Seems like everything’s been coming at me all at once the past two weeks. Guns have been a-blazing and disappointment has reigned supreme. So this morning when I took a deep breath and flipped the calendar to the alleged clean slate of September, I should have been prepared for another tidal wave of emotions.

A mere two weeks ago, I had been preparing to leave for an 8-country, 18-day, Grand European Cruise. It starts in Copenhagen and ends in Venice, looping all of Europe and stopping at fabulous ports of call every other day.

But 12 days ago, Rick, my amazing travel companion, was hospitalized yet again for complications of congestive heart failure (CHF), a condition he has successfully lived with for the past 14 years.

However this time, his projected stay in the hospital is several weeks. Consequently, our trip had to be cancelled.

So instead of packing my “little black dress” for the formal dinners on board, I am scrambling to fill out pages and pages of forms for the travel insurance company. We hope to get back much of the money we plunked down for this trip, but it will take time to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is, and gather all the medical documentation necessary to process the claim.

And here on my calendar there’s a squiggly line, arcing two and a half times across the page, from September 5 through 23, mocking me for daring to plan this adventure IN INK, a full year ago.

Thankfully, we have our memories of Italy, Austria, England and Scotland, all toured in 2012. Thankfully, we did not wait to go on those trips. Europe is now permanently off the table for us, but there are plenty of things inside the US that we both still haven’t seen, and we’ll move those destinations to the top of our travel wish list.

Meanwhile, thank you for keeping Rick in your prayers. We’ve still got lots of things to do and places to go, and right now he needs to focus on getting his strength back up so we can do just that!

Carpé diem, Semper fi, and Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!