
"You don't need your stinkin' work boots on an Alaskan cruise, Herb! You think you're going to have to hop off and pull the thing into Juneau? They have people hired to do that! They have ropes!"
"The brochure said 'Wear comfortable shoes' and those boots are the most comfortable things I own."
"There's a weight limit of 50 pounds, Herb."
"I'll knock the mud off."
"All the old jokes are wrong. Women know how to pack for a vacation. It's the packs of clueless Alpha Males like you who you see dragging their disorganized lives in an oversized Samsonite."
"You packed a hair dryer. The rooms already have hair driers."
"What if it breaks?"
"Put one of my boots on your head."
"Herb, you have no concept of what constitutes a necessity. You don't mess with a woman's ability of take care of her hair."
"Freida, I pack only the basics... what I need to survive. Good Lord woman, we went to Death Valley where it only rains one day a year and you packed our raincoats!"
"It'd just been our luck to show up on that one day."
"You take books you never read."
"I might."
"And extras! The number one rule of travel is don't take an 'extra' anything! This is Alaska, not Lower Slobovia! Rumor has it that other Americans actually live and breathe and buy toilet paper there. Why in the name of Delta Airlines are you packing an extra roll of toilet paper? You think an entire state is going to run out of Charmin?"
"You never know when it'll come in handy. Herb, I hope you run out some dark night and I've got the only roll on the cruise ship. You'll have to beg to get a sheet."
"And what's this?"
"A bathrobe. Don't you plan on bathing?"
"It's the size of a small circus tent, Freida. It takes up half your suitcase."
"I don't go anywhere without my bathrobe."
"And what's this picture?"
"That's our neighbor girl. She framed that for me when she graduated from eighth grade and I take it everywhere."
"Freida, the purpose of leaving a place and going somewhere else is to find out what it's like to be somewhere else! If all you do is pack your suitcase so full of 'home' that you never leave home, what's the use of buying the plane ticket?"
"I need those things, Herb. There's nothing wrong with wearing your own bathrobe and taking along a few mementos if it'll remind me of the comfort of my own home."
"Let's call Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and tell them to repaint our ship's cabin to make it resemble our Poosey living room, then let's mortgage the house and have UPS ship everything we own to Alaska so we'll make sure we deprive ourselves the experience of going on vacation. Heck, let's not leave anything to chance, Freida. You reckon they could transplant our entire front yard onto the deck of the ship? Maybe hire a pickup truck to drive by every 10 minutes? I sure wouldn't want you to be deprived of any of the comforts of home."
"Take your boots, Herb."
"Huh?"
"Shut up and take your boots. There's room right beside my bathrobe."
You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you'll enjoy the trip.
Comments?
