Saturday I was relatively anxiety-free, but on Sunday I was a mix of calm and anxious. The anxiety was about being left alone today, but right now I feel fine. I slept better, too. I didn’t overheat and my heart didn’t race. While I woke up feeling refreshed, alert and calm, I’m just not ready to face the world alone without my lorazepam just yet. I took one before bed and will take one when he leaves. If I can make it through the week without incident, then I’ll be off the lorazepam by the end of the week. I just hope this time it’s for more than a few days or even a few weeks! Each time I have a problem that basically hits the ‘reset’ button in the progress I’ve made toward gaining my serenity, security and confidence. 

In better news on this rainy, windy morning… the trip is getting real! We’re starting to finalize our plans. Tammy said it’s about what WE want and so we should think of ourselves first. Yeah, but we still want to do what’s convenient for her and the girls too, if we can help it. She’s having surgery on January 25th. Two weeks is a bit long, but there’s an appealing Princess cruise leaving Ft. Lauderdale on January 30th that makes two stops in Mexico and one in Honduras. It returns to Florida on February 5th. We would spend until the 8th or 9th with Tammy, hoping that since a weekend falls in there my nieces will have a better chance of being able to swing by and meet us. We’ll be flying first class, and instead of having a layover at the Atlanta hub like we did in 2007 when we went to the Bahamas, PR, and (almost) to the Grand Turks, it looks like we may layover in Dallas. Don’t know for sure yet. Our stateroom will be one of the luxury suites. Not top of the line, but close enough with a private balcony and all that. 

Cosco, who we’ll be doing the trip through, rates Princess and Royal Caribbean the same as Holland-America, the line we went on the first time around, being slightly above them. We looked at their cruises but they go where we’ve already gone. It would’ve been nice to at least be on a ship we knew our way around, though. We were on the Westerdam. It wasn’t a very attractive ship but it also wasn’t as overwhelming as I thought it’d be since most floors are staterooms and you only spend time on about 3 of the ship's 10 or so decks. 

The Mexican lady that Tom works with says Mexico’s too dangerous. Yeah, but we’re only going to a couple of touristy towns, and there are some dangerous places right here in the US anyway. It’s not like we’re going to the Middle East or Africa or crazy countries like that. This will be my first trip to Central America if we do decide to take this trip. It’s a bit long (twice as long as our Maui vacation), so we’ll think about it for a few days till the passport arrives, and decide if we want to do it or a shorter cruise to just Mexico. There’s also a Jamaica/Haiti option. 

We’ve allotted 2K for the airline and 2K for the cruise. We’ve decided that even years will be vacation years and odds will be major purchases. So a brand new side-loading washer/dryer set is on for 2017. 

Today’s cardio day since yesterday was strength training day on the Bowflex. Sometimes I still think, hey, this isn’t fair! Most people who do what I’m doing lose weight. They don’t maintain it. But most of them are also younger, so it’s all good and better than gaining.