"These Sunglasses Make Everything Look All Purple and Gay!"
Thursday:
Read some more this morning, and had breakfast. Andrew stole all the milk.
I went diving again today, and it was soooooo awesome. There were so many pretty fish and I found myself following different ones around and floating upside down to look under rocks and I felt like something out of Ponyo. It was down about twenty or thirty feet, actually, and I hadn’t been down that deep before but I didn’t mind. It was really cool. At one point Dane came down with just the snorkel, and had to grab Lonie’s extra respirator. Lonie gave him the finger. I found a sea urchin that was pretty cool, and a bunch of those conch shells with the squirmies in them. Also, while I was floating around, Dane came up from above/behind me and scared the crap out of me. He got it on the watercam too, so I’ll try to get him to upload that to FB. (He said that he was just glad I didn’t spit my respirator out. Yeaaaaah, that’s good.)
As a side note, did you know that Dane has white rhinestone skinny jeans? Just saying.
I’m a little cooked at this point; I’ve tried so hard to get a tan since I was so pale last time, and I think I’m a bit overdone. Oh well. I imagine I’ll stop being pink soon? I also finally got around to painting my fingernails to match my toenails. Briana and I did them together, while giggling about the boys. =DDD
Despite the fact that I’m medium-rare, I still sat up on the hot tub cover and fell asleep stretched out in the sun. There was a nice breeze, so it wasn’t too hot. Perfect? I think so. Even though I woke up and went downstairs and Lonie was like, “Oh, it sounded like your nap was good. Do you usually snore like that?” Aha ha ha. =DDD <3
Speaking of snoring, Dane says that Lonie snores too, but they both do so they don’t bother each other. Dane says, “Oh, man, I feel bad for the poor female who takes me under her wing.” I don’t, Dane. I don’t.
“A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office wrapped in cellophane. The psychiatrist looks at him and says, ‘Clearly I can see your nuts!’”
The boat radio Rickrolled me! I mentioned this, and neither Briana, Lonie, nor Dane knew what the heck I meant. I think Lonie sort of remembered, but the other two had never heard of it. Come on, guys!
Luke just walked by, and it would seem that he just got out of the shower because his hair was wet. He also smelled veeeeery nice. Like, nice enough that I actually noticed and went, “Ooooh…” I said this to Briana, which started a whole conversation about the “boat boys” and how… Well, duh. They’re really hot. Actually, Briana is a year and a half older than Lonie, so she’s got it made in the shade. (Or “In the bag” as she puts it. So “baggage” means that she did very well with them. This word has since been thrown around quite frequently, and always results in giddy smiles and/or giggles. =D) And she’s three years younger than Dane, and if I’m three years younger than Lonie then maybe, you know, we could work that out.
We keep discussing this with Emily, because the two of them apparently had a competition with the other two girls last trip. Basically Christina and her friend were talking in the van going there that “Oh, the two women on board already have boyfriends, so we won’t have any competition.” And Emily and Briana were like, “Oh, like we’re not competition!? Those bitches are going down!” Briana and Emily won.
So yeah, the boys said that they would take Briana out tomorrow night, and she said she’d ask if I can come too. Ooooooh yeaaaaaaah. Grace is getting some baggage. (I feel like such a Slytherin; I always knew I was deep down.)
I told Lonie and Luke more bad jokes. Eeeeeheeee~<33333
Friday:
Best day of my life.
I always thought that everyone onboard was used to going to new islands and everything. And yet, I caught Luke out with his camera when we were pulling into St. Maarten’s.
THAT WAS THE BEST. I was just sitting here typing, and I saw Lonie literally skip (goofy grin on his face, arms swinging, jumping as high as he could) down the length of the boat, past all the windows in the living room. Now he just came back, grinning like a little son of a gun. Luke followed him, shaking his head. This apparently happens a lot.
What does a yoga master put on his sandwiches? Swiss chi. (Briana and I came up with that, thank you.)
Everyone went out shopping, but Briana and I decided to have Lonie take us out on the Intrepid instead. Good choice on our part. We wanted to go diving, actually, but we couldn’t. Apparently you can’t go diving 24 hours before you leave on a plane, because you might explode. Oh well.
Hey, remember Lonie stealing Briana's sunglasses? Aside from providing me with a marvelous titale quote, I got this picture: Eeehee~
Right right right. So generally when one of the boys takes us out, they wear this white mesh water-shirt thing with a sketch of Aphrodite on the back, and then sunglasses, dark shorts, and sometimes one of the beige hats. Briana had gotten a white shirt beforehand, and I wanted one, and so we decided, “Hey, why not dress up like Dane and Lonie and see what they say?” We. Were. Epic. Win.
We were cruising around the harbor looking at all the other yachts, and Lonie was telling us how, if he could name a boat, he would name it Dinner Time. Then the tender would be Ding Ding, so when you radioed in it would be, “Ding Ding, Ding Ding, Dinner Time!” But then we had to get out of the harbor, and we had to go under this bridge that was really, really low. We only made it by a matter of inches; we declared ourselves boat ninjas.
We got to the beach and were pulled over by the French police. They come over like, “Vous parlez francais?” And Lonie is like, “No, no parlez fancais. Parlez English!” But they just needed a boat number or something and it was fine. We told Dane we went to jail for an hour. =DDD
Speaking of Dane, Lonie was on the radio telling him that we were on our way and Lonie was like, “Otaaaaaay? Over.” And there’s a pause before we hear, “You’re a tool. Over.” Hey, did you know that Australian people call people a “unit” instead of a “tool”? The brothers were trying to explain this to Claire.
Did you know that everyone’s radio frequency for the whole trip was 69? Win.
Lonie says, “My doctor said I can’t do any heavy lifting, so now I sit down when I pee.”
Anyway, Briana and I were walking on the beach just talking about life and stuff, and this giant wave came up and knocked me over and dragged me like five feet down the beach. I literally had to shovel the sand out of my bathing suit. “Guys, I have ton of sand up my buuuuuuuuuutt!”
It was this big to-do, because Briana and I found all of these shells and then we realized that we would have to swim back with them against the super tide coming in, or dump them. Briana swam back one-handed, I stuffed mine in my bathing suit (which made for an awkward time getting them out. I was trying to fish them out while I was still hanging off the back of the boat and Lonie was like, “Hey Grace, what the hell are you doing back there!?” Uhhhhh…)
When we got back to the boat, we wondered what Lonie had been thinking about all that time. He said to us, “I’ve had that song stuck in my head from Dr. Horrible. That one line, ‘And it’s plain to see, the rapture inside of me’, you know that Penny sings?” And I’m like, “Oh yeah!” And then he says, “Yeah, but if you say it really fast, it sounds like “And it’s plain to see, the rapture in sodomy.” I almost choked on the sip of water I had taken, and he had to clap me on the back a couple of times.
“A pirate walks into a bar with his ship’s steering wheel in his pants and orders a drink. The bartender says, “Sure, but why do you have a steering wheel in your pants?” And the pirate says, “Arr, I dunno, but it’s driving me nuts!”
After dinner Briana and I had chocolate milkshakes (I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I DRINK IT UP!) and we talked to Dane some. Apparently his mom has a belly button ring, and he told us about how she was the only woman on a 45-foot boat for eighteen years. (Remember how he was raised on a sailboat? His mom homeschooled them and everything.) Anyway, Dane, Lonie, and their dad drove her so nuts once that she chopped all her hair off, even though it was as long as mine. But she bought herself a little dog to keep onboard, after years of having big dogs (a Great Dane and then a Dalmatian.) Dane told us that now that she’s on land, she dresses it up and carries it around in one of those little bags. “Don’t tell her I said this, but it’s pretty cute.”
After milkshakes and stories, Dane took us to the bar down the pier. (Don’t look at me like that, I had a Sprite.) We thought there might be dancing but there wasn’t; so we just stood around a table and talked. But still, the whole atmosphere was really cool. I don’t think clubbing/ bar hopping will ever be my thing, but I seriously felt super cool.
BIG DISH. So apparently out of the three boat boys… Luke is the craziest? Dane said, “Yeah, he seems really shy, but once you get him into his element, his real personality comes out.” “What’s his element?” And he laughed and gestured around to the music and the lights and the booze and the tattooed women and says, “This!” Briana and I did not believe this at first. “Yeah, he’d party all night,” he says. “He’s a nut once you get a few drinks into him.” Wow. On another note, I guess he doesn’t get along with Bala very well either.
Also, apparently no one really likes Bala. I kind of got that sense, because I like her, but she does seem kind of fake. (Maybe like she could be kind of a bitch.) But yeah, Briana and I were talking about how Sean and Bala make kind of an odd couple, really but not really? I mean, for having all of a captain’s responsibilities, he’s pretty laid back. Bala’s pretty uptight, and Dane was like, yeah, she really gets on everyone’s case. Briana says, “I’m so happy to know they don’t like her” because I guess she and Emily got yelled at last trip for having too many towels or something, and Bala was like, “You know girls, you only think you’re on vacation.” Also about the Sean and Bala thing, Lonie later told us that one time he caught them having a candlelight dinner in that room where they drive the boat, and it was the most awkward thing he’s ever seen. (He was there because he had to watch the autopilot or something.)
On the other hand, Dane said that being on a boat with your significant other for months on end is like the ultimate test for a relationship. He did it once, and he didn’t really like her that much so he dumped her… In the middle of the ocean. She spent three weeks hiding/crying in the laundry room, and finally the captain told Dane that if he didn’t go in there and make her into a normal person again, he would fire both of them.
That being the case, not so much on the Dane/Claire shipping. He sees her like a little sister, he said. He feels bad, though, because she puts on so much heavy foundation to hide her blushing, even though Dane tells her not to because she’s so beautiful, and blushing is very natural, really. Awwwww.
I guess Dane and Matt didn’t get along too well, I guess because Dane likes to get things done, and Matt was really laid back. He didn’t go into detail, but he said that, “Yeah, he had some problems. Like, you know, getting his girlfriend pregnant.” But Briana and I had been talking about how much we really liked him, and she and Emily thought he was really cute too. At one point, she remembers Grandpa had gone in there to request something, and Matt said as cheerfully as possible, “No problem, Mr. G!” in that adorable English accent. Either way, Dane says that they would always “hug it out, because that guy would hug everyone.”
Dane also sort of worries that one day Lonie “won’t want to work for his older brother anymore.” It’s sad, because he was saying that when you’re in his line of work, you can’t really have any relationships (see the laundry room story) and it gets really lonely. He said that the crew is really only friends out of necessity/convenience (even though he gets along really well with Luke and Claire,) and it’s nice to have his brother so that they can watch each other’s backs and keep each other company. Then he tried to lighten the mood and say that it’s good that he doesn’t have to share a room with a stranger because he likes wearing just his underwear to bed and he can just ignore it when Lonie is all like, “Eww gross just get on your bunk already and stop waving your junk in my face!”
But I still got another perspective on the whole thing, and so I realize that it must be nice to see all kinds of places and people all the time, but it’s also rally tough in other ways. I don’t know if I could do it myself. (Also, Dane is secretly hurt sometimes, because he always tells Lonie that he loves him, and Lonie always says something like, “Oh, ha ha” or “Right back atcha’ bro.” He says he’d like Lonie to say “I love you too” one of these days.)
We also talked about dead bodies.
So yeah. Soooo much baggage. Like, double bagged: paper and plastic. We got back and then Dane went to bed and Lonie hung out with us on the top deck for a while. Briana and I wanted to have a dance party, but it ended up that we just blared music and sat on top f the hot tub cover. It was very comfortable. Then Lonie climbed up on the very top of the boat and we looked at the stars for a little while and it was very nice, really.
Speaking of which, Lonie came up with this joke, and it still makes me laugh so hard I can’t stand it: “How do you get on Lady Gaga’s nerves? You poker face.” =DDDDDDD MY FAVORITE JOKE EVER.
Saturday:
I had the best French toast for breakfast I don’t even know how I’m going to live without it. I was surprised because I think it was the first morning that Briana actually got up before me, even if it was only by a minute or so. It doesn’t matter; we had breakfast and went to pack, which was sad. Also Marybeth came in to tell us that Christina is having another friend come with her again, and that Stephanie might have her friends flown over to the Mediterranean to stay on the yacht for her Sweet Sixteen. I think I got a card for my Sweet Sixteen. Briana got a stale coffee cake. So we commiserated that our grandmother hates us, but Grandpa likes us so we can go on trips and stuff. Grandpa’s awesome.
About ten years ago, Grandpa rented this 30-foot boat for a weekend, and that was his big thing. I went for an afternoon and we took a picture together at the back; that’s the only picture I’ve seen always out at his house and in his office for all ten years since. So, we took another picture together on the back of Aphrodite. It’s really cool to see how far he’s come.
Anyway, Briana and I had a field day putting everything on Facebook and tagging everything and adding captions and everything. I took this picture with Dane at the bar and I could stare at it alllllllllll day. We stared at it for just a little while. Also, I have my new profile pic for, like, ever.
Speaking of Facebook, I was creeping around a little bit, and… YOU GOT ME SOLD, MAN.
It was weird; everyone was just sitting inside with their luggage, and Briana and I were like “Dude let’s get some last minute sun!” Even though it was raining sort of. But we went on the top deck which is covered anyway and I put my iPod in the boat dock and we blasted music for the last hour and a half. Dane’s also a big Carolina Liar fan, so we talked about that a little, and jammed to some Santana and The Beatles. Whoooo~
I felt horrible. We asked Dane where Lonie was, and he said he had gotten sick and was up all night throwing up. We wanted him to at least come out to say goodbye, even if he was in his pajamas. Well, a little later we saw him in his dress uniform and looking so miserable it was like a sick puppy or something. A little sick yellow lab, with a droopy tail and glazed eyes. It was sadder than a sick puppy. I was sadder than two sick puppies. But Dane made him take some PB, and it made me think back to the conversation that we had about them watching each other’s backs. Take care of him, Dane!
Either way, I was very sad because he was up top when I was leaving, so I got to shout up to him but I didn’t get a hug. On the other hand, Briana says that she saw him just give Christina a handshake (lol!) but it might have been just because he “didn’t want to get her sick.” I said that I didn’t care about that; a barf bag is still a bag.
So yeah, I finished The Fountainhead on the plane home; I think it’s one of my favorites now. Seriously. I’ll probably talk about it more in another post, but let’s just say that I didn’t let go of it until I had to get off the plane (and what was that, another four hours?) I fell asleep with it.
I think that’s it. Well, that’s not it. Briana is going to send me her notes from the trip, and then I’ll probably make another little post (mixed with The Fountainhead stuff maybe) with all of the odds and ends that I forgot. =DDD