Cruising News You Can Use

I just finished my 3rd cruise. My first one was in the 90"s and I think the boat was called "The Dolphin", I remember we docked somewhere close to the Fascination and my boat looked like the fuel boat it was so small. Flash forward to 2013 and me and another then single girlfriend of mine cruised out of Tampa it was a Carnival ship, I do not remember the name. We travelled to The Cayman Islands, big thumbs up and to Cozumel I think...no comment here. Towards the end of 2015 after a long year of recovering from an automobile accident, I decided it was time to cruise again, this time with my 15 year old daughter. Gaby decided she wanted to bring her best friend Ashley and I agreed, as I love AShley like she was my own and I felt if her parents allowed her and paid her way why not. So what is the purpose of this blog???? This blog I hope helps you learn from all of my wonderful mistakes and learning scenarios I encountered. Feel free to paypal me at lynnvilla168@gmail.com if this helps you, saves you time, money or sanity or if you just appreciate me. I am happy to receive. Lesson #1, if you are a tour planner and selling cruises, forwarding me mass emails does not help me at all. I welcome feedback from any individual or companies that truly offer a complete service meaning alls I have to do is pack and walk onto the ship and have fun this was not my experience. Lesson #2, print out directions to your port in advance, send and email to all parties, download directions via GPS on all phones. Follow the directions on how to fold said luggage tags and staple them onto each bag you plan on checking. Lesson #3: Leave yourself plenty of time to drive to destination add 2 hours to what you think it will take. Lesson #4: If you need to drive in the night before find a hotel, close to port that will allow you to park your car SAFELY onsite and that has a regular shuttle going to and fro the port. My experience....I stayed in a motel -ell, drove to a lot close to the airport where they said $5 a day, but my receipt magically morphed to $40 plus oh you have to have a reservation and they only had 1 shuttle bus that they are going to make you wait until is filled up before you leave. Ask lots of questions. Lesson #5: Print out your travel documents in advance, download them on everybody's phone. Print out the luggage tags per bag of the ones you are going to check in. Do pack a carry on of bathing suit, towel, flip flops, sunscreen or wear them under your clothes. Have an EZ 1 piece dress that you can wear to dinner should your luggage never make it to your cabin. Lesson #6: Unless you are hard core....really the all inclusive drink thing is unnecessary and or perhaps AA is a better option than cruising right now. Lesson #7: Do find the itinieraries, do take the tours, this will save you time and frustration trying to figure out how to get to breakfast on time. They give alot of stuff away if you show up to these events. The gals at my dinner table had won several items before dinner. I with no planning got a free necklace and a free piece of art. Lesson #8: Be prepared for motion sickness. I wear the wrist bands. If you KNOW you get motion sickness bring some ginger chews with you. I promise after day 1 you will stop walking sideways. Lesson #9: I asked for and received via email the alcohol and drink policy. I clearly read 1 750 ml bottle of wine was acceptable, yeah, yippie save me from paying $20-$30 for a mediocre bottle of wine onboard. I FAILED to notice that it said PACKED IN YOUR CARRY ON LUGGAGE. So a. my tour person come on you gotta know this...... b. I got my bottle of Cupcake chardonnay confiscted, boo hoo. Lesson #10- Do bring nice clothes and something besides flip flops for dinner, they will tell you " Sorreee we cannot seet you in those closings." in some bizarre accent. Lesson #11- If you can swing it do not work the day of travel there or the day of travel back. Lesson #12- 4 days is plenty... Lesson #13-If you have packed more than 1 suitcase and 1 carryon, go back and repack. Lesson #14- Ladies you can live in your fabulous bathing suit all day but you will need a cover and flip flops to eat in the casual buffet style area. Lesson # 15 - Avoid the crazy fast food lines by knowing what time the buffet opens and closes. They do serve a sit down breakfast and dinner. Every lunch I feel I got there as they were putting the buffet is closed sign out, don't believe it, just keep moving and put food on your plate as fast as you can and or get used to hamburgers and french fries for lunch. Lesson #16- If you meet somebody really cool, let them know that....seize the moment and don't let it slip by. Lesson #17-Pack and bring a water bottle, the quality and taste of water changes DAILY, one day it will be like "OMG I can't drink that to oh this is really good, maybe it depends on how many drinks you have had?? Lesson #18: If you are single and travelling with kids, do be prepared to have them disappear and never come back, be comfortable being by yourself and or go and attend the singles events. Be mindful of all the married men who say" My wifes in the cabin sleeping, she wants me to have a good time." Do not assume because he is by himself that he is single, his wife just had better sense than he did and went to the cabin to get some sleep. Lesson #19: If finances are woo hoo the skys the limit do the excursion. If you have a budget The Bahamas was safe to take a taxi, they expect you to prepay round trip. Look at the excursions beforehand, research online, find a taxi thats going to one of the excursions advertised, the cruiselines are NOT going to send you somewhere UNSAFE. I paid $14 for a taxi that was a $80 excursion. I lucked out on the first day, the 2nd day I took a ferry and walked around for a bit to find Atlantis Hotel. You do not have to pay to enter Atlantis and there is a free beach nearby. Lesson #20: Give yourself PLENTY of time to get back via taxi, I saw woman become unhinged trying to get back to their boats because everybody waited till the last hour and all the taxi's were full. Hope that helps, good journey.

How do I LOVE ME....

Let me count the ways. Valentines Day is fast approaching. This will cause some of us to feel a little less than if we aren't coupled. But why? Why do we have to be coupled in order to feel good about ourselves. I mentioned to a friend the other day ...well it starts with me. Her reply ws yes it all starts with you and everyone is a mirror. So what if we all just loved ourselves and I mean really loved ourselves what would happen? I suppose if everyone loved themselves first and foremost and really got that we are all connected and there is no separation between me and you, than I would never consciously choose to hurt another human being. If we never hurt another human being , then the possibility of World Peace comes in. So the subject of the paper is how do I love me, let me count the ways. How can I love myself. How can I love, honor and appreciate myself more and more each day? Here are a few ideas: 1. Meditate everyday on the concept of love....what....the more you connect with the divine nature of the Universe the more you will become that. Don't know where to begin. Start here with www.davidji.com. Sign up for a free 21 day meditative process, if you stick with this I guarantee your life will change and you will thank me. 2. Have a spiritual plan and discipline every day even if its reading something positive in the am upon waking and again have it be on self love, perhaps a book called You Can Heal Yourself by Louis Hayes. 3. Tell yourself everyday in the mirror: I love you, you are awesome and amazing. Look deeply into your eyes and then say "I am surrounded by people who love, honor and respect me. 4. Begin to tell everyone that you love them. 5. Hug everybody. 6. Get up and get dressed fabulously everyday even if you do not have plans. 7. Create your bucket list with no thought of how, when, or financial sense, you simply write it out of desire and allow yourself to have as much as you want. I did this yesterday and wrote 3 full pages. 8. Narrow that list to 12. 9. Post that list. 10. Treasure map your number one desire and place it somewhere where you can see it before you go to bed and when you wake up in the am. 11. Take salt baths as often as you can. 12. Buy yourself flowers, literally you can buy inexpensive flowers at Aldi and Trader Joes from $3.00 up. Why wait for someone to give them to you. 13. Buy the best that you can afford, I believe personally you can buy brand new clothes at a Dillards outlet than you can at..... 14. Believe you deserve new clothes and not someone else's energetically printed clothes or accesories. 15. Buy yourself a full length mirror and look at yourself naked everyday and tell yourself you love yourself exactly the way it is, do this even if you don't believe it. Do it until you LOVE your body and yourself, then your body will magically transform itself when you accept it the way it is. 16. Find a Spiritual Community you can connect to even if you had a bad experience as a child, get over it. Spiritual food is a necessity. What are you teaching yourself, your partner and your children. So you may not have agreed with your parents philosophy go out and find a new one and stop complaining about the old one. 17.Make your bedroom and home a sanctuary. 18. Light candles just because you love yourself. 19. Only use products on your body that you can eat. 20. Massage your body daily with coconut oil infused with rose oil and look at yourself in your full length mirror and tell yourself : I love you, you are a beautiful body temple, Thank you for serving me so well. 21. Forgive yourself and everyone in your world. How... Begin with this one simple meditation. Google Forgiveness meditation and the The Monroe Institute, do this meditation once in am and once in pm. Thats all for know I will add to this list. I am off to my weekly Spiritual Center which for me is Centers for Spiritual Living in Asheville, NC because it teaches me how to have my best life ever. May you all have the most amazing Valentines Day 2016 that you ever had. If you follow this program and get amazing results I am always open to receive a love offering via paypal at lynnvilla168@gmail.com.

Creating harMONEY in a Sharing Economy

The information I am writing about is coming straight through me. The only time I have heard the word sharing is when it was being referred to in the AirBnB model. I have no political training or inspirations nor do I have any desires around them. The information is coming only from a source of LOVE and how we can all get along better in this infinite Universe. Those of us who believe in Spiritual Laws will continue to find ways to make our lives easier, how to help our fellow man and of course how can we sustain our families in this time. When corporations and business continue to do what they do and I am not here to label what they do or make them wrong. We just choose NOT to be part of that system. We will find a way to THRIVE in this economy by doing what we term is right and true in our hearts. By following our bliss and being of service to our fellow man. One way a group of us have been doing this is through the ever amazing and popular platform of AirBnB. What a concept and yes it has been a cash COW for everyone. I am speaking from a viewpoint of having 2 mortgages, being a single Mom and at times being on unemployment. Why would we want to shut this system down? How can we be threatening anyone’s economy? We are not, we are simply creating a new stream of revenue. We are not competing with the Hyatts and the Biltmores, that is simply absurd. We are creating an entire new industry where someone wakes up one day and realizes, oh yeah, I want to go check out Asheville, the coolest city on the planet and now I have a means to. No I can’t afford to or better I choose NOT to spend $150 a night on a hotel but I’d rather share my money with a single Mom or Dad or even a Grandmother who is raising her 3 grandchildren. I will have extra money to spend on their THRIVING tourist economy and bam, win-win, everybody wins. Do not limit us, fine us, ticket us, threaten us, tells us your going to make us sell our house. HOA’s listen up, how loving is it to tell your single Mom family that you are going to sue her and force her to sell her house? Everyone and I mean everyone needs to bone up on Spiritual Lessons on karma. What you do to me will come back to you multiplied abuntantly. I told my neighbor what the HOA sent me, a certified letter in the mail. He wanted a copy of it…He said if he didn’t have a problem with what I was doing, no one gets to. I think he has secret super powers and I think he knows a few very important people. That’s not a threat just thoughts I think. I think we all have the right to create a win win income based on however we choose to. The extra money has allowed me to pay my 2 mortgages, spruce up my home, paint and power wash the outside of my home. Isn’t this a GREAT thing for our neighborhood? Or would it be better for me to fail, go into foreclosure, go on welfare, food stamps and unemployment CANCEL CANCEL …and pull down the home values in my own neighborhood. Wake up and smell the sharing economy. It’s going to happen regardless. Can you limit or tax couch surfing? At least AirBnB has given the communities that are sqwaking the most what they want…MONEY in the form of occupancy tax. The values for rooms have gone down significantly, not sure how that is going to work out but I do know that requests for my rooms have declined dramatically. I just got back from a home in an undisclosed state who doesn’t even use AirBnB, it’s all word of mouth. He is a single homeowner renting rooms to people who are on a healing journey. Magically a group of 6 people shared a home, 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths over a weekend. He provided affordable beds to those of us who were seeking to heal ourselves, he made income to pay his bills and probably decided…you know what I can keep this home and make a living and the community at large benefitted from us purchasing food at their wonderful restaurants and wares in the stores. Let this tribe thrive, let us show you how we can all learn how to live together successfully, let go of the old model and old paradigms. No matter what you try to do to us we will find a way to gather and heal because GOD wants us to and the more you threaten, limit, harass, tax, yadda yadda to US the more the effects of KARMA will come upon you, your families, your business, your industry. Just saying… Love and Light. Athena in Asheville

My thought on 2012 and 2013

I am sitting on a black leather couch overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. It is an amazing view. It has always been a dream of mine to live in a beachhouse so I get to check that one off the list. I started this blog years ago. I am a great writer, always have been and always will be. It's time to put my thoughts out there and share my genius or lack of it with the world and I fancy myself a comedien sometime so don't take me or life that seriously. 2012 is done and over with. For many of us we are grateful for this. 2012 kicked my proverbial a--. We are all still here , the world didn't come to an end and I did not start levitating on December 21 which is my birthday. Those of you who really know me and I mean really know me, know I have some interesting gifts so the following are my intuitive empathic outlook on what happened in 2012 and what is likely to happen in 2013. I think for the lightworkers and you know who you are, or the awakened group of individuals dwelling in this space and time here right now , whether you choose to admit your level of consciousness, I think we all are getting our proverbial a-- kicked if at this point in time if you are not on your spiritual or dharmic path, meaning the path you chose to be on when you incarnated into this plane. If you are not for whatever reason and I will use myself as an example The Universe will start throwing you some interesting stuff and by interesting I mean beyond ridiculous , I am doing my best to remain positive here. So if you feel like the World is or went crazy during the later part of 2012 you are in good company. I do not think we need to spend our precious time or energy rehashing all the wondrous things we managed to create and manifest in 2012 but to sit back and in the words of Christy Corna a very wise Minister I know in Asheville, North Carolina and go "Ha", don't look at it any longer, don't ponder, just be in complete amazement of what you have created. Now the power lies in 2013. New Year, new clean slate to start all over again. What are you going to create? I am happy to know and treat for anyone who wants to share their dreams, desires, goals for 2013. I am a Powerful Manifestress. For me I want to share with the whole world wide web that I intent to create that perfect loving Spiritual partner, have a loving family, open that Retreat center in the woods, BE FINANCIALLY FREE, have a more amazing body in top physical, mental and emotional balance and form, BE living my dreams and passions everyday by being lucratively paid for them. What are you doing, thinking right now? Whatever it is you are setting the tone for 2013. Make it the Best Year Ever. The energies that are around right now are phenomenal and very condusive for manifestation. So my predictions is if you chose to get back on your Dharmic Path now the energies that are around all of us right now will facilitate the process with warp like speed. The other prediction if you stay off path with the level of consciousness that you are at (meaning the boomerane will occur in direct porportion to your knowledge base/level of consciousness) you will start to experience what I call instantaneous Karmic boomerang effect IKBE can I coin that phase. Meaning if you do things you know you ought not be doing the cause and effect is both instantaneous and amazingly mind boggling. Things coming back multiplied ABUNDANTLY and I have seen this, it is neither fun or enjoyable but I have in moments been truly amazed at my Karmic boomerangs and I am ready to embrace a New 2013. What is you Grand Master Plan? If you are reading this it is because you are in my life somehow and I want you to know I am wishing you the Best Year ever, the encouragement and the confidence to follow your dreams and the Divine Guidance of always KNOWING exactly what to do. May you attract everything your heart desires for the highest good for all involved. Go out and share your gift with the world and uplift Humanity!! Blessings, Lynn Villa RScPE Religious Science Practioner Extraordinaire

How to successfully remove gasoline from clothes

This is my first blog on this site. I do have a few posted on myspace, feel free to check them out. I'd like to think of myself as a Green Martha Stewart but without the tv show, magazine and ....billions of dollars.

Hemingways...I have to share this story because Gaby my daughter said I had to post it.I have always loved writing and maybe some smart publisher or newspaper will see my blog and hire me on the spot. Yes and I live in a beautiful world called Lynntopia.

So I am teaching my 9 year old and a borrowed 7 year old how to pump gas. Slide the credit card, enter pin, press start..yadda yadda. We got to the part where we are successfully pumping gas into the car with the locking device on the pump. The little one is watching the numbers until it hits $20 and beep beep beep goes the cell phone and Mommy goes off to Lynntopia.

Next thing I know I see Gaby against the pump, with the pump in her hand up in the air with gas pouring out ala "Zoolander" gasoline blow up scene and I am promptly brought back to this reality.

I casually ok maybe wasn't so casually grab the pump, turn it off and replace it to it's proper location. I instruct all children to get into the car, promptly return borrowed child and go home, straight home . Did I tell you I am sensitive to all strong smells thus my love of all things green and natural. I was not enjoying the overpowing smell of gasoline in my car and was adamant it was not coming into my "sacred place" which is my home. I instruct Gaby to remove clothes upon entry , I remove mine and promptly throw into washer machine.

Heres what not to do first:
1. Do not combine with the clothes you already have in the washer machine because after your first unsuccessful attempt at washing the clothes now you have an entire load of smelly clothes.
2. I tried all of the following unsuccessfully: hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, large amounts of regular liquid detergent, more baking soda.
3. I then read online plus I have a major in Chemistry (no not Rocket Science Thank God it wasn't jet fuel)that you need an oil based cleaner thus me being green had no petroleum based products in the house so I thought-coconut oil, that didn't work either.
4. Washing 4 to 5 times with combinations of the above didn't work, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I left the clothes in the machine with obvious globs of organic coconut oil glistening back at me. All of this occurs between Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

What to do
1. Go to the .99cent store and buy a plethora of cleaning products.
2. Guess which one or ones to use first.
3. I tried one bottle of Arm and Hammer Essentials and Degreaser this is a plant based cleaner with an empty spray bottle and a small bottle of concentrated cleaner. I diluted it(meaning add the entire cartridge to empty bottle) with water about 50% (approx 16 0z) of the spray bottle and poured the entire bottle into the load.
4. I added approximately 2 ounces of Ajax Super Degreaser Antibacterial Orange dish soap .
5. Ran the load on hot/warm stopped it to soak overnight. Ran it the next morning and presto clean super fresh clothes.

Everything is clean, nothing was damaged and everything smelled absolutely wonderful. Now I know this wasn't a totally green solution but it was a successful one and my intention is that if I save one Mom or Rocket Scientist from all of my hassle and experimentation than my job here is done.

By the way I must add a footnote here. When I was a little kid I'd lock myself up in the bathroom and play Mad Scientist. I'd combine whatever I could in the sink like Selson Blue, toothpaste and toilet cleaner and then mix it all up. I guess this was before child safety locks.



Have a blessed day!!