Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 40: Christine La Vonna; How A Cruise Ship Creator Built Her Global Travel Community

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Episode 40: Christine La Vonna; How A Cruise Ship Creator Built Her Global Travel Community · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  Douglas: Hi, my name is Doug.
• 0:01
  Douglas: Thanks for tuning into my podcast, Doug Has Questions.
• 0:03
  Douglas: I was born and raised in Haynes, Alaska with two former educators' parents.
• 0:07
  Douglas: They got out of education, went into retail, and my sister and I grew up in a retail store that now includes clothing, groceries, and sporting goods.
• 0:16
  Douglas: Over the years, had a chance to meet people from a variety of different backgrounds, and I have a lot of questions for them.
• 0:22
  Douglas: Now I get to ask them.
• 0:24
  Douglas: Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions for the in Skagway today, filming at Skagway Brewing Company, and hats off to Skagway Brewing Company for letting us use this room next to their aeroponics facility so you can come over here and see how they're growing their greens that they put in all their food that they're serving downstairs.
• 0:44
  Douglas: And also a big thank you to Reba Hilton from the Haynes Visitor Center for helping coordinate this trip.
• 0:51
  Douglas: Also, we can come over here and see Christine Kessler.
• 0:56
  Christine: Kesslo, I'm big held hostage.
• 0:58
  Christine: Just kidding.
• 1:00
  Christine: I just got done with work.
• 1:02
  Christine: Most people, before we do a podcast, you let me like fix my hair and makeup, but we just went from the 89-degree weather out here in Skegway straight to the microphone.
• 1:11
  Douglas: So straight to the microphone.
• 1:12
  Christine: I'm usually prettier than this, guys.
• 1:14
  Christine: Is that possible?
• 1:15
  Christine: No.
• 1:16
  Christine: You're sweet.
• 1:18
  Douglas: So Christine.
• 1:20
  Christine: Yes.
• 1:21
  Douglas: Content creator.
• 1:22
  Christine: Yep.
• 1:23
  Douglas: Influencer?
• 1:24
  Douglas: Sure.
• 1:24
  Douglas: Life or living on a cruise ship.
• 1:27
  Christine: Yep.
• 1:27
  Christine: Living on a traveling full-time.
• 1:29
  Douglas: Traveling full-time.
• 1:30
  Christine: Yep.
• 1:30
  Douglas: Doing content.
• 1:31
  Douglas: Yep.
• 1:31
  Douglas: What?
• 1:32
  Douglas: VH1.
• 1:33
  Douglas: Yep.
• 1:34
  Douglas: VH1 show.
• 1:35
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:36
  Douglas: Twice on Oprah.
• 1:37
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:38
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Douglas: What else am I missing here?
• 1:40
  Christine: Um, I don't know.
• 1:42
  Christine: We've been in People magazine a couple times now, and and I travel the world full time.
• 1:47
  Christine: Every day I travel and I live on a ship half the year.
• 1:53
  Christine: And now we have like three million people that travel with me.
• 1:57
  Douglas: And you you get paid to travel.
• 1:59
  Christine: I do.
• 1:59
  Christine: I get paid to smile and give hugs too.
• 2:01
  Christine: That's what I did today before you guys um handcuffed me and took me out of the store, um, held me hostage here.
• 2:08
  Douglas: Um so wait, we got the smile, but we didn't get a hug.
• 2:10
  Douglas: Yeah, I know.
• 2:11
  Douglas: Do we get a hug afterwards or does it depend on the content?
• 2:14
  Christine: When I was in Catch Can the other week, we gave 2,875 hugs.
• 2:18
  Christine: I did.
• 2:19
  Douglas: And do you have a little clicker that you're keeping track of?
• 2:22
  Christine: No, I can't I go back because I take photos of everybody I gave hugs to.
• 2:25
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Christine: And I go back and I count the heads after I post them on Facebook.
• 2:30
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:30
  Christine: And I I had to go get a massage because my underarms were sore from all the hugging, hugging.
• 2:35
  Christine: Because I would rather hug someone than shake their hand.
• 2:37
  Christine: I don't want to shake your hand.
• 2:39
  Christine: Okay.
• 2:39
  Christine: Did I shake your hand today?
• 2:41
  Christine: No.
• 2:41
  Christine: Oh, okay, good.
• 2:42
  Christine: Just kidding.
• 2:43
  Christine: You're confirming everything you just said.
• 2:46
  Christine: No, no, no.
• 2:47
  Christine: Some people like will want to shake my hand, but I'm a former cruise director.
• 2:50
  Christine: That's something that we didn't talk about.
• 2:52
  Christine: Yeah.
• 2:52
  Christine: Former cruise director, and so I used to have to shake everybody's hands, and like there's something about having to touch, you know, 200 hands a day.
• 2:58
  Christine: It's like, I'll just rather hug you.
• 3:01
  Douglas: So that that's less of an issue than shaking somebody's hand?
• 3:05
  Christine: Yeah.
• 3:05
  Christine: I think so.
• 3:06
  Christine: Yeah.
• 3:06
  Christine: Okay.
• 3:07
  Christine: Yeah.
• 3:07
  Christine: We'll go with that.
• 3:08
  Christine: Okay.
• 3:10
  Douglas: Are you ready to get into your backstory?
• 3:11
  Christine: Sure.
• 3:12
  Christine: Where are we starting?
• 3:13
  Douglas: Where where you grew up?
• 3:15
  Christine: Yeah, I grew up in Iowa.
• 3:16
  Christine: I grew up in Iowa.
• 3:18
  Christine: I was uh always in activities, but I was horrible at school.
• 3:23
  Christine: Like I was your typical C student, and in math I was always failing.
• 3:28
  Christine: So I'd like to go up and I mean, I'm sorry, if I had to flirt with the teacher, I would just to get my my my D plus to a C minus.
• 3:36
  Christine: I did that.
• 3:37
  Christine: Yeah.
• 3:37
  Christine: Um I hope my mom's not watching this right now.
• 3:40
  Douglas: Anyways, um I hope your mom is watching this right now.
• 3:44
  Christine: But I was in the school newspaper.
• 3:46
  Douglas: So you get you you'd get grounded for D's?
• 3:49
  Christine: Oh, absolutely.
• 3:49
  Christine: I got grounded.
• 3:50
  Christine: My whole high school career I was grounded.
• 3:52
  Christine: I never got to go anywhere.
• 3:53
  Christine: Because my dad was actually really bad growing up, like partied and you know, was kind of dating a lot of girls and stuff, so he never he knew how the life was, so he never let me out of the house.
• 4:03
  Christine: So I was always grounded.
• 4:04
  Christine: If I didn't drink my milk at dinner, I was grounded.
• 4:06
  Christine: If I said the word D-A-M-N, I was grounded.
• 4:10
  Christine: Not allowed to cuss.
• 4:12
  Christine: Not allowed to cuss.
• 4:12
  Christine: No, can't even say shut up.
• 4:15
  Christine: I have to say, will you please be quiet?
• 4:17
  Christine: Anyways, good lessons.
• 4:20
  Christine: Great parents, uh, strict parents, uh, but I I never drank or did rugs in high school or anything like that.
• 4:29
  Christine: I went on a full art scholarship to uh Drake University for operatic performance, but I wanted to be a weather girl because I love tornadoes.
• 4:37
  Christine: I dream about them every month um multiple times.
• 4:40
  Christine: I love the weather and how it changes, but I guess you have to be good at math to be a meteorologist, and I'm not good at math.
• 4:48
  Douglas: Unless I'm like you couldn't flirt with somebody that knew math to help you out with the math part to just I still don't know what A plus B is.
• 4:54
  Christine: Like, why are we counting why are we counting letters?
• 4:58
  Christine: But I do know how to take 15% off my item at Walmart.
• 5:02
  Christine: I'm good.
• 5:03
  Douglas: You learned what she you learned the basic skills.
• 5:05
  Christine: I love counting money too.
• 5:06
  Christine: That's great.
• 5:08
  Douglas: Just the calculus and the higher math.
• 5:10
  Christine: If I'm adding up money, I can add up.
• 5:12
  Christine: If I'm adding up my money, I'm gonna get it.
• 5:13
  Douglas: Your money, you can do that all day long.
• 5:15
  Christine: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:16
  Douglas: So you learned the skills you needed.
• 5:17
  Christine: I did, you know.
• 5:18
  Douglas: So, what did your parents do?
• 5:20
  Christine: My dad was a tool and die maker, so he worked for a factory.
• 5:23
  Christine: Okay, and my mom was a nurse.
• 5:25
  Christine: And yeah, so they they worked a lot of long hours, so I was always with a babysitter.
• 5:30
  Christine: Um, I had some good babysitters and some bad ones.
• 5:33
  Christine: But yeah, just grew up the typical lower lower mid-class, yeah.
• 5:39
  Christine: Um, Iowa farm country, yeah, yeah.
• 5:42
  Christine: My grandpa was a farmer of watermelons and and uh pumpkins and things like that.
• 5:48
  Christine: And my mom was Miss Port Queen like 1968.
• 5:52
  Christine: Go, mom.
• 5:54
  Douglas: So we talked about this briefly before we started when we were downstairs, but I don't know of a lot of opera singers coming out of Iowa.
• 6:03
  Christine: Yeah.
• 6:03
  Douglas: Is that a thing that that is that like a hot?
• 6:06
  Christine: Obviously, I have a lot of air going through me because I talk a lot and I'm very vocal.
• 6:10
  Christine: Um, but yeah, no, I I don't know of a lot.
• 6:13
  Christine: I didn't really get into it though because I went to school with the scholarship and then I dropped I dropped out.
• 6:18
  Douglas: So you didn't really but were you doing that kind of singing in high school then?
• 6:21
  Douglas: Obviously.
• 6:22
  Christine: No, they never let me.
• 6:23
  Douglas: They never let you.
• 6:24
  Christine: No, all I was doing was like whatever alto soprano, I don't know.
• 6:28
  Christine: I would they put me in the altos, and and then I remember I was in my school play and it was a musical, and I didn't get the part I wanted for my senior year, and my dad told me I could quit.
• 6:37
  Christine: What great parenting dad.
• 6:38
  Christine: And you didn't.
• 6:40
  Christine: You know what I wanted to be?
• 6:42
  Christine: I wanted to be that big chubby nun, old nun in Sound of Music.
• 6:46
  Christine: And the lady, which this is a compliment, I guess, but she said we couldn't make Christine big and and not good looking, so that's why we couldn't give her the part.
• 6:55
  Christine: I'm like, listen, I could have put I could have made myself, you know, bigger and you know, whatever, but she was just using that as an excuse because the other lady that got the part, their parents gave more money to the school than mine.
• 7:06
  Christine: I don't think my parents gave them any money to the school.
• 7:08
  Douglas: So you think the the part the position was bought and paid for?
• 7:11
  Douglas: Of course.
• 7:13
  Christine: Yeah.
• 7:13
  Christine: And then I remember my drama teacher told me that no one would ever listen to me speak because I have a nasally voice.
• 7:19
  Christine: Do I have a nasally voice?
• 7:20
  Douglas: No.
• 7:21
  Christine: Anyway, so she told me that.
• 7:22
  Douglas: But I I went Do you want to know what we have in common then?
• 7:24
  Douglas: What?
• 7:24
  Douglas: When I was in college, I was I want I went for business.
• 7:28
  Douglas: My parents had a store, went for business, and that wasn't turning out because apparently when you get to college you have to study.
• 7:35
  Christine: Oh yeah, I don't do that.
• 7:36
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 7:37
  Douglas: The micro macroeconomics.
• 7:40
  Christine: Yeah.
• 7:40
  Douglas: I just went over to the code.
• 7:41
  Douglas: What is that?
• 7:43
  Douglas: We don't need that.
• 7:44
  Douglas: So I always wanted to be I always wanted to be a sports broadcaster.
• 7:46
  Douglas: So I'm going to communications.
• 7:48
  Douglas: One of my first class, and we have to do a public speaking thing.
• 7:50
  Douglas: Oh my god.
• 7:51
  Douglas: The professor's like, you don't have a good public speaking voice.
• 7:54
  Douglas: Yeah, I hope you want to go into print journalism.
• 7:56
  Douglas: So I was like, see on the communications.
• 7:58
  Douglas: Peace out.
• 7:59
  Douglas: I'm not doing that.
• 8:00
  Christine: We could have our own TV show.
• 8:01
  Christine: I could be the meteorologist, and you would be the sports.
• 8:05
  Douglas: Let's do it.
• 8:06
  Christine: Oh my gosh, look at us.
• 8:07
  Christine: What are we gonna call this?
• 8:08
  Christine: KWQC Haynes?
• 8:09
  Christine: I don't know.
• 8:10
  Christine: That works for me.
• 8:11
  Christine: I just made that up.
• 8:12
  Christine: It works.
• 8:12
  Christine: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Christine: Oh my gosh.
• 8:15
  Christine: Let's do it.
• 8:16
  Christine: Let's do it.
• 8:16
  Christine: Come into a TV soon.
• 8:19
  Christine: We're like, I think it's gonna be a little windy today.
• 8:21
  Christine: Um, but uh yeah, so high school came from, you know, typical family.
• 8:28
  Douglas: But the thing that gets me on that is were you interested in opera?
• 8:33
  Christine: No, I just had a big voice.
• 8:35
  Christine: I I sang and I they I I would they were wanting me to double major in meteorology or jar broadcasting and then also music performance.
• 8:45
  Christine: And I'm like, nope, not doing this.
• 8:47
  Christine: So my mom dropped me off at college, and within four days, I went to the uh what do you call it, dean of I don't know.
• 8:55
  Christine: Yeah, um, H whatever it is.
• 8:58
  Christine: I I dropped it.
• 8:59
  Christine: I just dropped my scholarship.
• 9:00
  Christine: So my parents made me pay for college uh my freshman year, which was $32,000 because um it was a private school and we couldn't afford for me to go to a private school unless I got a scholarship.
• 9:11
  Christine: So I paid for it.
• 9:12
  Christine: Yeah, it was good.
• 9:14
  Douglas: Yeah, it was big.
• 9:14
  Douglas: We're good.
• 9:15
  Douglas: So you were you hustling jobs at college then to make sure to pay for it?
• 9:18
  Christine: Red lobster man.
• 9:19
  Christine: All right, where do you think I learned how to tell the difference between a boy and a female lobster?
• 9:23
  Christine: Where do you think I learned to crack crab legs?
• 9:26
  Douglas: Red lobster.
• 9:26
  Christine: It wasn't Alaska, it was Iowa at Red Lobster.
• 9:29
  Christine: I I was a great server too.
• 9:31
  Christine: I would hustle, I would really hustle because cash tips were I just loved getting a present on the table.
• 9:38
  Christine: I was a good server, and I always too, if I really liked the table, especially for the all-you-can-eat shrimp.
• 9:43
  Christine: I think this is why Red Lobster went out of business.
• 9:45
  Christine: But all you can eat shrimp, if I really liked the family, I'd be like, ooh, looks like maybe you should get another scampe to take home, huh?
• 9:52
  Christine: What do you think?
• 9:53
  Christine: You know?
• 9:53
  Christine: And I'd load them up, and then my tip was better.
• 9:56
  Christine: Probably why they're going bankrupt.
• 9:58
  Douglas: Probably all because of the big thing.
• 9:59
  Christine: I'd always give them extra cheddar bait biscuits too.
• 10:01
  Christine: And sometimes when they got the lobster tail, I'd be like, ooh, that looks a little small, doesn't it?
• 10:06
  Douglas: So do you think the statute of limitations on embezzlement and theft are probably passed now, so you're not they're not gonna come after you?
• 10:12
  Christine: Yeah.
• 10:13
  Douglas: You think it's probably cleared.
• 10:14
  Christine: Red lobster, I love you.
• 10:16
  Christine: Anyways, no, yeah, no, they won't come after me for the $50 I earned.
• 10:22
  Christine: I did get a pin though, because I was a five-year employee.
• 10:25
  Douglas: Five-year employee, red lobster.
• 10:27
  Douglas: Sets you on a path to where you are.
• 10:29
  Christine: And then I worked at a car dealership.
• 10:31
  Christine: I can see the customer service.
• 10:33
  Christine: I I worked with all men, and it was not easy, but I would like try to sell people like the Pro Pack, which is like the undercoating on your car, even though it's already undercoated.
• 10:43
  Christine: I mean, it was it I I had to work, guys, I needed a job.
• 10:46
  Christine: So, like bedliners, um, sidesteps, like I was this young girl selling these older men all of their extras on the trucks.
• 10:56
  Christine: I did pretty well.
• 10:58
  Douglas: Did it go back to kind of the high school where you're flirting for your grades?
• 11:01
  Douglas: That if you just kind of batted an eye and wore, you know, it was a problem though.
• 11:06
  Christine: Morally, I had a problem selling these people.
• 11:08
  Christine: Like, if I knew they didn't need it and they're like, Oh, I can't afford the extra $50 a month payment.
• 11:14
  Christine: My problem is I'm not good at sales.
• 11:16
  Christine: I'm really good at marketing, but I'm not good at sales because I'm like, you really don't need it, you know, like it's okay.
• 11:21
  Christine: And then I didn't get a paycheck.
• 11:23
  Christine: So, anyways, what else is it?
• 11:26
  Christine: Yeah, and then I worked for a university and I was a presenter for high school students.
• 11:33
  Christine: I would teach, I would go around the state of Iowa and I would teach them resume writing, interviewing skills, credits, um, all of those things.
• 11:44
  Christine: Yeah.
• 11:44
  Christine: I so I went around to all schools and basically I'd do I'd present and then I'd try to get them enrolling in my school.
• 11:50
  Christine: I did pretty well.
• 11:52
  Douglas: Was that an hourly position, or did you get a kickback for each student that you got enrolled?
• 11:57
  Christine: No, it was a salaried position, and yeah, I yeah, I did that for like three years.
• 12:03
  Christine: But I loved it because I was always out of office traveling to the schools.
• 12:08
  Christine: Dude, I was driving around listening to my music, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, you know.
• 12:15
  Christine: And I did about two hours of work a day.
• 12:17
  Christine: It was great.
• 12:18
  Christine: Perfect.
• 12:18
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 12:19
  Douglas: So were you doing that while you were in college, or was this after you're bailed up?
• 12:22
  Douglas: I bailed college.
• 12:24
  Christine: Went to college for one year, bailed.
• 12:26
  Christine: Then I tried going to community college, didn't do that.
• 12:30
  Christine: But then people started offering me these positions, thinking I had a college education, um, because I would put down I attended Drake University.
• 12:38
  Christine: Well, they didn't understand that they didn't.
• 12:40
  Douglas: Attendance and graduation are two different things.
• 12:42
  Christine: They didn't ask me for my thing.
• 12:43
  Christine: I was golden, man.
• 12:44
  Christine: You know, I was working for a university, enrolling college students, but I didn't go to college myself.
• 12:49
  Christine: There you go.
• 12:51
  Christine: But for some people, it's very important.
• 12:53
  Christine: For me, it wasn't because my skills led me to something else.
• 12:57
  Christine: And I love like now telling people go to trade school, don't spend all your money for this four-year degree.
• 13:03
  Christine: Like my daughter now, she's 18.
• 13:05
  Christine: She's gonna be a beautician.
• 13:06
  Christine: She's going to cosmetology school.
• 13:08
  Christine: I love that for her.
• 13:10
  Christine: Um, but all of my friends were getting in all this college debt, and here I was, you know, making what I thought was really good money out of car dealership.
• 13:20
  Douglas: Well, I and I I I think that is true in a lot of ways that kids are forced, kind of really influenced to go into college.
• 13:29
  Christine: Yeah, they're supposed to go to high school, college, uh, get married, have kids.
• 13:33
  Christine: It's like bam, bam, bam.
• 13:34
  Christine: Life is not like that.
• 13:35
  Douglas: It's well, it's not the best fit for everybody.
• 13:37
  Douglas: No.
• 13:37
  Christine: That's not not everybody is supposed to go to college for four years.
• 13:40
  Christine: Not everybody is supposed to pay $80,000 for college.
• 13:43
  Christine: And not, there's not many families, especially in this economy, that can pay all that money for their kids, you know.
• 13:50
  Douglas: Yeah, you come out of the house.
• 13:50
  Douglas: You got $80,000 to $100,000 in debt, you gotta pay off.
• 13:53
  Douglas: How long does it take to do that?
• 13:55
  Christine: My friends, and I'm 45 now, my friends just finished paying their college off.
• 13:59
  Christine: They were paying $800, some of them were paying $800 a month.
• 14:02
  Christine: I'm like, whoa.
• 14:03
  Christine: That's a lot.
• 14:03
  Christine: Glad I didn't do that.
• 14:05
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 14:05
  Christine: You know, but my mother, she has her master's degree, she's very into education.
• 14:09
  Christine: Um, so she was disappointed that I didn't graduate college.
• 14:13
  Christine: Uh, and she was disappointed up until I got into cruise directing.
• 14:17
  Christine: So when I um when I left working for the university, I had my daughter.
• 14:27
  Christine: She was three pounds.
• 14:29
  Christine: I'm sorry, sorry, she was two pounds, five ounces.
• 14:33
  Christine: Yeah, she was little, she was born three months early.
• 14:35
  Christine: I was gonna say she had to be a pre-man.
• 14:37
  Christine: Yeah, so I had um the ladies will know this, but you know, you've you've heard of pre-clampsia, but there's something worse than pre-calampsia.
• 14:43
  Christine: It's called help syndrome.
• 14:44
  Christine: It's where your liver and kidney shuts down.
• 14:46
  Christine: That's what happened to me.
• 14:47
  Christine: So it's also called like Michelin man syndrome.
• 14:49
  Christine: So here I was like six, seven months pregnant, maybe, and I my nose blew up.
• 14:56
  Christine: People were calling me Fiona from Shrek, and I was just getting big big.
• 15:00
  Christine: My feet went from a size eight to a 10.
• 15:02
  Christine: And I know, right?
• 15:04
  Christine: And I didn't know what was happening to me.
• 15:06
  Christine: And I was at these universities talking to these kids, and I was about ready to pass out every single time I was on stage.
• 15:11
  Christine: So I had headed home, and I remember Dr.
• 15:14
  Christine: Phil was on the TV and I was taking a nap, and I was supposed to be working.
• 15:17
  Christine: And my sister-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, um, she called, hadn't called, I haven't talked to her for like four years.
• 15:24
  Christine: She had a dream about me.
• 15:25
  Christine: And she's like, Chris, I had a dream about you.
• 15:27
  Christine: Is your pregnancy going okay?
• 15:28
  Christine: And I go, Yeah, it's going fine, except for, and then I told her all the symptoms.
• 15:32
  Christine: She goes, Chris, you're in critical condition.
• 15:33
  Christine: You need to get to the hospital right away.
• 15:35
  Christine: And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:36
  Christine: And she's like, No, you really need to get to the hospital.
• 15:38
  Christine: I'm like, I will, I promise.
• 15:39
  Christine: And then I didn't.
• 15:40
  Christine: And then the next day, I'm never late for anything.
• 15:43
  Christine: I'm always on time for stuff.
• 15:44
  Christine: And the next day I was in the shower and I almost passed out and I knew I'm gonna be late for work.
• 15:49
  Christine: So I called my university and said, I'm gonna be late.
• 15:52
  Christine: I'm going to the hospital.
• 15:53
  Christine: And once I got in there, they're like, You're dying.
• 15:55
  Christine: Your daughter's dying.
• 15:57
  Christine: Um, so I had help syndrome, liver and kidney shutdown, blood pressure off the charts.
• 16:01
  Christine: Uh, and then I basically went into a coma, they took her out of me.
• 16:05
  Christine: She was a premi at 27 weeks, and then I stayed in the hospital, and then she was in the hospital three months.
• 16:12
  Christine: So it was my first near death.
• 16:14
  Douglas: How long were you in the hospital for?
• 16:15
  Christine: Um for two weeks.
• 16:16
  Douglas: For two weeks.
• 16:17
  Christine: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Christine: Yep.
• 16:19
  Christine: So that was that was the first.
• 16:20
  Douglas: How old were you when that happened?
• 16:22
  Christine: 28.
• 16:23
  Douglas: 28.
• 16:24
  Christine: Yeah, 28.
• 16:25
  Christine: And then, because it gets a little worse.
• 16:27
  Christine: So then we finally get Delaney, my daughter, home from the NICU.
• 16:32
  Christine: And we, my dad gets diagnosed with cancer, stage four, that same week.
• 16:38
  Christine: And then a flood, I had just bought a home, craftsman, beautiful home.
• 16:44
  Christine: A flood, 16 feet of water, comes the same week and takes out my home.
• 16:47
  Christine: So here we get out of the hospital, she's on a heart and lung monitor, my dad has stage four cancer, and my house is, and all my belongings are taken away.
• 16:55
  Christine: So we mom and I we we joked saying that we were gonna get like a tattoo of 2008 on our butt because it was like the year of craft.
• 17:02
  Douglas: Yeah, the financial nationwide financial collapse as well.
• 17:05
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 17:05
  Douglas: That was Lehman Mark as well, or Lehman brothers and all of those.
• 17:08
  Christine: Yeah, and I tried to get out of the mortgage, but they said, hey, you have to miss mortgage payments to be able to get out of it, like you have to miss.
• 17:16
  Christine: I was still paying on this house that now it's only worth $5,000 the property.
• 17:20
  Christine: And um, so I start missing the payments, and I tried to call Wells Fargo, where my loan was through, and I said, Hey, please let me give you my FEMA money because we got the max amount, which is $28,800.
• 17:30
  Christine: And I'm like, Let me give you this so we can get out of our mortgage.
• 17:32
  Christine: If not, I'm I'm gonna have to foreclose.
• 17:34
  Christine: I'm 28 years old.
• 17:35
  Christine: And we'd talk to lawyers.
• 17:37
  Christine: Um, then the lawyer said, Chris, you just need to get out of this.
• 17:40
  Christine: By the time seven years passes, it'll be off your credit, which now it's off.
• 17:44
  Christine: My credit's awesome.
• 17:45
  Christine: Um, but the they wouldn't take the money.
• 17:47
  Christine: So I kept the 28,000, had to foreclose on the house, and um, yeah, that was basically, and I moved in with my parents.
• 17:54
  Christine: Yeah.
• 17:56
  Christine: That was that.
• 17:58
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 17:59
  Douglas: That's a that's a big year.
• 18:00
  Christine: It was a big year, yeah.
• 18:01
  Douglas: Was it was there any part of that that you're wondering how how am I gonna get to tomorrow?
• 18:07
  Christine: Uh no, because I didn't know at the time I had severe uh um postpartum depression.
• 18:14
  Douglas: Did not.
• 18:14
  Douglas: So all this is going on and you have postpartum depression?
• 18:17
  Christine: Really bad.
• 18:18
  Christine: But I'm taking care of my daughter like no other.
• 18:20
  Christine: Like my mom said, I was like the best mom she had seen.
• 18:22
  Christine: I was like on top of it, but like out of nowhere, I just cry, you know, and cry.
• 18:27
  Christine: And I was really, really, really depressed, but never was I diagnosed.
• 18:33
  Christine: Like my mom knows, she's uh been in the hospital.
• 18:35
  Christine: Yeah, she's 40 some years, and she's like, Chris, you had real, you know, postpartum depression, but no one had a chance to help me because we were going through it's all this other crap, you know.
• 18:43
  Douglas: How did you pull out of all that?
• 18:45
  Christine: I just did it myself.
• 18:46
  Christine: I've done, and you'll see through us talking, I pull myself out every single time by myself.
• 18:52
  Douglas: Oh, yeah.
• 18:53
  Christine: I just I just go into a I I build a wall and go in and just I don't know, mentally just work on myself.
• 19:01
  Christine: I'd never ask anybody for help ever.
• 19:03
  Christine: I never have.
• 19:04
  Christine: Even though you shouldn't do that, you should always ask people for help.
• 19:06
  Christine: I'm just a little different.
• 19:08
  Douglas: But in a way though, you were getting help from your parents.
• 19:10
  Douglas: Like when we were in the NICU, for example.
• 19:12
  Douglas: Yeah, they were they were you had a place to go.
• 19:15
  Douglas: Yeah, you know, you had the support of your parents and any other family, I'm guessing, was there to help.
• 19:20
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Christine: But when I was in the NICU, though, uh they always wanted me to pe be a part of these mother groups and get together with other mothers that had, you know, I remember the twins were next door to me.
• 19:29
  Christine: They both passed away.
• 19:30
  Christine: There was you know, another little baby that made it, another one that didn't.
• 19:34
  Christine: But they wanted me to hang out with these ladies during the day and do knitting or scrapbooking and stuff, and I'm like, I don't want to hang out with these girls because I have enough of my own problems and my own, I was scared about everything, you know.
• 19:47
  Christine: I'm like, I don't want to take on all their fears too.
• 19:50
  Christine: I want to be by myself.
• 19:51
  Christine: I will just handle this myself.
• 19:53
  Douglas: So that's kind of how I just process it yourself and just someone that's gonna deal with this.
• 19:57
  Christine: Yeah, and we'll we'll get to the next story a little later on.
• 20:00
  Christine: But I was uh in the hospital in New Zealand for two months because my bowel ruptured and I was septic, and they took me off a cruise ship and I stayed two months in a hospital in Dunedin.
• 20:09
  Christine: People wanted to come and take care of me, but I said no, I'm staying in the hospital two months by myself, and I healed myself.
• 20:15
  Christine: So that we'll get to that story.
• 20:16
  Christine: We'll get to that.
• 20:17
  Christine: Yeah.
• 20:17
  Christine: How's Dad?
• 20:19
  Christine: Dad's good.
• 20:20
  Christine: He's honored so that was what he's my biggest troll on social media, too.
• 20:25
  Douglas: 18 years ago, stage four cancer, and he's still here.
• 20:28
  Christine: Yeah.
• 20:28
  Christine: That's awesome.
• 20:29
  Christine: I know.
• 20:30
  Christine: He's great.
• 20:30
  Christine: I yeah, he's honored, but I mean he's not in the best health, but he's in good health.
• 20:34
  Douglas: He's still here, yeah.
• 20:36
  Christine: It's pretty awesome.
• 20:37
  Douglas: That's a long time after with stage four cancer.
• 20:40
  Christine: Yeah, it's pretty good.
• 20:41
  Douglas: So it must run in the family that you just picked yourself up and kept going.
• 20:45
  Christine: Probably.
• 20:45
  Christine: Like my I think my mom is like that.
• 20:47
  Christine: I don't know so much my dad.
• 20:49
  Christine: Well, you know, he's gotta give him credit for it.
• 20:51
  Christine: My dad's my best friend.
• 20:52
  Christine: He's pretty tough.
• 20:54
  Christine: But my but my mom is really like dig deep.
• 20:57
  Christine: She's gone through some crap, and she just she's good.
• 21:00
  Christine: Um, but then so we moved to Chicago.
• 21:03
  Christine: Uh we moved to Chicago, uh, it was with my ex-husband's job, Delaney's dad.
• 21:08
  Christine: And that's when I started to try to get my life back.
• 21:12
  Christine: Uh, someone said, Hey Chris, you need to get back.
• 21:16
  Christine: I was 250 pounds at the time.
• 21:17
  Christine: They're like, you need to lose this weight, maybe get into a pageant, and then you can run and talk about the help syndrome and all that.
• 21:23
  Christine: So I said to my mom, I said, I'm gonna run for Mrs.
• 21:26
  Christine: Iowa and be a part of Miss USA in Las Vegas.
• 21:30
  Christine: And she's like, Chris, absolutely you're not walking across the stage, you're 250 pounds.
• 21:34
  Christine: And I put the $500 entry fee into the m into the mail, and within six months, I had lost all the weight.
• 21:41
  Christine: I was 130 pounds, I won the pageant.
• 21:44
  Christine: I placed 13th in Las Vegas, and then I went on the Oprah Winfrey show twice, and she asked me how I made it out of it.
• 21:54
  Christine: Her articles that she kept doing for me were from near death and overweight to you know whatever.
• 21:59
  Christine: 120 pounds in six months.
• 22:02
  Christine: I know.
• 22:03
  Christine: I was dedicated.
• 22:04
  Christine: I went to the gym twice a day.
• 22:05
  Christine: I would take Delaney in the morning.
• 22:06
  Christine: We'd get up.
• 22:06
  Christine: I'd take her to daycare.
• 22:07
  Christine: She started speaking Spanish because we're in Chicago and all the kids are Spanish, you know.
• 22:13
  Christine: So or they were speaking Spanish, sorry.
• 22:15
  Christine: And uh so she started learning Spanish.
• 22:17
  Christine: She doesn't know it anymore.
• 22:18
  Christine: Um, but yeah, we go twice a day to the gym.
• 22:21
  Christine: But still, that's 20 pounds a month.
• 22:24
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 22:25
  Douglas: That is I know.
• 22:26
  Douglas: I don't know if that's healthy.
• 22:28
  Christine: Probably not.
• 22:29
  Christine: It probably isn't.
• 22:31
  Douglas: When you set a goal, you do it.
• 22:32
  Christine: I do, you know, I'm very, yeah, I'm very goal goal goal-oriented.
• 22:36
  Christine: Holy crap, yeah.
• 22:37
  Christine: I'm very competitive too.
• 22:39
  Christine: But in a good way, though.
• 22:40
  Christine: I'm competitive, it's like, I love to prove people wrong.
• 22:44
  Christine: You know, kind of like when the people saying that there's no way you can do this, you're like, yeah, and and mom's like, whoa, she did it, you know, like that's amazing.
• 22:54
  Douglas: And so um Did that did that give you more self-confidence that going forward with other things that like I can pretty much do whatever I want right now?
• 23:04
  Christine: Yeah, but while I was with while I was Mrs.
• 23:06
  Christine: Iowa after Las Vegas, I got a divorce while I was holding the crown.
• 23:11
  Christine: So um obviously I'm not gonna talk about my daughter's I uh my daughter's dad, but um he's very successful, lives in Iowa, and he's now married and having a beautiful life, and that's wonderful.
• 23:21
  Christine: But we just were not compatible.
• 23:23
  Christine: We got divorced while I was Mrs.
• 23:25
  Christine: Iowa, and so I never gave my crown away because I felt like I'm not gonna be on stage, I'm divorced now, you know?
• 23:32
  Douglas: Okay.
• 23:33
  Christine: Yeah.
• 23:33
  Christine: But while I was in Chicago though, I was dressing the Miss USA, Miss America girls for a dress company called MacDougal.
• 23:39
  Christine: So I'd travel the world, I'd go um and I'd meet up with the girls that won the pageants, let's just say Miss South Dakota, and I'd be like, oh, you look good in this dress or that dress or whatever.
• 23:48
  Christine: And my goal was to get these girls in the dresses for the pageants on stage.
• 23:52
  Christine: And MacDougal is still around and they're a great dress designer, but they're out of Chicago.
• 23:57
  Douglas: That would that's a job?
• 23:58
  Douglas: You get paid to go around and just fit pageant when we're gonna be able to do it.
• 24:02
  Christine: You know what?
• 24:02
  Christine: I was taking care of their social media.
• 24:04
  Christine: They made me social media girl because I knew how to use Facebook.
• 24:07
  Christine: So it's funny.
• 24:08
  Christine: So I was on the Oprah Winfrey show, and Oprah sent me home with my own camera to videotape my life, what I eat, how I go about this.
• 24:15
  Christine: So there's the first thing that leads to where I'm at today.
• 24:17
  Christine: Then the second thing is now we're dressing Miss USA, Miss America girls, and they asked me to do their social media.
• 24:23
  Christine: So then second thing comes into play.
• 24:25
  Christine: Um, and then guess who came knocking on my door?
• 24:29
  Douglas: VH1.
• 24:30
  Christine: VH1.
• 24:30
  Christine: So uh VH1, I was at the gym, which will surprise a lot of my followers now.
• 24:36
  Christine: I actually used to go to the gym twice a day.
• 24:37
  Christine: Um, but I was on the elliptical and I got a call and said, This is Jocelyn from VH1.
• 24:42
  Christine: We want to interview you.
• 24:43
  Christine: And I'm like, yeah, right.
• 24:45
  Christine: And I hung up on her, and no, she called back.
• 24:46
  Christine: She's like, no, we saw your Oprah Winfrey show, and we are looking for one last girl.
• 24:52
  Christine: We've interviewed 10,000 girls.
• 24:53
  Christine: We're looking for one last girl, and you fit the profile.
• 24:55
  Christine: Can you come down to Chicago, meet with us, all that?
• 24:57
  Christine: And you you bet your butt.
• 24:59
  Christine: I got down there and I'm an open book.
• 25:01
  Christine: As you guys know, I like to tell, I like to storytell, right?
• 25:04
  Christine: Share my stories.
• 25:05
  Christine: And I was by the end of that interview, I was crying.
• 25:08
  Christine: I told them about all my ex-boyfriends, and and they were like, Whoa, this is good content.
• 25:14
  Christine: And before I knew it, I was being um uh sent to Miami.
• 25:18
  Christine: I had to leave my job, quit my job at MacDougal with the dress designers.
• 25:22
  Christine: My ex-husband said, Hey, I will take care of Delaney.
• 25:25
  Christine: This is a great opportunity for you.
• 25:27
  Christine: And I'm going on the show about five women that haven't found love.
• 25:31
  Christine: Why?
• 25:31
  Christine: And so I'm living in Miami, but you had found love.
• 25:34
  Douglas: No, I didn't know.
• 25:36
  Christine: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:37
  Douglas: That didn't count.
• 25:39
  Christine: Even though I was blessed with the most beautiful daughter, like she's amazing.
• 25:44
  Christine: Uh she's the best thing I've ever given to the world.
• 25:46
  Christine: So best thing.
• 25:47
  Douglas: So trying to find love in Miami.
• 25:48
  Christine: Yeah, and it was horrible.
• 25:50
  Christine: But so now I'm this I'm uh I turned 30 on the TV show.
• 25:55
  Christine: I was 120 pounds, maybe, but still thinking that I was 250 pounds.
• 26:02
  Christine: And um, yeah, I had to date like 30 different guys from the TV show.
• 26:08
  Douglas: And how long did the how long was it?
• 26:10
  Douglas: Two months.
• 26:10
  Douglas: Two months.
• 26:11
  Douglas: Two months 30 dates in two months.
• 26:13
  Christine: Yeah, and every anytime I wanted a phone call, well, Delaney was too young for phone calls as it was.
• 26:17
  Christine: Um, and we really didn't have video chat, but all of our phone calls were recorded and things like that.
• 26:21
  Christine: Now my mom didn't like this.
• 26:23
  Christine: My mom's very uh from small town, very Christian, very we don't do reality TV in our family, uh, nor do divorces happen in our family.
• 26:32
  Christine: So mom and I, who are best friends now, like all of my social media people are like, oh my gosh, you and your mom didn't get along.
• 26:39
  Christine: We didn't talk for like two months.
• 26:40
  Christine: But my dad was behind, like, Chris, go for your dreams.
• 26:43
  Christine: Don't tell your mom he said so, but Chris, keep keep doing this, it's awesome.
• 26:46
  Christine: You know, so I always go with when someone presents something to me, like you, like Reba, our friend, presented you to me of like, let's do this podcast.
• 26:56
  Christine: That is an opportunity that came to me, and I love things that come to me instead of me searching for them.
• 27:02
  Christine: And so I feel like it's meant to be, so then I do them.
• 27:05
  Douglas: What were you thinking you were gonna get out of the H1 show?
• 27:07
  Douglas: Were you hoping you're gonna find love?
• 27:09
  Douglas: Or did you think now?
• 27:11
  Christine: No, I just needed an opportunity.
• 27:13
  Christine: I wasn't made I I had gone from stay-at-home mom to now working for the dress designer to now living on my own because I was divorced, and I was not able to cut the bills myself.
• 27:26
  Christine: I had some 70-year-old woman living in our apartment with me because I couldn't make it on my salary there, plus driving two hours to work, her daycare.
• 27:34
  Christine: I couldn't financially make it.
• 27:36
  Christine: So I thought, ooh, this might lead to something bigger, you know, and it and it did.
• 27:41
  Christine: After the VH1 TV show, it led to Holland America Line.
• 27:45
  Christine: I did some commercials for them, and then a company called Panoff Publish Publishing, PPI, reached out to me.
• 27:52
  Christine: They do marketing for all the cruise ships and all the jewelry stores, and they reached out to me and realized I was good at marketing and all that, and they trained me um for like 20 high-end companies like Cartier and Rolex and all that.
• 28:06
  Christine: And then mind you, I'm a girl from Iowa.
• 28:07
  Christine: I thought having a Michael Kors watch was like like life goal, a you know, $250 watch.
• 28:13
  Christine: Like, that's a really nice watch.
• 28:15
  Christine: And here they're having some Midwest girl here tell people that they on their cruise vacation need to buy a $35,000 watch.
• 28:21
  Christine: Like, I'm like, whoa.
• 28:23
  Christine: So it was a different world I was being put into.
• 28:25
  Christine: That leads to yeah.
• 28:28
  Douglas: How was how was it getting into that world?
• 28:31
  Christine: It was it was rough.
• 28:32
  Christine: I actually got in trouble many times um by uh some very known uh companies in the cruise industry with uh diamonds and stuff.
• 28:42
  Christine: I got in trouble because I remember there was one lady.
• 28:46
  Christine: Now, my goal was to sell $250,000 worth of jewelry every seven days to the people on my cruise ship off the ship, quarter million dollars.
• 28:55
  Christine: Yeah, every every week.
• 28:56
  Christine: Every week.
• 28:56
  Christine: And it happened.
• 28:57
  Christine: They have no idea how much money these people are bringing in.
• 28:59
  Christine: It's a lot.
• 29:00
  Christine: Um, I'm in the jewelry business now, but let me not cut off my fingers myself.
• 29:05
  Christine: Or what do you call it?
• 29:06
  Christine: Cut off your own leg, or I don't know what you call it.
• 29:09
  Douglas: Cut off your nose to spite your face.
• 29:10
  Christine: Yeah, right.
• 29:11
  Christine: So um I was doing presentations on the ship, then I would get off the ship and I take these people shopping in these stores, and they would come in shopping for Tanzanites, diamonds, all these things.
• 29:23
  Christine: And I remember one lady and her daughter came in, and I knew because my dad had gone through enough surgeries and been on enough medications, I can tell when someone is under the influence of a pharmaceutical medication, right?
• 29:36
  Christine: And this lady had had just had back surgery, and she's wanted to come shopping with me, her and her daughter.
• 29:41
  Christine: So I bring them into the first store, and by the time I know it, she's like, Chris, which one should I get?
• 29:46
  Christine: And I'm like, Oh, I like that one.
• 29:47
  Christine: She goes, Okay, Christine likes it, I'm buying it.
• 29:49
  Christine: And I'm like, okay, never seen someone lay down $15,000 so fast because I like it.
• 29:54
  Christine: And then, Chris, what should I buy next?
• 29:56
  Christine: And I'm like, Well, cabana's cool, you know, or I'd say something, and she'd be like, Great, I got it.
• 29:59
  Christine: And I'm like, oh my gosh.
• 30:00
  Christine: Now the salespeople are going nuts because they're all like, this is amazing, awesome.
• 30:05
  Christine: And I have seen she's bought all these items, but then I also see that she's taking off stickers off new credit cards.
• 30:11
  Christine: I also realize she is under the influence.
• 30:14
  Christine: Her daughter comes up to me, she's like, Thanks for shopping with us today, Chris.
• 30:17
  Christine: But you know, we really trust you.
• 30:18
  Christine: And I'm like, absolutely.
• 30:20
  Christine: Now they're done shopping, and I'm like, okay, well, now here's where you're gonna go next.
• 30:25
  Christine: She goes, Yeah, where are we going?
• 30:27
  Christine: Where are we going?
• 30:27
  Christine: I go, you're gonna go to the Alaska Fudge Company, and you guys are gonna get some fudge, and then you're gonna walk around town.
• 30:33
  Christine: She goes, No, no, no.
• 30:34
  Christine: We're supposed to go to the next store with you.
• 30:36
  Christine: And I go, no, you guys are done shopping for the day.
• 30:39
  Christine: And that's when I got my ASS reened.
• 30:43
  Christine: Because I am not supposed to put a cap on what anybody purchases, blah, blah, blah, that I don't know their bank account.
• 30:50
  Christine: I shouldn't tell them when as a cutoff.
• 30:53
  Christine: But I'm sorry, morally, I couldn't do it.
• 30:55
  Christine: You've got this uh, you know, woman that just was, I don't know what her situation was.
• 31:00
  Christine: Maybe she's a multimillionaire, I don't know, but I didn't want to be a part of it at that point.
• 31:04
  Christine: So I didn't do well in that position because I morally could not push people to spend 20, 30, 50, 100,000.
• 31:15
  Christine: Couldn't do it.
• 31:16
  Christine: Even though I'm in the jewelry business now, I market jewelry.
• 31:18
  Christine: I make it fun.
• 31:19
  Christine: You come in, you buy with me, and it's fun shopping with me, but buy what you want.
• 31:24
  Christine: I'm not pressuring you into buying a big something, you know.
• 31:28
  Douglas: So this was right after the TV show that they trade they they approached you for this.
• 31:33
  Douglas: So this is your first foray into the cruise business.
• 31:36
  Christine: But I'm making complete amazing money, you know.
• 31:39
  Christine: I was making like $10,000, not it, what I was 30 years old, I'm making $10,000 a month and working on a ship free of look free of costs.
• 31:47
  Christine: So I was able to help out with Delaney, and and at that time now she's living with her dad.
• 31:52
  Christine: Their dad's remarried, couple kids.
• 31:55
  Christine: Um, yeah, so I was on and off cruise ships, but then I went to land and I was working again for Pan Off Publishing.
• 32:01
  Christine: Great company.
• 32:02
  Christine: But instead of being this port shopping ambassador, now I'm working on land doing their publications.
• 32:07
  Christine: So now I am living in Florida.
• 32:08
  Christine: I'm going out to Everglades Holiday Park with the Gators and the Everglade boys.
• 32:13
  Christine: I'm going um to, I don't know, the any tour companies, and I'm getting them to be a part of our in-cabin publication because on every cruise ship there is an in-cabin publication, and we have all the chapters for Lauderdale, Bahamas, you know, whatever.
• 32:27
  Christine: And so I was getting them to sign up like $10,000 for one ad in the thing.
• 32:32
  Christine: And then I'd make commission on that, and I loved it.
• 32:34
  Christine: Yeah.
• 32:36
  Christine: And then I left that, and then I went to work for the Gator Boys on an uh, what is it, Animal Planet?
• 32:43
  Douglas: Okay.
• 32:44
  Christine: Everglades Holly.
• 32:44
  Christine: I used to work in a gator firm.
• 32:49
  Douglas: I'm trying to catch up to you here.
• 32:50
  Christine: Do you like my resume yet?
• 32:52
  Christine: Because we're not even close to done.
• 32:53
  Douglas: Well, no, but this is just this is just crazy to me because one minute you're selling diamond, you're selling diamonds.
• 32:59
  Christine: Diamonds and Nanama Gator Park.
• 33:01
  Douglas: Now you're now you're in a gator park.
• 33:02
  Christine: Like, yeah, and then I was going around.
• 33:03
  Christine: So I was living in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and then I was going around, and I was making sure that all the hotels had our flyers, promoting our thing, and then I loved hanging out at the gator park.
• 33:16
  Douglas: Okay.
• 33:16
  Douglas: Gator seem gators seem like a lot of fun.
• 33:19
  Christine: Yeah.
• 33:19
  Douglas: They taste delicious, also.
• 33:21
  Christine: They do.
• 33:21
  Christine: Well, no, I'm I'm not a big I mentally I can't do it.
• 33:24
  Christine: I just came back from Australia and I can't do it.
• 33:26
  Christine: Okay.
• 33:26
  Christine: I even tried kangaroo, gator, and kangaroo, but I tried gator once.
• 33:31
  Christine: A lot of people eat kangaroo.
• 33:32
  Christine: It's supposed to be really good.
• 33:33
  Douglas: The gator was good.
• 33:34
  Christine: Mentally, I couldn't do it.
• 33:36
  Douglas: I'd have a hard time with kangaroo.
• 33:37
  Christine: Yeah.
• 33:38
  Douglas: So after you got reamed out for cutting that lady off, was that kind of the thing like I need to find a different position?
• 33:44
  Douglas: Because this is a good thing.
• 33:44
  Douglas: No, they fired, they basically took me off the ship.
• 33:47
  Christine: They didn't fire me, but they took me off the ship.
• 33:48
  Christine: We had this real, this guy, um, hopefully he's watching.
• 33:51
  Christine: He he won't though.
• 33:52
  Christine: Um, but anyways, he was real um, you know, I'm the man kind of thing.
• 33:57
  Christine: And I'm in Juneau, Alaska on the 4th of July, and he calls me, he said, You didn't make your numbers, pack your bags, you're getting off in whatever port it was.
• 34:05
  Christine: And then I had to pack up and leave.
• 34:07
  Christine: And that's when I started working on land for the company, you know.
• 34:11
  Douglas: Um, but then what excited you to start working at because you're I love the cruise industry.
• 34:16
  Douglas: I know, but you're you're doing these publications to help get all these people in the in-cab of magazine.
• 34:22
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 34:23
  Douglas: What was about the Gator Boys that you're like, yeah, ditch that.
• 34:27
  Douglas: I just want to work on the club.
• 34:27
  Christine: Well, they offered me a $10,000 sign-on bonus.
• 34:29
  Douglas: Well, that helps.
• 34:30
  Douglas: That makes that convention.
• 34:33
  Christine: And I got to work on my own time, out of my I just drove my Jeep all around Miami, Fort Lauderdale, all the hotels, and and then also I, because I love jewelry, so then I'm like, hey, Chris, there's all of these um uh what do you call them?
• 34:48
  Christine: Excursion places all around that have gift shops.
• 34:51
  Christine: Why wouldn't I, since I'm close to Miami, go into one of those places?
• 34:54
  Christine: I would start up a business, go into the places, buy the jewelry for two bucks, you know, sell it to them for eight dollars, and they sell it for 16.
• 35:02
  Christine: So then I had a company called Jealous Gems.
• 35:06
  Christine: I never made anything of it, but I had my jewelry in a lot of places.
• 35:09
  Christine: I was tagging everything myself.
• 35:11
  Christine: I'd go in Miami and buy all the stuff, and then I'd tag it, and I had my own business, and um, yeah, so then I had my jewelry in Gator Boys.
• 35:20
  Douglas: Okay.
• 35:21
  Christine: Yeah.
• 35:22
  Christine: And then I left it all.
• 35:24
  Douglas: Left it all for what?
• 35:25
  Christine: Yeah, so okay, so this is where another man comes into the picture.
• 35:29
  Christine: Oh gosh.
• 35:30
  Christine: I don't say Yeah, well, this guy is the one I met on the VH1 show.
• 35:34
  Christine: Okay.
• 35:34
  Christine: I did mention that I had kept him around and now I'm dating him.
• 35:38
  Christine: Okay.
• 35:39
  Douglas: You've been dating him this whole time.
• 35:40
  Christine: Yeah, but he's not, he's not, he's a great guy if you want to have a beer with him, but he's not a good guy for a relationship, right?
• 35:45
  Christine: Okay, okay, it was really bad.
• 35:47
  Christine: And just to tell you uh a few things, like I we could I he wouldn't let me in his uh sleep in his room.
• 35:53
  Christine: We live shared the same house, wouldn't let me sleep in his room, but um, except for two nights a week.
• 35:58
  Christine: And so when I wasn't sleeping in his room, I had a mattress in the back, in the back shed area, um, once in a while cockroaches around, there was wet dripping, and I slept on a mattress.
• 36:10
  Christine: And I did that because I thought this is the relationship I need to be in.
• 36:14
  Douglas: How long did you let him see to you?
• 36:16
  Christine: Almost five, six years.
• 36:17
  Christine: But then that's where we end up.
• 36:18
  Christine: I knew I had to get out of this relationship because it was really, really bad.
• 36:22
  Christine: I mean, I can't tell you everything that happened.
• 36:24
  Douglas: Well, you just told me that part.
• 36:25
  Christine: It was like he wouldn't let me eat after like seven o'clock at night, call me fat all the time when I looked good, man.
• 36:30
  Christine: I mean, if you saw these pictures, I was good.
• 36:33
  Christine: But I was the most unhappy I'd ever been.
• 36:36
  Christine: And my mom even said, if you don't leave him, you it it'll kill you.
• 36:40
  Christine: My mom even knew this.
• 36:41
  Christine: And my dad said, Chris, this isn't a relationship, this is a business deal.
• 36:44
  Christine: Because what he did is he said, Chris, that's why I was at the that's why I left this PPI paying off publishing because I needed to make more money at Everglades Holiday Park and have my jewelry business.
• 36:54
  Christine: And I was working in Miami at a quorum watch, really nice watch uh place, three jobs, because he said once I made six figures again, I could get my engagement ring from him.
• 37:04
  Christine: And he dangled it like a carrot, he bought me an engagement ring, and I'm like, oh yes, I want that.
• 37:09
  Christine: Like, so he would go out on at night and he would, you know, he would go out on the weekends and stuff, and he's like, and I'm like, oh, I really wish I could hang out too.
• 37:17
  Christine: And he's like, he's like, honey, uh, you know, when you uh make six figures again, you can hang out too.
• 37:23
  Christine: You can go to these places, and then he would like, he'd never, yeah, it was just he was really bad, he was really not a good guy.
• 37:29
  Douglas: So this is where hold on for that for a second.
• 37:33
  Christine: Yeah.
• 37:34
  Christine: Are we going back to the cockroaches?
• 37:36
  Douglas: In a way, yes, because it makes me sad.
• 37:40
  Christine: Not every person that is friends with this person knows how horrible of a boyfriend he was.
• 37:47
  Douglas: It makes me sad that with all the strength and resilience you've talked about so far, with medical issues that you you couldn't get out of the way.
• 37:54
  Douglas: No, because I had nowhere to go.
• 37:56
  Christine: I had nowhere to go.
• 37:57
  Christine: I had, of course, my family.
• 37:58
  Christine: Anybody that knows me now knows how close I am to my mom and dad.
• 38:02
  Christine: But at the time I'd come off this TV show that my mom didn't want me to do, and all my friends and family are upset, I got divorced, and they now they're like, We understand why you got divorced, Christine.
• 38:14
  Christine: Best move you ever made.
• 38:15
  Christine: Like, you good job.
• 38:17
  Christine: But I had to be strong and say, I want a divorce, I want out of this, and I signed the papers myself, ticked everybody else off, but years later they're like, Whoa, she knew what she was doing.
• 38:29
  Christine: But I had to make every I had to go through everybody disliking me to get I had no one.
• 38:35
  Christine: So all my friends, everybody turned their back, all my best friends that I have now turned their back on me, and now they're back to being my friends.
• 38:41
  Douglas: So you didn't think during this time with this guy that if you left him, you wouldn't be able to survive on your own.
• 38:47
  Christine: Sometimes I it was it was really bad because and only women that are mothers that have gone through abusive relationships might understand this.
• 38:56
  Christine: But there were times where I would need to go back to Iowa because it was my time to be with Delaney, things like that.
• 39:01
  Christine: But I knew if I left, he'd go hang out with girls, so then I'd not want to leave to be with my own daughter because I'm like, oh, I'm gonna, he's gonna cheat on me, he's gonna leave me.
• 39:09
  Christine: And that was, I'm like, this is not right, like not okay, you know.
• 39:13
  Christine: And Delaney would come and she came to Florida and stuff too.
• 39:16
  Christine: But um, but then I left him.
• 39:19
  Christine: I left everything I owned, all over $25,000 of belongings, all of my Miss America, Miss USA dresses, my Jeep, the title to my Jeep, everything.
• 39:29
  Christine: You left all of that there, everything I own, and I had a huge Barbie collection too.
• 39:33
  Christine: I dream about them all the time because I collected Barbie's.
• 39:35
  Douglas: You didn't think you could go back and grab the Jeep and everything?
• 39:38
  Christine: No, I left it all and I told him.
• 39:39
  Christine: So cruise ships saved my life multiple times.
• 39:42
  Christine: So I said, hey, there's a company that wants me on board in New Zealand, Australia, and they want me for um, you know, a month to open up this jewelry store on board, and I promise I'll be back.
• 39:54
  Christine: Promise.
• 39:55
  Christine: Because what we're doing right now is now he has his house we're living at.
• 39:59
  Christine: He's wanting to buy another house, and he's saying, Well, for you to be my girlfriend, I'm gonna need you to pay half the mortgage, but you're not gonna be on the house, but I'm gonna need you to pay half this mortgage.
• 40:06
  Christine: So we're house hunting.
• 40:07
  Christine: Now he owns this house that we picked out together, right?
• 40:10
  Christine: So, um, and sorry to my husband if he's watching any of this, but uh, you know, I because I never talk about my exes or anything like that because I don't want to be disrespectful to him, you know.
• 40:21
  Christine: We'll get to him because he's amazing, but we'll get to him in a second.
• 40:24
  Douglas: But anyway, so I don't think your husband has anything to worry about this guy.
• 40:28
  Christine: No, not this guy.
• 40:29
  Christine: I just don't talk about past stories because it's just you know, I'm so moved on, you know.
• 40:32
  Christine: I'm living my best life now after all this sh sh S-H-I-T.
• 40:36
  Christine: Yeah, you know, but so I left.
• 40:38
  Christine: I got on a plane, went to Australia, New Zealand, never went back to Florida.
• 40:42
  Christine: My stuff literally is still sitting in his garage.
• 40:46
  Christine: I he's like, What am I supposed to do with your car?
• 40:48
  Christine: I'm like, sign my name on that title, sell it, get what you want.
• 40:52
  Christine: And then he started writing checks out on my account.
• 40:54
  Christine: Now, mind you, this guy's a millionaire, he's got malt uh money and he's very cheap.
• 40:58
  Christine: When I left, he had a $25,000 bill written down line by line, two pages of anytime I couldn't pay for all my dinner or my half, or anytime I couldn't pay rent.
• 41:10
  Christine: He had $25,000.
• 41:12
  Christine: So if I ever wanted my stuff back, I had to pay him $25,000.
• 41:15
  Christine: Now these days, just so he knows, I could pay him 80 million times that.
• 41:20
  Christine: But at the time I had no money to my name, so I had to leave my stuff that there.
• 41:23
  Christine: Yeah.
• 41:24
  Christine: So it's still there.
• 41:25
  Christine: I because I know him, I know he hasn't thrown away my stuff, so it's still no scrutch.
• 41:29
  Christine: Anyway, so we move on, and that was that.
• 41:32
  Christine: So I moved in with my parents, and then I was like, okay.
• 41:36
  Douglas: So you were just the one month in New Zealand and Australia.
• 41:38
  Christine: Yeah.
• 41:39
  Douglas: And then when you came back, and I'm like, I went straight to my parents.
• 41:43
  Christine: And he's like, you need to come back and tell me you don't love me.
• 41:45
  Christine: Because that was his tactic for me to stay, you know?
• 41:47
  Christine: Yeah.
• 41:47
  Christine: Because I knew actually, you know, a lot of people in abusive relationships.
• 41:51
  Douglas: I can tell you that over text or on the phone.
• 41:52
  Douglas: I don't need to be personal.
• 41:53
  Christine: I never told him, I never said anything.
• 41:55
  Christine: I just, people that are in abusive relationships, they want that abuser wants them in front of them again to to catch them again, and he would have caught me again.
• 42:03
  Christine: Because I would have been too weak, I would have been too, I don't have a place to be.
• 42:07
  Christine: I went home to my parents, my parents definitely supported me, and then that's when I started on my journey with Holland Maritelle.
• 42:13
  Douglas: Did you tell them what was going on?
• 42:15
  Christine: Oh, they already knew.
• 42:15
  Christine: They already knew it.
• 42:16
  Christine: Oh, it's even worse than you could ever imagine.
• 42:19
  Douglas: I mean, it it's Were they trying to get you out of it sooner?
• 42:22
  Christine: They just knew that it wasn't good.
• 42:24
  Christine: You know, even like my mom's friends would come to Florida and they'd be like, Oh, we're gonna go down and have dinner with Chris and our boyfriend, and and they would they would come away and tell my mom, that guy is just a player, he's a playboy, he's never settling down, you know.
• 42:37
  Christine: You know, and he's he would come home for Christmas.
• 42:39
  Christine: He was from the Midwest and stuff, but he's just a he is a fruit loop.
• 42:43
  Christine: I mean, I don't even know what else to call him, circus show, you know.
• 42:46
  Christine: Anyways, but I haven't thought about him or that life in a long time because I moved on, got on cruise ships, and this is where we will go into the fact that I was event manager, I got hired as an event manager.
• 42:59
  Christine: Now, mind you, I don't even know how to turn a computer on, but they're like, hey, why don't you do the the press, the publication for us every single day?
• 43:06
  Christine: I'm like, yay, I don't even know how to use Excel.
• 43:08
  Christine: But they trained me and I did okay.
• 43:11
  Christine: But so I was doing every day on a cruise ship, you get a program um saying what the activities are.
• 43:16
  Christine: So every single day I had to be perfect and do that.
• 43:19
  Christine: So that's what I was doing.
• 43:20
  Christine: I was doing um four months on, four months off contracts.
• 43:24
  Christine: Then I got uh event, so I went event manager, um, director.
• 43:30
  Christine: Then I had to step back down because they uh did roles to media manager, and this is where I meet my husband, right?
• 43:36
  Christine: Okay, my husband Pete, he's from the Netherlands.
• 43:39
  Christine: Um I get on the ship, but everybody's warned him about me before I get on the ship.
• 43:43
  Douglas: They won't they warn Pete about it?
• 43:45
  Christine: Oh all the engineers are like, oh my god, Christine's getting on.
• 43:48
  Christine: She used to be on BH1, you know, she's a little looker, you know, whatever.
• 43:51
  Christine: And so Pete, of course, looks me up in the system, which he's probably not supposed to do, but anyways, he looks me up.
• 43:55
  Christine: So he knows about me.
• 43:56
  Christine: Yeah.
• 43:57
  Christine: But Pete is 15 years older than me, people, right?
• 43:59
  Christine: So, um, anyways, he gets on the ship, and I didn't know of him at first, but I'm attracted to older guys.
• 44:06
  Christine: I always have them.
• 44:07
  Christine: My mom knows this, and salt and pepper hair as well.
• 44:10
  Christine: So he's walking down.
• 44:11
  Christine: Sam's like, Sam, yeah, yeah.
• 44:16
  Christine: Sam's like, I got a wedding roommate.
• 44:18
  Christine: He's got salt and pepper hair.
• 44:22
  Christine: Yep.
• 44:22
  Christine: Okay, so um he Pete's walking down and he shuffles when he walks, and he he's very shy, and he just has his head down.
• 44:30
  Christine: And I'm walking towards him, and we meet eyes, and he's like, hello, and I'm like, hi, and I'm thinking, whoa, you are in trouble, buddy.
• 44:36
  Christine: You know?
• 44:37
  Christine: And then what happens is he had to do my cabin inspection.
• 44:41
  Christine: So on a cruise ship, every crew member every month needs to get their cabin inspected.
• 44:45
  Christine: And that is for what?
• 44:47
  Douglas: Oh my gosh, we to make sure you don't have any contraband or anything on there.
• 44:50
  Douglas: Yeah, yeah, torn apart.
• 44:52
  Christine: Yeah, the next part is coming.
• 44:53
  Christine: I thought we skipped over something.
• 44:54
  Christine: Uh, anyways, yeah, so you need to make sure that the room is safe.
• 44:57
  Christine: You don't have anything bad in your room, like food, and then there's pests and things like that.
• 45:01
  Douglas: Okay.
• 45:02
  Christine: Anyways, I had just gone out in Hawaii that night because I don't drink anymore, but I used to have a few cocktails.
• 45:07
  Christine: You know?
• 45:08
  Christine: A few.
• 45:09
  Christine: Anyway, so I had bleach blonde hair.
• 45:12
  Christine: I was still young, and I went to out in Hawaii.
• 45:14
  Douglas: How old were you at this time?
• 45:16
  Christine: 36, maybe?
• 45:17
  Christine: 36.
• 45:18
  Christine: Well, I consider that young.
• 45:19
  Christine: Anyways, I was living my best life, right?
• 45:21
  Christine: Well, I thought so.
• 45:22
  Christine: No, I wasn't.
• 45:23
  Christine: Um, but I got a little loaded in Hawaii.
• 45:26
  Christine: I like to leave places by myself, which is not safe, ladies.
• 45:30
  Christine: But I got in a cab, went back to the ship, um, and then the next morning I hear knocks on the cabin door, and I'm like, oh crap, it's crew inspection day, and you cannot be in bed and you have to be like dressed and ready, not in your pajamas.
• 45:41
  Christine: So I've got masks, you know how it is, ladies, you fall asleep with your makeup on.
• 45:44
  Christine: I got mascara on me, I got my hair up.
• 45:47
  Christine: I look like a real tramp.
• 45:48
  Christine: You know, like knocking.
• 45:50
  Christine: And then I put on this pink dress and then knock on my door, bam, bam, bam.
• 45:54
  Christine: I open the door, Pete stares at me and I stare at him like this.
• 45:58
  Christine: And then the guy said, Uh, Sir Pete, you need to check her room.
• 46:04
  Christine: And he's like, Oh yeah, okay.
• 46:07
  Douglas: Oh, that's what we were doing.
• 46:08
  Christine: The dude wrote me up.
• 46:09
  Christine: Pete wrote me up.
• 46:10
  Christine: He showed it.
• 46:11
  Christine: Well, first off, I stand outside and I'm up against the wall, and I'm like, what in the heck was that?
• 46:16
  Christine: Like, I like we had fallen in love and like the split moment our eyes met, like, whole, like we had known each other forever, right?
• 46:23
  Christine: And I'm like, what was that?
• 46:25
  Christine: And um he checked my cabin door and oh, I'm sorry, he checked my cabin, and then he ended up writing up writing me out because I took something off my cabin door so it would close faster.
• 46:35
  Christine: And he put that thing back on.
• 46:36
  Christine: Because my hair my husband's very ridiculous.
• 46:40
  Douglas: Yeah, it's that's good for him for his job because he cannot be distracted by a pretty young lady.
• 46:45
  Douglas: No, he was.
• 46:46
  Douglas: He was, but not enough to get him to oversee a safety violation.
• 46:50
  Douglas: He was not gonna let that fly.
• 46:52
  Douglas: Yeah, I admire Pete.
• 46:54
  Christine: We met uh BB King.
• 46:55
  Christine: We it was like the BB King's blues, uh, I'm sorry, blues cruise charter.
• 46:59
  Christine: So we had music out on the decks and things like that.
• 47:02
  Christine: We met, it was, you know, we basically just fell in love.
• 47:05
  Christine: He's very quiet.
• 47:06
  Christine: I'm very talkative.
• 47:08
  Douglas: Um you still give him crap for writing you up?
• 47:11
  Christine: Yeah.
• 47:12
  Christine: And you know what was worse was our first date.
• 47:16
  Christine: After our first date, I said I'm never going on a date with him ever again.
• 47:19
  Christine: So, ladies, listen to this part.
• 47:21
  Douglas: What was the first date?
• 47:22
  Christine: I'm gonna tell you.
• 47:23
  Christine: Okay, ladies, listen up.
• 47:24
  Christine: So, first off, he's like, Oh, can I take you because he got a Dutch ass accent.
• 47:28
  Christine: Can I take you on a date uh next port?
• 47:30
  Christine: I'm like, Yeah, that'd be great.
• 47:32
  Christine: So Mazzalon, Mexico, right?
• 47:34
  Christine: So I meet him off the ship, and I'm like, okay, where are we going?
• 47:36
  Christine: He goes, Oh, I don't know.
• 47:38
  Christine: I thought maybe you knew because you know everything, because I'm a cruise director at the time, right?
• 47:41
  Christine: Yeah, and um I'm like You should know these things.
• 47:44
  Christine: Yeah, and I'm like, um now I'm ticked off because I don't want to plan anything.
• 47:48
  Christine: I'm like, okay, I guess we'll go into old Mausalon, you know, and have lunch, I guess.
• 47:52
  Christine: He's like, okay.
• 47:54
  Christine: And then we get into this like open-air ta taxi thing, and we drive we drive there, we get there.
• 48:00
  Christine: His buddies, other engineers, and the captain, they're all sitting close to us, so he doesn't talk to me for the entire meal.
• 48:08
  Christine: He literally orders and then just eats like this, and I'm sitting there, like, oh my gosh.
• 48:14
  Christine: Then the bill comes.
• 48:15
  Christine: Now he's Dutch.
• 48:16
  Christine: Now you guys know the phrase, like going Dutch.
• 48:19
  Christine: Going Dutch?
• 48:19
  Christine: I didn't know what that meant.
• 48:21
  Christine: Anyways, well, he didn't make me learn Dutch.
• 48:23
  Christine: He didn't make me go Dutch, but here's what he did.
• 48:26
  Christine: In America, when that bill is set on that table, you've got literally six seconds to say, oh, I'll get it, I'll get it, I'll get it, I'll get it.
• 48:34
  Christine: And we go back and forth, right?
• 48:36
  Christine: No, that bill had now been sitting there for like eight minutes, which felt like an eternity.
• 48:41
  Christine: And I'm like, oh, I'll get this.
• 48:43
  Christine: He goes, okay.
• 48:44
  Christine: I'm like, what the hell?
• 48:46
  Christine: Then we leave dinner.
• 48:48
  Christine: He didn't talk to me.
• 48:49
  Christine: Well, first off, I had to plan the place out.
• 48:51
  Christine: He didn't talk to me, I have to pay the bill, then we get in the tax, and he goes, Can I have a kiss?
• 48:55
  Christine: And I was like, Hell no.
• 48:56
  Christine: You can heck no, you can't have a kiss.
• 48:59
  Christine: So I get back to the office where the cruise director, well, actually, cruise director's there, I was there, I wasn't cruise director at the time.
• 49:05
  Christine: And I say to the cruise director, Erin, I said, I am never going on a date with that guy ever again.
• 49:11
  Christine: But then he started writing letters to me.
• 49:14
  Christine: And he's like, maybe in the next life we're just cats and dogs and we can't be together.
• 49:18
  Christine: I'm like, what the hell is all this?
• 49:20
  Christine: You know, being from different countries.
• 49:22
  Christine: You're like, what is this?
• 49:24
  Christine: And he's like literally handwriting them and faxing them.
• 49:27
  Christine: We are in the year 2019.
• 49:30
  Douglas: Yes, I love Pete.
• 49:32
  Christine: Anyway, so finally, I like Pete more well.
• 49:34
  Christine: Yeah, he's he's a he's I he does no wrong.
• 49:36
  Christine: He's amazing.
• 49:37
  Christine: Um, but he uh then I said, you know what, I will meet up with you.
• 49:41
  Christine: Um, and you just I I decided I'm gonna go about this a different way.
• 49:45
  Christine: I'm gonna make him buy me the best bottle of wine that I like, and it was spellbound from Cal California.
• 49:51
  Christine: And I'm like, you buy me a bottle, spellbound, and I'll meet you in your room.
• 49:54
  Christine: We can talk.
• 49:54
  Christine: Because you gotta understand cruise ships.
• 49:56
  Christine: We can't just go okay, I guess we could have met in a in a more um open spot, but we we needed to talk, right?
• 50:04
  Christine: Yeah, so I met him in his cabin, and from that moment on we were kind of almost together, yeah.
• 50:10
  Christine: Okay, we had some things to go through, and then um the second contract Pete and I had, I got taken off ship and sent over to another ship to do a fill-in.
• 50:20
  Christine: And I remembered um I have a picture, one of my cover photos is me standing outside on the bow of the ship, and it's the sunset, and there's all of those wind turbines.
• 50:31
  Christine: And that picture is right in front of where I'm living now in the Netherlands.
• 50:35
  Christine: Had no freaking clue.
• 50:36
  Christine: But Pete said, Hey, we're gonna be passing the Netherlands, you're gonna live there someday.
• 50:39
  Christine: And I said, No, I'm not.
• 50:40
  Christine: I'm absolutely not living in the Netherlands, and now I'm living in the Netherlands, and it's weird, our ship that we're on right now, in the big painting, is our home of seriously, our home is on the painting, like the boulevard.
• 50:52
  Christine: We live on the boulevard, it's right there in the in our ship.
• 50:55
  Christine: Like all these things kind of like you know, match up, but so I get transferred.
• 50:59
  Christine: Let's go back to that restrict real quick.
• 51:01
  Douglas: You get put on a different ship, yes.
• 51:03
  Christine: I get uh transferred to another ship and I end up getting sick.
• 51:06
  Christine: So I'm over in between I just left uh Papua New Guinea, I am heading down towards uh New Zealand, and I have a bowel rupture, I'm septic and periontitis.
• 51:16
  Christine: They can't air uh metavac me off the ship because we're in the Tasman Sea, and if you know there's three currents to the Tasman Sea, so it's like too choppy, so they have to leave me on the ship.
• 51:26
  Christine: I was on 72 hours with a bowel rupture and septic.
• 51:29
  Christine: Ended up making it to the hospital.
• 51:31
  Christine: They're like, How did you get here?
• 51:32
  Christine: And I'm like, Taxi, because the doctor on the ship, I can't get too much into this, but the doctor on the ship kept thinking I just had like indigestion or something or I was constipated or something.
• 51:44
  Douglas: They couldn't show you.
• 51:44
  Christine: She was gonna take away medicine from me too.
• 51:46
  Christine: She's like, No, we don't want to put you on this, you're gonna get addicted.
• 51:48
  Christine: And I'm like, listen, we'll deal with addiction later.
• 51:51
  Christine: So I ended up going to the hospital, like, how did you get here?
• 51:54
  Christine: How are you still alive?
• 51:55
  Christine: They made you take a taxi?
• 51:56
  Christine: They went, they didn't even give me an ambulance.
• 51:58
  Christine: What?
• 51:59
  Christine: It's a bad story, but I can't really talk about it.
• 52:01
  Christine: So um then we get to we get to the hospital, and now a couple guests that were on the ship that you know you meet people on the ship and they call you family, they came with me to the hospital, and I said, Hey, because you know me, I've already you know I I like to be alone when I'm healing, when I'm grieving, all that.
• 52:19
  Christine: So I said, Hey, I need you, instead of staying here at the hospital with me, I need you to go in to Dun Eden in New Zealand and pick up pamphlets for me.
• 52:26
  Christine: Tell me about the city because when I get done here, uh when I heal, I'm gonna need to go back and I'm gonna need to tell them about this because I was cruise director on the ship.
• 52:34
  Christine: So, um, anyways, I get them finally gone.
• 52:38
  Christine: And then I go into immediate surgery, and the the doctor's like, hey, we have one of the top four gastrointestinal doctors here, we're gonna bring him in with us.
• 52:46
  Christine: I had three doctors, multiple nurses.
• 52:49
  Christine: Um, and luckily I'm not hooked up to a colostomy bag because of this doctor.
• 52:53
  Christine: I don't even know who he is, but he was like top four in the world.
• 52:56
  Christine: He just happened to be there teaching a class.
• 52:57
  Christine: Yeah.
• 52:58
  Christine: So, but then these people that I send into Dunedin, they find my doctor at a cafe having a coffee, and she's like, so what was wrong with her?
• 53:05
  Christine: They're like, Oh, she's septic and bowel rupture.
• 53:07
  Christine: And I guess her face just went white.
• 53:09
  Christine: So then I spent two months in the New Zealand hospital, came back to Iowa, stayed there, moved in with Pete in the Netherlands, and then just when when you do stuff, you don't do it halfway.
• 53:24
  Douglas: No, even when you get sick, no, you just let it go full bore.
• 53:28
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 53:29
  Christine: And I think and another thing about me that um everybody knows me is always happy.
• 53:34
  Christine: And I think I'm always happy because I've had every I I think a lot of people in life have had close calls or they've lost people they love.
• 53:40
  Christine: Luckily for me, I haven't had that loss yet.
• 53:43
  Christine: That's coming up in my future, I'm sure, obviously for all of us.
• 53:46
  Christine: But I I've gone through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering alone, but I've never lost anybody I loved.
• 53:54
  Christine: So that I think suffering alone is a lot easier than I don't know, I'm going off on a tangent here.
• 53:59
  Christine: I don't even know.
• 53:59
  Christine: But I'm always happy.
• 54:00
  Christine: I'm always happy because um I things could be worse.
• 54:04
  Christine: I could not be sitting here with you and flipping Skagway Lask with mountains out my window.
• 54:09
  Christine: Like, look where it got me.
• 54:11
  Christine: Here with you, buddy.
• 54:13
  Douglas: Absolutely, but it just blows me two three days on the hospital on the ship.
• 54:22
  Douglas: Yeah, they don't have any better diagnostics to figure out what's wrong with you than we think you're constipated.
• 54:27
  Douglas: It was pretty bad.
• 54:28
  Douglas: You need to take a cowboy.
• 54:30
  Christine: There was a whole nother story to that, which was bad, but unfortunately, with my my husband being employed by the company, I have to watch what I say.
• 54:36
  Douglas: No, that's that's fine.
• 54:37
  Douglas: It's just again the resiliency that you're building on all this.
• 54:41
  Douglas: So, where where was the ship that you were on with Pete before you get transferred to this ship?
• 54:49
  Christine: Um, you like where I got sick?
• 54:51
  Douglas: No, where because in that one you're down in Australia, New Zealand.
• 54:54
  Douglas: Yes.
• 54:54
  Douglas: Where was the ship?
• 54:55
  Douglas: Where were you guys?
• 54:56
  Douglas: Was it in the same area?
• 54:58
  Christine: Oh yeah.
• 54:58
  Christine: Well, it was doing New Zealand run, Australia run, that sort of thing.
• 55:02
  Douglas: Okay, and so you got transferred to another New Zealand-Australia ship when you got sick?
• 55:06
  Christine: Absolutely not.
• 55:06
  Christine: No, no, no, no.
• 55:07
  Christine: So they took me off my ship.
• 55:09
  Douglas: Yeah, which was where?
• 55:10
  Christine: Which was docked in Dunedin.
• 55:12
  Christine: Okay.
• 55:13
  Christine: And then I got in a taxi, went to the hospital, then I healed in the hospital for two months.
• 55:17
  Douglas: Before that, let's back up before that.
• 55:19
  Douglas: Because you had said that you and Pete were on the same ship.
• 55:22
  Christine: Yeah.
• 55:22
  Douglas: And then you got transferred to another ship.
• 55:24
  Douglas: So where was the ship that Pete was on?
• 55:26
  Christine: I don't remember.
• 55:27
  Christine: Where was he?
• 55:28
  Douglas: Not that it matters, but I was like, are you like half a world apart at this time?
• 55:32
  Douglas: Are you in this?
• 55:33
  Christine: Yes, he was doing like the Mexican Riviera, like California, Mozilla, and all that, and then Hawaii.
• 55:38
  Douglas: So you got shipped clear across the Pacific.
• 55:40
  Christine: Absolutely.
• 55:41
  Christine: Yeah.
• 55:41
  Douglas: And so you don't even have him close by.
• 55:44
  Christine: You know, he and the thing is, I remember and I have a vision.
• 55:46
  Douglas: Is he still faxing you letters when you're in the hospital?
• 55:49
  Christine: No, but he got oh it so I have it on video.
• 55:51
  Christine: I wake up from surgery and I check my phone.
• 55:54
  Christine: Now, mind you, it's been 24, 32 hours, uh more probably.
• 56:00
  Christine: And before I went under, I told him I was going to the hospital, I'm not well, and I said, Hey, but I've got a surprise of peanut MMs for you, and they are being delivered to your room.
• 56:09
  Christine: I had someone on the ship bringing to them.
• 56:11
  Christine: Anyways, I wake up to my phone just bam with messages.
• 56:14
  Christine: Where's my peanut MMs?
• 56:16
  Christine: Where are you?
• 56:16
  Christine: Oh my gosh, you don't love me anymore.
• 56:18
  Christine: You're leaving me, you're uh ghosting me, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 56:20
  Christine: He's thinking, because he's 15 years older, and he's thinking, I have just you know, why does this younger cute woman want to be with someone that's older?
• 56:29
  Christine: Maybe she's changed her mind all of this.
• 56:31
  Christine: She's making up this hospital thing.
• 56:33
  Christine: I video call him, and I've got the video, I video call him, and I'm like, I've got hoses all over, so I'm like, he, I'm not doing so well.
• 56:41
  Christine: Your peanut MMs are gonna come now, you know.
• 56:45
  Christine: But I got tubes everywhere, and I've cut, they cut 12 inches of my bowel out, and I've cut from up here all the way down here.
• 56:53
  Christine: Yeah, and I am just they're having to stuff me every day, and it was oh, it was horrific.
• 56:59
  Christine: You know?
• 56:59
  Christine: I got I screenshotted it and I got it on camera, and he's like looking down like, oh you said you weren't well, but what is this?
• 57:08
  Christine: Wasn't expected, you know?
• 57:10
  Christine: So he would send me hosp flowers in the hospital and he'd talk to me every day, and and he really um he was my strength through healing.
• 57:19
  Christine: But I was in that hotel room after I got transferred out of the hospital.
• 57:22
  Christine: I loved taking my pharmaceutical meds and drinking my Kiwi crush, which is the New Zealanders think that Kiwis help your gut, and they do, but they actually prescribe it to you.
• 57:34
  Christine: So yeah, they prescribe you Kiwi crush, which is kiwi juice.
• 57:37
  Christine: Okay, and so I would take that every day, I'd take my medicine, I'd look out the window.
• 57:40
  Christine: Now the New Zealand is the first place that the sun rises.
• 57:44
  Christine: So I thought that was magical that every day I got to see the sunrise before everybody else, right?
• 57:48
  Christine: Um, and mind you, I was also pretty rugged up on these uh pharmaceuticals.
• 57:54
  Christine: It was great.
• 57:56
  Christine: And then and then um so I just stayed there, I healed, and you know what a lot of people don't know is if you get injured on a ship and you get stuck in a port, like let's just say here in Skegway, there's a port agent.
• 58:06
  Christine: That port agent is going to take care of you until you or check in on you until you leave.
• 58:11
  Christine: So I had one port agent in New Zealand, Brendan Meredith, that him and his wife would come every day and check up on me.
• 58:17
  Douglas: Nice.
• 58:18
  Christine: And by this time, I still hadn't started social media.
• 58:20
  Christine: Okay, nothing on social media.
• 58:22
  Christine: I had Facebook though, and you know, there were uh, you know, hundreds of people like wishing me well, and I'm sure there's a few haters that's like, ah, we hope she doesn't make it through this.
• 58:30
  Christine: Of course, like we all have those people, I'm sure.
• 58:33
  Christine: Um, but yeah, I get out, I go back to Iowa, settle down uh there, wait for Pete to get done with his contract.
• 58:41
  Christine: In December, move to the Netherlands.
• 58:43
  Christine: Now, mind you, I had never what year is this?
• 58:46
  Douglas: 2019.
• 58:47
  Douglas: 2019, you're moving to the Netherlands.
• 58:49
  Christine: And remember, I had never oh not remember, but I had never even asked him where we're living.
• 58:53
  Christine: Not even a picture, nothing.
• 58:54
  Christine: I was that in love, right?
• 58:55
  Christine: So here he's like, Do you want to live in Iowa or do you want to live in the Netherlands?
• 58:59
  Christine: Well, at the time, you know, I've got I've got Pete that's 15 years older with Dutch healthcare, and I'm like, well, we can always set up a place in Iowa, but let's go wherever your place is now, because he had never lived in this house.
• 59:10
  Christine: Um, but he had it, you know.
• 59:11
  Christine: So I'm like, okay, uh, we'll go to the Netherlands.
• 59:14
  Christine: So he picks me up from the airport, we drive, it's dark, and we pull up to this big concrete building, and I'm like, wow, we have a whole building.
• 59:21
  Christine: This is great, you know.
• 59:22
  Christine: And I'm like, I get up to the building and I look outside and I'm like, oh my gosh, you didn't tell me you live on the boulevard and the ocean, it's outside our window.
• 59:31
  Christine: I've got my own beach.
• 59:32
  Christine: And he's like, Oh yeah, I think I told you I showed you.
• 59:35
  Christine: I go, No, you never showed me.
• 59:36
  Christine: He goes, Yeah, well, I didn't, I wanted to make sure you loved me, and I'm like, oh yeah, I love you, love you even more now.
• 59:42
  Christine: But then I'm like, I had never, you know, in the states or in the US, we have big houses and yards.
• 59:49
  Christine: And here I am in this apartment that's the size of what we're sitting in right now.
• 59:55
  Douglas: Uh-huh.
• 59:56
  Christine: And I remember the first summer we came home, I struggled up those Dutch stairs, six flights of stairs.
• 1:00:02
  Christine: I'm not an exercise girl, if you haven't noticed.
• 1:00:05
  Christine: Okay?
• 1:00:05
  Christine: It used to be a few years.
• 1:00:06
  Christine: Yeah, it used to be those days are over.
• 1:00:08
  Christine: And then I climb up these stairs, I get up there, and I'm like, oh, I gotta turn the AC on.
• 1:00:13
  Christine: So I'm like, knocking the AC down, and Pete comes in, we're all sweating, and I'm like, hey Pete, I turned the AC on.
• 1:00:20
  Christine: He goes, What is AC?
• 1:00:22
  Christine: I said, air conditioning.
• 1:00:23
  Christine: He goes, we don't have it.
• 1:00:23
  Douglas: I'm like, what buttons were you in?
• 1:00:28
  Christine: Yeah, we have air conditioning.
• 1:00:29
  Christine: He's like, we have ocean air.
• 1:00:30
  Christine: I was like, oh, you know, so, anyways, but now we have moved into a house down the street we both own and it's got air conditioning.
• 1:00:38
  Douglas: It's got air conditioning.
• 1:00:39
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:00:39
  Christine: But then we haven't gotten to COVID yet.
• 1:00:41
  Douglas: No, because you're still 2019 when you're in the middle of the year.
• 1:00:44
  Christine: Yeah, so 2019, then wait, wait a second.
• 1:00:47
  Douglas: So when you're moving in with Pete, do you guys now get contracts together so you're on the same ships?
• 1:00:53
  Christine: So we're setting that up.
• 1:00:53
  Christine: So that was what we were setting up, and so I my first contract that I had back, they uh were sending me to the Koningsdam ships.
• 1:01:02
  Christine: So I went to the Koningsdam, um, and my parents and Pete came for my first cruising.
• 1:01:08
  Christine: Hold on, I needed a sip of have a sip of water.
• 1:01:11
  Douglas: You can have two sips if you want.
• 1:01:15
  Christine: Wait, I want to switch.
• 1:01:16
  Christine: That's why I have such energy.
• 1:01:18
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:01:19
  Christine: Anyways, um, so Koningstam.
• 1:01:21
  Christine: So Pete is bringing my engagement ring on the ship.
• 1:01:24
  Christine: My parents are there, we're all sailing together, and that is when and Pete engage proposes to me on the ship, that is when COVID hits, okay?
• 1:01:32
  Christine: So COVID hits, and I am, and everybody on the ship is going absolutely nuts, and this is where I learned that when I am in a situation of um, whether it be a situation that's stressful, I turn very bossy.
• 1:01:48
  Christine: I'm like, we're not playing around.
• 1:01:49
  Christine: This is a situation, we gotta take, you know, we gotta take rain, you know?
• 1:01:53
  Christine: And I don't deal well with people that are whiners and all this and all that.
• 1:01:57
  Christine: I'm like, we have something to do, we're in a pandemic, let's go.
• 1:02:00
  Christine: So here we're on stage, captain and I, and we've got all the people there, and they're all wanting to know all these questions about COVID.
• 1:02:07
  Christine: We've got these two people in the front row, everybody's freaking out, conspiracy theories, all this stuff.
• 1:02:12
  Christine: No one knows what's going on.
• 1:02:13
  Christine: And these two people in the front row, the lady is yelling at the captain, get us off the ship, we need off, la la la la la.
• 1:02:19
  Christine: There's covet on the ship, we know it.
• 1:02:21
  Christine: People are yelling.
• 1:02:22
  Christine: I finally said, Captain, can I have the microphone?
• 1:02:24
  Christine: I said, you guys, my elderly father, my dad's like, what?
• 1:02:29
  Douglas: Why am I elderly?
• 1:02:30
  Douglas: Why's my daughter talking to me like this?
• 1:02:33
  Christine: I'm like, my elderly father, my fiance and my my mom are sitting in the front row.
• 1:02:38
  Christine: Do you think if there's COVID on the ship, I would let them out near all of you?
• 1:02:42
  Christine: I'm like, so we're fine.
• 1:02:44
  Christine: I'm like, I wouldn't let them out near you guys if there was COVID on the ship.
• 1:02:47
  Christine: She ends up having like a a stroke or something from all this fear, and I don't know.
• 1:02:52
  Christine: But, anyways, the cruise ends March 13th, and here's where my husband, who is just a fiance, needs to go back to Iowa and live with my parents for a month and a half, almost two months, with me not there.
• 1:03:04
  Christine: Now, mind you, you all know um my parents.
• 1:03:08
  Christine: My dad's a handful, my mom is a sweetheart, but it's a lot to take in because I'm like, I finally found a man to marry me.
• 1:03:14
  Christine: Do not screw this up.
• 1:03:16
  Christine: Do not f this up, right?
• 1:03:18
  Christine: That's what I was really thinking, you know.
• 1:03:20
  Douglas: So you you're still under contract, so enough.
• 1:03:22
  Douglas: So I have to be on the ship.
• 1:03:23
  Douglas: Even with COVID, you gotta stay on the ship.
• 1:03:25
  Christine: I can't leave.
• 1:03:26
  Christine: So I'm on the ship.
• 1:03:26
  Christine: Pete goes back, he lives with my parents for a month and a half.
• 1:03:29
  Douglas: Why do you still need to be on the ship?
• 1:03:30
  Douglas: You don't have any passengers.
• 1:03:32
  Christine: It costs more for ships to not run and not have anybody on it than it costs for them to just sit still.
• 1:03:38
  Douglas: But I thought they weren't having any passengers on the side.
• 1:03:40
  Christine: But the ship still needs to run.
• 1:03:41
  Christine: So you were still on there and just making sure everything is.
• 1:03:43
  Christine: Yeah, remember, we've got over 60 nationalities on board.
• 1:03:46
  Christine: We can't get all those people.
• 1:03:47
  Christine: No, we've got to keep the ship running.
• 1:03:49
  Christine: And we also don't know how long this is gonna last.
• 1:03:51
  Christine: It's gonna be a week, two weeks, we don't know.
• 1:03:53
  Christine: At that moment, I'm like, hee ha!
• 1:03:56
  Douglas: I can be on the ship and I'll have to do this.
• 1:03:57
  Christine: I'm gonna get paid and I'm gonna get a week to myself.
• 1:04:00
  Christine: And that's great, you know.
• 1:04:01
  Christine: And I had started doing videos.
• 1:04:03
  Christine: I think I was doing like videos for like a week and a half or so, and then that's when Holland was like, hey, please, you know, don't do this.
• 1:04:09
  Christine: Like, okay.
• 1:04:11
  Christine: Um, but I still was doing like updates of photos and things like that.
• 1:04:15
  Christine: But I ended up being stuck on board for 55 days and I couldn't get off.
• 1:04:19
  Christine: I found out during the pandemic that you're a seafarer before you're a passport holder, which means even though we docked at LA twice, as a U.S.
• 1:04:27
  Christine: citizen, only one of five that was on the ship because US citizens usually typically do not work for cruise lines because we have no currency conversion.
• 1:04:35
  Christine: We're like, take me in a cruise directing position, let's say I make $10,000 a month.
• 1:04:39
  Christine: You've got someone from South Africa making $10,000 a month.
• 1:04:42
  Christine: They have no taxes, they go home and they have a currency conversion of $1 per 16 Rand.
• 1:04:47
  Christine: Where me, I'm taxed, healthcare, all this stuff.
• 1:04:50
  Christine: So he's making $10,000.
• 1:04:52
  Christine: I take home $5,000 or $6,500 or whatever it may be.
• 1:04:56
  Christine: So that's why there's not a lot of Americans that work on a ship.
• 1:04:59
  Christine: So here I am stuck on board, and they won't let me off in LA the two times because I'm a seafarer holder, uh a seafarer, not a passport holder.
• 1:05:07
  Douglas: So as a seafarer, does it go based on the flag of the ship?
• 1:05:09
  Douglas: Is it because it's not your password?
• 1:05:12
  Christine: All I know is that they don't consider uh they didn't consider me a U.S.
• 1:05:16
  Christine: Citizen citizen, no.
• 1:05:18
  Christine: We even had like my government step in from Iowa, my parents reached out, all that, um, and no one could do anything.
• 1:05:25
  Christine: So I'm on board for 55 days.
• 1:05:27
  Christine: Um, I am now what the captain calls over the public announcement PA on the cruise ship.
• 1:05:33
  Christine: You have, you know, your cruise director, dun dun, dun.
• 1:05:35
  Christine: Welcome to Skagway, Alaska.
• 1:05:37
  Christine: You know, that was my job, is to be the face.
• 1:05:39
  Christine: So now I'm the face of this cruise ship, but it's turned into a repatriation ship.
• 1:05:45
  Christine: So now I've got six cruise ships, all from the Carnival Corporation, that have now sent their get their crew members to my ship.
• 1:05:52
  Christine: And so, as the cruise director of the main ship, it was my job to now take care of all the crew that are on the ship.
• 1:05:59
  Christine: The captain's busy.
• 1:06:01
  Christine: The HR is busy.
• 1:06:04
  Christine: The hotel director's busy.
• 1:06:06
  Christine: Culinary's busy.
• 1:06:07
  Christine: Everybody's busy.
• 1:06:07
  Christine: But so they put it all on me.
• 1:06:09
  Christine: So what I did was and I took and I took two volunteers from each cruise ship to be the leaders of those cruise ships.
• 1:06:16
  Christine: And then we had a WhatsApp.
• 1:06:17
  Christine: I had a WhatsApp group with all these ships.
• 1:06:19
  Christine: And then they I would make sure that they would go to their temp temp times because we had to take temps twice a day, making sure that you know any questions were answered.
• 1:06:28
  Christine: But it turned nasty on me because all these crew members were thinking I knew something that they didn't because no one knew anything.
• 1:06:35
  Christine: But they were, and then the captain, which was an amazing captain, Captain Timmers, um he recently just came to see me for the first time after all this COVID stuff in Grand Turk.
• 1:06:45
  Christine: But uh he would call me Lean Mean Christine and I would get on the PA the announcement and I'd be like, uh good afternoon, everyone.
• 1:06:52
  Christine: So a couple things we need to go over.
• 1:06:54
  Christine: A go over.
• 1:06:55
  Christine: Are we allowed to have crew parties in our cabin?
• 1:06:59
  Christine: The answer is no.
• 1:07:01
  Christine: Are we allowed to leave our cabin on undesignated times?
• 1:07:06
  Christine: The answer is no, you know.
• 1:07:08
  Christine: So these people are like knowing me as the rule girl because I'm like, we're in a flipping pandemic, people.
• 1:07:14
  Christine: And then finally, when we got a chance to get off ship, that's when people were whining and whining.
• 1:07:20
  Christine: Uh we finally had a private airplane that was gonna take first the American citizens off, okay?
• 1:07:26
  Christine: And I had my entertainment group, and one of the girls came up to me.
• 1:07:30
  Christine: They're only letting me take one of my suitcases, but I need both suitcases, Christine.
• 1:07:34
  Christine: I go, do you want off the ship?
• 1:07:36
  Christine: She's like, Yeah, I do.
• 1:07:37
  Christine: And I go, then pick what you need.
• 1:07:39
  Christine: Take what you need.
• 1:07:39
  Christine: And you leave one suitcase and you take another one, and I don't want to hear anything about it.
• 1:07:43
  Christine: I'm like, what is your problem?
• 1:07:45
  Christine: Or I'm making a list because we're running out on the ship of deodorant, lotion, shampoo, conditioner.
• 1:07:50
  Christine: So I have each of my groups from the different ships take the log, what everybody needs.
• 1:07:55
  Christine: I come back with, I need deodorant but only dove.
• 1:07:59
  Christine: I need the shampoo but only herbal essence.
• 1:08:02
  Christine: I need this.
• 1:08:03
  Christine: I'm like, we're in a pandemic, people.
• 1:08:05
  Christine: I'm getting 10 sticks of this deodorant, this shampoo, this conditioner, and you're gonna make do.
• 1:08:10
  Christine: And at that moment, I realized if in a time of war, who I would want by my side and who I wouldn't.
• 1:08:15
  Christine: But there was a lot of people I wouldn't want by my side.
• 1:08:19
  Christine: I don't like winers, even in life.
• 1:08:22
  Christine: Times are tough.
• 1:08:23
  Christine: We get through it.
• 1:08:24
  Christine: Right?
• 1:08:26
  Douglas: So after 55 days.
• 1:08:27
  Christine: Yeah, 55 days, I get off, go to my parents' house.
• 1:08:30
  Douglas: Wait a second.
• 1:08:31
  Douglas: So the was the ship in LA this whole time?
• 1:08:34
  Douglas: Were you docked up?
• 1:08:34
  Douglas: Yeah, just right outside LA.
• 1:08:35
  Douglas: You're just right outside LA that you guys were.
• 1:08:38
  Christine: What we were doing is we were going through, we were going through um down, we were going down South uh South America.
• 1:08:46
  Christine: Our ship, Koningsdam, was the first big ship to go through the Panama Canal.
• 1:08:50
  Christine: We actually had to bring the lifeboats in a little bit to get us through it.
• 1:08:54
  Christine: Yeah, because we're not we weren't supposed to go through the Panama Canal, but we needed to get back over that way to get over towards California and LA for our our position.
• 1:09:03
  Christine: You know, the best place we could re repatriate these people.
• 1:09:06
  Christine: So Pete now had lived with my parents for a month and a half.
• 1:09:09
  Christine: Now he leaves and he gets position stationed on a ship outside of Indonesia where he is for five whole months.
• 1:09:15
  Christine: He stays there for so we are away for five months.
• 1:09:18
  Douglas: So you guys just got engaged and the whole time he's in Iowa, you're on a cruise ship.
• 1:09:23
  Christine: Yeah, but I'm you know, with with my family and with my my daughter, my family, everything's good, and he is on this cruise ship.
• 1:09:29
  Christine: We did have um Peacock TV reached out to me, and they had the guy from the office, the guy that's in a band, the with the the afro, the the big guy, I don't know.
• 1:09:41
  Christine: He ended up singing us a a song on national TV about cruise ship cabin lovers or whatever it was, I don't know.
• 1:09:48
  Christine: And so they put him on TV from Indonesia and I was in Iowa, and it was this big thing from the office, the TV show.
• 1:09:55
  Christine: Anyways, um we get we get to where he's getting off ship.
• 1:10:00
  Christine: Now at that moment, I knew I needed to get back with Pete.
• 1:10:03
  Christine: I cannot get in the Netherlands because I'm not a U.S.
• 1:10:06
  Christine: citizen.
• 1:10:06
  Christine: He can't get in the US.
• 1:10:07
  Christine: Yeah, I'm not another uh Nederland citizen, Netherlands citizen.
• 1:10:13
  Christine: I he can't get in the US.
• 1:10:15
  Christine: So there's only a multiple uh number of places that you can actually get into to be together, and most of those places were the Caribbean or Mexico.
• 1:10:22
  Christine: Well, if we're in a time of uh sorry if Caribbean and Mexico, but you know, the healthcare, you know, is iffy in some places.
• 1:10:28
  Christine: So I'm like, we're not going there.
• 1:10:30
  Christine: Ireland.
• 1:10:31
  Christine: Ireland was a place that we could go and be together.
• 1:10:34
  Christine: So we I had to get tons of paperwork together and show all these things of that we're actually a couple.
• 1:10:40
  Christine: I still have the big book, I put together all of our pictures and everything.
• 1:10:43
  Christine: And we head to Ireland and we lived for six weeks in an Airbnb while the world is shut down.
• 1:10:50
  Christine: We had Ireland all to ourselves, and we literally lived there until we could get back into the Netherlands.
• 1:10:56
  Douglas: Wow.
• 1:10:57
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:10:57
  Christine: And then from there.
• 1:11:01
  Douglas: So what now so what I'm if I'm doing this right, now you're fall of 2020 when you get back to the Netherlands, or is it beginning to do?
• 1:11:10
  Christine: Yeah, no, fall of 2020.
• 1:11:12
  Douglas: Is when you finally get back to the Netherlands.
• 1:11:14
  Douglas: Yeah, is my matter?
• 1:11:15
  Douglas: 2020.
• 1:11:15
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:11:16
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:11:17
  Christine: And then that's when like we go through COVID a while, when the cruise line started up again.
• 1:11:22
  Christine: Um, they would not, because of scheduling, they don't want to deal with scheduling conflicts at this moment.
• 1:11:26
  Christine: They just want to get people on, get these the cruise ships started started.
• 1:11:30
  Christine: They wouldn't put me on the same ship as Pete.
• 1:11:32
  Christine: And I said no.
• 1:11:33
  Christine: They want to put me on a Eurdam instead of another ship.
• 1:11:36
  Christine: And I said, no.
• 1:11:37
  Christine: I said, I need to be on the same ship as my husband.
• 1:11:39
  Christine: I'm not gonna do this.
• 1:11:40
  Douglas: I'm you guys got married during this time.
• 1:11:41
  Douglas: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:11:42
  Christine: We got married in the we got married in the courthouse.
• 1:11:45
  Christine: I I bought my in Ireland or no, in the Netherlands.
• 1:11:48
  Christine: We had pizza for dinner.
• 1:11:50
  Christine: I made my own wedding cake from the grocery store.
• 1:11:53
  Christine: Um, and I bought fake flowers from some lady in England and had them shipped to me.
• 1:11:59
  Christine: I bought my dress on Shein for $20.
• 1:12:01
  Christine: Ladies, I had to buy Spanx on the internet too, and shoes.
• 1:12:06
  Christine: I am not from Europe, so I don't know all these European sizes, so I kept buying shoes and they were the wrong size.
• 1:12:12
  Christine: Now I know I'm a size European 40.
• 1:12:14
  Christine: So, um, but we had the cheapest wedding you could have.
• 1:12:18
  Christine: It was great.
• 1:12:19
  Christine: It was just the two of us and his sister that signed the papers, and that night we thought, well, we're gonna have we're gonna get drunk and have champagne, and we had our first bottle of champagne.
• 1:12:29
  Christine: We were passed out by 6 p.m.
• 1:12:30
  Christine: and we woke up at 10 and ordered dominoes.
• 1:12:32
  Christine: And that was our wedding.
• 1:12:34
  Christine: And we got no presents from anybody, and well, I got we got a couple uh bottles of champagne from people and some cards, but um, we didn't have you know the typical reception and all that, but you know what?
• 1:12:45
  Christine: It was a perfect, perfect wedding for us.
• 1:12:48
  Christine: Um, but then we started ships came into action.
• 1:12:51
  Christine: We needed to start on ships, they wouldn't put me on the ship with Pete.
• 1:12:53
  Christine: So I stayed in the Netherlands and tried to learn Dutch.
• 1:12:57
  Christine: Went to that's when I started doing social media.
• 1:13:00
  Christine: I started trying to learn Dutch.
• 1:13:02
  Christine: Um, that was a fail, still is a fail.
• 1:13:05
  Douglas: So still haven't made it?
• 1:13:06
  Christine: No, I'm I'm trying.
• 1:13:07
  Christine: Ick probare.
• 1:13:08
  Christine: Um that's a phrase in Dutch.
• 1:13:10
  Christine: Ickprobear, I try.
• 1:13:13
  Christine: Anyways, so basically he gets on ship, he starts working.
• 1:13:18
  Christine: I'm like, what am I gonna do for work?
• 1:13:20
  Christine: I don't know.
• 1:13:21
  Christine: That's when I turned to social media.
• 1:13:22
  Christine: I'm like, finally, if they're gonna take away my microphone, I'm gonna be cruise director to everyone, everyone in the world.
• 1:13:27
  Christine: So I was taking that anger, even though I absolutely love my husband's company.
• 1:13:32
  Christine: I was taking that anger that I had just got everybody through repatriation.
• 1:13:37
  Christine: I had been in and out of the hospital twice, finally got my job back, and it's taken away again.
• 1:13:42
  Christine: I took all that anger and I'm like, heck with all you, I'm gonna be it.
• 1:13:46
  Christine: I'm gonna be the person everybody comes to for cruising.
• 1:13:49
  Christine: And so I started just videos like everybody else, started with one follower, 20, 100,000, whatever, and I slowly we get there.
• 1:13:56
  Christine: Um, I finally get to get on ship with Pete.
• 1:13:59
  Douglas: When was that?
• 1:14:00
  Christine: That was 2022.
• 1:14:03
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:14:03
  Christine: Finally get to go back to Alaska.
• 1:14:05
  Christine: I was the first cruise ship back in Canada with Pete.
• 1:14:09
  Christine: I had to be like in my room for like a week.
• 1:14:11
  Christine: Like, what did what did they call that?
• 1:14:13
  Christine: Quarantine.
• 1:14:14
  Christine: Quarantine for a week.
• 1:14:16
  Christine: And that's when I started my videos, and I was always doing room service, and it was mashed potato.
• 1:14:20
  Christine: They knew me as mashed potato girl because I'm like, oh, mashed potatoes again.
• 1:14:24
  Christine: And then like people found that funny.
• 1:14:27
  Christine: And then, of course, they want to come back.
• 1:14:28
  Christine: Did she get mashed potatoes again?
• 1:14:29
  Christine: And then, oh, mashed potatoes again, and then the next next, I hope I don't get mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes again, you know.
• 1:14:37
  Christine: And so I'm in quarantine, and that's when I started gaining followers.
• 1:14:40
  Christine: And I I went from like 10,000 to 20,000 to 30,000, you know, during this thing with my husband.
• 1:14:46
  Christine: And finally, I thought I had made it when I got to 60,000 followers.
• 1:14:49
  Christine: I'm like, dip, I'm the bomb, man.
• 1:14:51
  Christine: This is cool.
• 1:14:52
  Christine: You know, people are actually we're talking back and forth.
• 1:14:54
  Christine: I'm starting to do videos, dancing, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 1:14:57
  Christine: Um, and people are finding me cringy.
• 1:15:00
  Christine: The people that know me think I'm stupid, cringy.
• 1:15:03
  Christine: Oh my god, look at her, what a show off.
• 1:15:05
  Christine: Um, you know, because what people don't know is to be, I think personally, to be successful, you do need to go through a period of looking cringe.
• 1:15:16
  Christine: Um, people making fun of you, questioning what you're doing because you're stepping out of the box.
• 1:15:20
  Christine: You're not doing what's normal to everybody and everybody else.
• 1:15:23
  Christine: You're stepping away from the norm and starting something.
• 1:15:26
  Christine: And man, did we start something?
• 1:15:27
  Christine: Now we're at like three million people, 1.2 million people on Facebook.
• 1:15:32
  Christine: Um, I've got and now my husband is probably gonna retire in 2028 because our job has been so successful, and now I work for like six different I have six different entities, and yeah, it's been successful.
• 1:15:46
  Christine: So that's that.
• 1:15:47
  Douglas: We're done with the story now.
• 1:15:48
  Douglas: No, no, we're not.
• 1:15:50
  Douglas: No, we're not.
• 1:15:51
  Douglas: I got more questions.
• 1:15:52
  Christine: I'm just kidding, I'm kidding.
• 1:15:53
  Christine: Go ahead.
• 1:15:54
  Douglas: So if he retires and you're no longer on the ships, oh we're still gonna cruise and be on the ship.
• 1:15:59
  Douglas: You're still gonna do the yeah.
• 1:16:01
  Christine: So part of my job, so first off, we started with I started with TikTok, okay?
• 1:16:07
  Christine: And TikTok was pushing out my videos.
• 1:16:11
  Christine: We have 1.2 million followers on TikTok, a lot of people watch, right?
• 1:16:14
  Christine: Then TikTok, I realized eh, something something's not right with this.
• 1:16:19
  Christine: I saw that there was a lot of changes going on with TikTok, so I'm not one to sit around and wait for what's gonna happen.
• 1:16:24
  Christine: Let's jump ahead of it.
• 1:16:25
  Christine: So that's when I turned to Facebook.
• 1:16:27
  Christine: I turned all of my um focus on Facebook, and now we have 1.2 million people on Facebook, and that's where my bread are bread and butter is.
• 1:16:35
  Christine: That's where I socialize with all my people, and I'm not just a regular influencer content creator, I'm actually talking to you guys, talking back and forth.
• 1:16:43
  Christine: And for a lot of you that are cruising to Alaska, because this is my 129th cruise to Alaska.
• 1:16:47
  Christine: 129th.
• 1:16:48
  Christine: Yeah, it's a lot, right?
• 1:16:50
  Douglas: It's almost like you live here.
• 1:16:51
  Douglas: Ah, yeah.
• 1:16:52
  Douglas: You can all you're you could probably be close to a resident now.
• 1:16:54
  Christine: I wish.
• 1:16:55
  Douglas: If they were a consecutive.
• 1:16:56
  Christine: I wish, yeah.
• 1:16:57
  Christine: But um, so they look to me for the videos.
• 1:17:00
  Christine: So I've done over since you know, I've been in Alaska since 2012, on and off, but um, since 2022, I've been doing regular videos of Alaska for Skegway, Ketchcan, Juneau, Icy Straight Points, Haynes, all these places that they can go and see, and what are you gonna do?
• 1:17:15
  Christine: What are you gonna eat?
• 1:17:16
  Christine: And so um now these people come in and meet and greet with me in the ports.
• 1:17:20
  Christine: Um, and like last uh last month, one week, we had 2,875 hugs I gave.
• 1:17:26
  Christine: It was awesome.
• 1:17:26
  Christine: And like I feel like I know every single person I meet because they know my mom, they know my dad, they know what they know that what my pajamas look like, you know.
• 1:17:34
  Douglas: So do people reach out to you and find out what ships you're gonna be on and where?
• 1:17:39
  Christine: So they can book their trips.
• 1:17:42
  Christine: Yeah, but then I also now that I have so we have a couple different, I don't put all my eggs in one basket because we don't know how long social media is going to last.
• 1:17:51
  Christine: So that is why I have my marketing with Milano Jewelry, which is in all the ports, and I've got my jewelry, as you can see, with them.
• 1:17:58
  Christine: But then also Dune Jewelry.
• 1:18:00
  Christine: I do marketing with Dune Jewelry, and then I've designed some stuff with Dune.
• 1:18:04
  Christine: So I'm in all the ports, 440 stores around the world.
• 1:18:07
  Christine: Um, in Milano we have 43 stores, so I work with those two, those are my main jobs, right?
• 1:18:12
  Christine: But then I also started up my own company, which is Dune Travels.
• 1:18:16
  Christine: I am not a travel agent, but I have a travel agent that books you and next year I'm taking 200 to Italy, 200 to Alaska, 200 to uh Caribbean, and I've done this for three years now.
• 1:18:26
  Christine: So people pay to be on the cruise and pay extra to hang out with me for the week, and that's another one of my businesses.
• 1:18:32
  Douglas: So I'm getting to hang out with you for free.
• 1:18:34
  Christine: Yeah, other people pay for this?
• 1:18:36
  Christine: He paid for my lunch.
• 1:18:37
  Christine: I did, and he was I had a salad.
• 1:18:39
  Christine: Just kidding, it was a really good salad.
• 1:18:41
  Christine: It was good, but I and I also had a spinach artichoke dip.
• 1:18:44
  Christine: That was really good too.
• 1:18:46
  Christine: But so I've got so then I've got social media, I've got Dune Travels, I've got Milano, I've got Dune.
• 1:18:53
  Christine: Yeah, so that's four jobs.
• 1:18:55
  Christine: Oh, and then I've got some collaborations coming up that you guys don't know about yet.
• 1:18:59
  Douglas: Okay, so with the jewelry collaborations, when you get to a port, there's that are you bringing people off the ship into the stores like you did before?
• 1:19:06
  Christine: Absolutely not.
• 1:19:07
  Douglas: You're not doing that anymore.
• 1:19:09
  Christine: Because the stores are all affiliated with their own jewelry company, so I am not allowed to sell jewelry on the ship, talk about jewelry.
• 1:19:15
  Christine: I can't say, hey, come with me in a port.
• 1:19:17
  Christine: But what I can do is on my Facebook say, hey, I'm in port these days from this time.
• 1:19:22
  Christine: Like today, my meet and greet was from 10 to 3.
• 1:19:24
  Christine: So they come in, they meet me, and they buy jewelry.
• 1:19:27
  Christine: They buy a lot of jewelry.
• 1:19:29
  Christine: People uh wonder, for example, my last group cruise, which we just did to, well, I just came back from Norway.
• 1:19:36
  Christine: There was no jewelry up there, but then the group cruise before that, I brought a hundred people into Alaska.
• 1:19:41
  Christine: Uh, out of my 100 people I brought, they they bought that was 100 people, $200,000 worth of jewelry.
• 1:19:48
  Christine: Whoa.
• 1:19:49
  Christine: Just from my cruise.
• 1:19:51
  Christine: And actually we have 200 people.
• 1:19:53
  Douglas: You're making other people a lot of money.
• 1:19:55
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:19:57
  Christine: But it's nice.
• 1:19:58
  Douglas: Can you sell sporting goods?
• 1:19:59
  Douglas: Have you sold like fishing lures and stuff?
• 1:20:02
  Christine: We'll talk about commissions later.
• 1:20:03
  Douglas: We'll talk about commissions later.
• 1:20:04
  Christine: But then I also do a lot of pre-bono, uh, what do you call it?
• 1:20:07
  Christine: Pre-bono?
• 1:20:08
  Christine: Pro bono.
• 1:20:08
  Christine: Pro bono.
• 1:20:09
  Christine: I do a lot of pre-bono work.
• 1:20:11
  Christine: I love that.
• 1:20:13
  Christine: No, but um, I do a lot of things for the community.
• 1:20:16
  Christine: So you guys know I do videos for catch cam.
• 1:20:18
  Christine: I've got another video I'm loading today for Skegway, but I love to go into small businesses and I love to take video.
• 1:20:24
  Christine: I love that I get to I I love that I've been given a platform and then I can help other people.
• 1:20:31
  Douglas: So backing up a little bit more now to another question.
• 1:20:35
  Douglas: How normal is that for people in the cruise industry to meet their spouse on a ship and then be on get that same schedule like you and Pete did, that you meet on a ship, you get married, and then you're working on the same ships and on the same schedules.
• 1:20:51
  Christine: Yes, it uh there's a lot of spouses on board, whether it be a husband on board, usually it's a wife on board.
• 1:20:56
  Christine: Um, but it happens a lot.
• 1:20:58
  Christine: There's a lot of people that meet on board and then they have families and relationships, but there is a lot of divorces on board too, because you've got these husbands that are away from their wives for six months out of the year, you know, and only with them for six months, unless they're with their spouse all the time.
• 1:21:14
  Christine: You know, a lot of the women, you know, we as women have to have children and a family in a certain amount of time.
• 1:21:20
  Christine: So we need to get off ship and do that, so we can't be with our spouses as as much.
• 1:21:24
  Christine: So there is a lot of divorce that does happen on ships.
• 1:21:27
  Christine: Um, you know, Pete and I, he's 50, he's not 56, he he's 60, and I'm 45.
• 1:21:33
  Christine: So we're past that stage.
• 1:21:35
  Christine: You know, if my husband wants to try to go out and upgrade on me, go ahead, baby.
• 1:21:39
  Christine: I'm his retirement plan.
• 1:21:41
  Christine: You're his retirement plan.
• 1:21:42
  Douglas: He's gonna go ahead and he's gonna keep you around.
• 1:21:44
  Douglas: So this is do you have to pay to be on the ship then?
• 1:21:48
  Douglas: No, no, I don't.
• 1:21:49
  Douglas: Since you're a spouse, you're in it, you guys everything, food and everything like that's right.
• 1:21:54
  Christine: So and everything is free.
• 1:21:56
  Christine: Um, if we go to a specialty restaurant, we pay for that.
• 1:21:58
  Christine: Uh, I do pay for internet at a discounted rate.
• 1:22:01
  Christine: I'm not allowed to talk about uh discounts, um, but I do get discounted as a crew member.
• 1:22:05
  Christine: So I live basically a life on board as a guest, but also a crew member.
• 1:22:10
  Christine: The only thing I cannot do is I cannot gamble on the ships because that would look weird if I won like a big, you know, a big jackpot and my husband is working there.
• 1:22:21
  Christine: Um also I'm just very respectful if I'm at the pool and some and there's no seats, I get up, I let someone else have it.
• 1:22:27
  Christine: I always let if we're in a tender boat, which the boats um people might not want to what tender boats are, they take a boat um people from the ship to shore.
• 1:22:36
  Christine: Um, I will always wait to get off last.
• 1:22:38
  Christine: Um, I just am very respectful because I act as if I was a crew member.
• 1:22:43
  Christine: I also never take my camera downstairs.
• 1:22:46
  Christine: I'm allowed in all the crew areas.
• 1:22:47
  Christine: I'm allowed to I could show you guys a lot of stuff, but I do not want to invade my crew member's space.
• 1:22:55
  Christine: You know, this isn't they didn't sign up to be on a show.
• 1:22:58
  Christine: I am the show.
• 1:22:59
  Christine: So, and also I don't film guests.
• 1:23:01
  Christine: Um, now when we're off ship, I might get the back of a guest's head in something, but I never you'll never see me, even if there is a guy naked on the dance floor and he's 90 years old.
• 1:23:11
  Christine: I will not videotape him, even though I know it's gonna go viral and make me thousand dollars.
• 1:23:15
  Christine: I won't do it because I think it's really disrespectful.
• 1:23:19
  Christine: People are going on cruise ships and filming everybody else.
• 1:23:21
  Christine: They are on vacation, they didn't ask to be on social media.
• 1:23:25
  Christine: It's uh for me, it's disrespectful.
• 1:23:27
  Douglas: So it's a good boundary to have.
• 1:23:29
  Christine: Yeah, so I've just found ways to show my life without intruding on other people's lives.
• 1:23:34
  Douglas: And so you're basically you and Pete six months out of the year, you're at sea.
• 1:23:38
  Douglas: Is that still?
• 1:23:40
  Christine: Yes, yes.
• 1:23:40
  Douglas: So he's at three-month contracts or is that a full so you're three months, three months off, three months on, three months off?
• 1:23:46
  Christine: Yep, so he's been with the company for 34 years, and he works three months on, three months off, three months on, three months off.
• 1:23:53
  Christine: So he rotates with another staff chief.
• 1:23:55
  Christine: So when Pete's not on the ship, the other one takes over.
• 1:23:57
  Christine: We share the same cabin.
• 1:23:58
  Christine: We're in the same cabin every single time.
• 1:24:00
  Christine: People ask that a lot.
• 1:24:01
  Christine: We also do um leave one cabinet full of stuff.
• 1:24:05
  Christine: We trade off with the other staff chief, so we can leave a little bit on board.
• 1:24:08
  Christine: Um, but Pete is paid whether he's on the ship or not on the ship.
• 1:24:12
  Christine: Really?
• 1:24:12
  Christine: Yep.
• 1:24:13
  Christine: So he's paid the same amount.
• 1:24:15
  Christine: Um, so those three months that he's off, he's paid.
• 1:24:17
  Douglas: Uh-huh.
• 1:24:18
  Christine: Um, but he does work, you know, 14-hour days and uh every single day for three months with no day off.
• 1:24:25
  Christine: Now he can um request some time off to um see some things, like I just uh my friend Reba and and Haynes, you know, I know she you got a lot of bears in Haynes, Alaska, and I just said, Pete, if you can get some time off ship, Reba knows where the bears are, you know.
• 1:24:40
  Christine: So um I've we he can get off ship, but he just, you know, unless he's going out to dinner with me or or doing a tour, he usually stays on ship.
• 1:24:50
  Douglas: So when you're docked here in Skagway or any other port most of the time, he's still on the ship working.
• 1:24:55
  Douglas: Yeah, he's out there working.
• 1:24:56
  Douglas: He's out there.
• 1:24:57
  Christine: Unless it's at six o'clock.
• 1:24:58
  Christine: Is it six yet?
• 1:24:59
  Christine: At six, he's off work.
• 1:25:01
  Douglas: He's been off for 26 minutes.
• 1:25:02
  Christine: Good.
• 1:25:03
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:25:03
  Christine: And he's off work.
• 1:25:04
  Christine: Probably wondering where the heck I am.
• 1:25:05
  Christine: He knows where I'm at.
• 1:25:07
  Christine: He's got me on live 360, actually.
• 1:25:10
  Christine: You guys lay at Live 360?
• 1:25:11
  Christine: We track our that's what we got to.
• 1:25:13
  Christine: What?
• 1:25:14
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:25:15
  Christine: What?
• 1:25:15
  Christine: Live 360.
• 1:25:16
  Christine: What's that?
• 1:25:16
  Christine: I can track my parents, my daughter, my husband.
• 1:25:19
  Christine: I know where they're at in all times.
• 1:25:20
  Christine: I know how fast they're driving, I know everything.
• 1:25:22
  Christine: It's an app.
• 1:25:23
  Christine: And so I told Delaney, my daughter, as long as she's she moved into her apartment, and I said, as long as you've got my credit card, you are on my Live 360.
• 1:25:32
  Christine: You know, I want to know.
• 1:25:34
  Douglas: If you want to give up, if you don't want to be a couple of things.
• 1:25:36
  Christine: Like when you're an adult and you don't need my credit card anymore, you can be off Life 360, but I want to know where she's at.
• 1:25:41
  Christine: I don't, you know, I'm not gonna call her.
• 1:25:45
  Douglas: She's fine to have mom's credit card still.
• 1:25:47
  Christine: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:48
  Christine: She doesn't want to give that up.
• 1:25:50
  Christine: She doesn't, she doesn't know what life is about yet.
• 1:25:53
  Douglas: If you have a spare credit card, you can track me on Life 360 too.
• 1:25:56
  Douglas: I'm willing to make that trade.
• 1:25:58
  Douglas: My life's pretty boring, but whatever.
• 1:26:01
  Douglas: If it comes with one of your credit cards, we might be able to make a deal here.
• 1:26:04
  Douglas: Maybe.
• 1:26:05
  Douglas: We'll talk.
• 1:26:07
  Douglas: So what have we missed in your story?
• 1:26:10
  Christine: I don't think anything.
• 1:26:11
  Christine: Uh just obviously something.
• 1:26:13
  Christine: No, obviously, just you know, now I do social media and uh travel the world, and you know, um, yeah, we're just always traveling, always in a different spot.
• 1:26:22
  Douglas: Look, looking back to the young girl growing up in Iowa, could you have imagined being at this point?
• 1:26:29
  Douglas: And and and and what you've gone through.
• 1:26:31
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:26:32
  Douglas: The hardships and everything, the hospital stays, the bad relationship for five, six years.
• 1:26:37
  Douglas: That you're at this spot, you're incredibly successful, you've got an amazing outlook on life.
• 1:26:44
  Douglas: And but looking back at that, that wasn't always predetermined that's where you're gonna be.
• 1:26:49
  Christine: But honestly, it was all the uh, in my opinion, the hard choices that led me to whatever life I'm living now.
• 1:26:56
  Christine: I mean, it's as long the reason I'm living my best life right now is because I'm financially stable.
• 1:27:02
  Christine: Where back back in the story, remember I wasn't financially stable, single mom, and now I am paying for my daughter's college, she's got my credit card, she's going hog wild, right?
• 1:27:11
  Christine: I need to put her on a budget actually.
• 1:27:13
  Douglas: Um, but uh but but but also with that, be you found a relationship with Pete before the social media stuff.
• 1:27:24
  Douglas: Yeah, you were probably doing okay with the job you had on the cruise ship, probably so there was some stability there, but do you think that relationship with Pete being different than other relationships has kind of allowed you to expand and be the person you are as well?
• 1:27:41
  Christine: Yeah, when you have a supportive partner, you can just kind of you just kind of can fly and do your thing.
• 1:27:46
  Christine: And like I I mean, I was just away from him for two weeks.
• 1:27:49
  Christine: I was in Norway on my group cruise with my ladies, and then I was with him for a week, and before that I was gone another two weeks, and I can literally just go and be successful and fly, and I've got that confidence.
• 1:27:59
  Christine: Of we're happy and we're in love and we trust each other.
• 1:28:03
  Christine: I can go out and have like I could go have dinner with you.
• 1:28:06
  Christine: I could go have dinner with any man.
• 1:28:07
  Christine: He wouldn't care because he he has that trust, you know, and he lets me flourish.
• 1:28:12
  Christine: And he's also supportive.
• 1:28:13
  Christine: He is the thing is he is so quiet.
• 1:28:16
  Christine: Now he's opened up a lot, but he is so quiet and I'm so hyper that I hype him up and he he just settles me.
• 1:28:24
  Christine: So it's just a very good, but he has he he literally has given me um the strength to really do all of this.
• 1:28:32
  Christine: I mean, heck, he's the one that's gotten me free on ships, and I've been able to do my job and how does that feel to be in that spot?
• 1:28:40
  Douglas: It's just compared to where you were before.
• 1:28:42
  Christine: I can't like I'm so happy I never settled for all those things I was gonna settle for.
• 1:28:48
  Christine: Now, mind you, during this whole story, we missed out on about five other relationships.
• 1:28:53
  Christine: That's fine.
• 1:28:56
  Christine: South Africa!
• 1:28:57
  Douglas: We don't have we don't have to get into all of them.
• 1:28:59
  Christine: Yeah, I know.
• 1:29:00
  Christine: But I mean it's just so good.
• 1:29:01
  Christine: I'm just kidding.
• 1:29:02
  Douglas: It's it's it's just that arc of looking back at where you were.
• 1:29:06
  Douglas: What advice would you have to to somebody else, man or woman, that's in that was in the position that you were for five or six years that know you're in a bad position, you you don't know how you're gonna get out of it.
• 1:29:19
  Douglas: What would you say to your former self?
• 1:29:21
  Christine: It's hard because honestly, I know why women don't leave when they don't have a support system, they don't have anything else, they can't.
• 1:29:28
  Christine: So it really will take you till you're beaten down as far as you can go to know either I'm gonna leave or I'm gonna probably my this is gonna be the end of my life, you know.
• 1:29:39
  Christine: Um that's where it was for me.
• 1:29:41
  Christine: Anybody would say you're in a bad relationship, you're a bad relationship, and you knew you were, but you're not going anywhere.
• 1:29:46
  Christine: It's I don't have the problem is I don't have advice because you can give people advice, but they're not gonna take it until they're ready.
• 1:29:53
  Christine: So I don't, I'm sorry, I just don't have an answer to that.
• 1:29:56
  Douglas: That's still a good advantage.
• 1:29:57
  Douglas: Because it's such hard.
• 1:29:58
  Douglas: But that there is an answer.
• 1:30:00
  Christine: I think you can keep telling people, hey, you're in a bad spot, you're in a bad spot, and just be supportive of them while they're in the bad spot and trying to, I mean, um, until they're ready to leave.
• 1:30:11
  Christine: But I left with nobody.
• 1:30:13
  Douglas: I didn't have dollar to my name, and uh, yeah, I just I think that's a key thing for all of us regarding is not knowing what somebody else's struggles are and what they're going through, but to just show kindness and empathy and support to the people around us because you you don't know what they're going through at any given time.
• 1:30:35
  Christine: And that's why, like on the on Facebook, I do get a lot of trolls.
• 1:30:39
  Christine: Trolls people that leave bad comments.
• 1:30:41
  Christine: And at the moment I get ready to clap back at them, I'll I'll like which I don't usually because I'm very kind and politically correct to these people.
• 1:30:48
  Christine: But then I'll look at their profile, I'm like, darn, this life don't look good.
• 1:30:53
  Christine: No wonder she's upset.
• 1:30:54
  Christine: You know, no wonder she's telling me I'm bad or ugly or whatever.
• 1:30:57
  Christine: She wants to make me feel bad because she feels bad, you know.
• 1:30:59
  Douglas: So And that's kind of where we're at with a lot of online stuff is we're trying to bring other people down.
• 1:31:04
  Douglas: Instead of trying to try to raise everybody, it's like we need to bring you down to make myself feel good.
• 1:31:10
  Christine: Yeah, a lot of people are hurting.
• 1:31:11
  Christine: Um, and that's um now I get a lot of actually no one's given me flack about this, but a lot of people want me to talk about this issue, that issue, this issue, that issue.
• 1:31:19
  Christine: If I were to talk about all the issues that are going on, and I'm not talking about just the United States of America, I'm talking about the world because I travel the world, so I see a lot of different issues that aren't even related to here.
• 1:31:32
  Christine: I can't talk about all of that stuff because there's too much to talk about.
• 1:31:35
  Christine: There's too much bad stuff going on in the world.
• 1:31:37
  Christine: So I try to take and make my page happy.
• 1:31:41
  Christine: Even when, you know, I'll have bad days, um, but I always try to find the the good of them, you know.
• 1:31:47
  Christine: But the people that are on my page, they're gonna go with me through those bad days.
• 1:31:50
  Christine: At some point I'm gonna lose my mom, my dad, you know, who knows what happens with me.
• 1:31:54
  Christine: Maybe in the future I get sick or whatever.
• 1:31:56
  Christine: They're gonna go through that with me.
• 1:31:57
  Christine: We're in a happy stage right now because it's easy for me to be happy.
• 1:32:01
  Christine: I've got my mom, I've got my dad, my husband, and my mom.
• 1:32:03
  Christine: What else can you ask for?
• 1:32:05
  Christine: Money can't, yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 1:32:07
  Christine: Money and my mom and my daughter.
• 1:32:09
  Christine: Sorry, Delaney.
• 1:32:11
  Christine: Um, but money can't buy those things, you know?
• 1:32:14
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:32:14
  Christine: Money can't buy that.
• 1:32:16
  Christine: And so right now I am the richest woman out there.
• 1:32:18
  Christine: I'm richer than the richest person because I have those five things.
• 1:32:21
  Christine: But my wealth is is going to go away in the next years, and I know that.
• 1:32:26
  Christine: So I'm just keeping it intact and staying happy while I can.
• 1:32:30
  Christine: And then I want them to see me go through.
• 1:32:32
  Christine: I want them to see me go through those moments where most of the people that are on my page are 50 and above.
• 1:32:37
  Christine: They've already lost their parents, right?
• 1:32:39
  Christine: So they've already gone through that, and so they are living through me right now because they're like, hey, you remind you remind me of the relationship I have with my parents, or I didn't have a good relationship, so I get to watch you with your parents and this and that.
• 1:32:50
  Christine: So um, and I I know they've already lost their parents, so I'm literally loving my parents like crazy every day that I can because they can't.
• 1:33:00
  Christine: And it and I know I'm gonna be in their position someday.
• 1:33:02
  Christine: But then I know I've got a million point two people that are gonna be there for me when you know when my when my dad or mom decide to give me their inheritance.
• 1:33:12
  Christine: Just kidding.
• 1:33:14
  Christine: Hopefully, there's none left.
• 1:33:15
  Christine: They keep cruising with me, they're gonna have it any of their name.
• 1:33:18
  Douglas: Maybe they just give it all to Delaney.
• 1:33:20
  Christine: They will well, yeah, Delaney's gonna end up with one heck of a good jewelry.
• 1:33:24
  Douglas: I was gonna say, you got you like some bling, don't you?
• 1:33:27
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:33:27
  Christine: My dad does too.
• 1:33:28
  Christine: My dad's the one that taught me this.
• 1:33:29
  Christine: Oh, really?
• 1:33:29
  Christine: So my dad we used to call him Mr.
• 1:33:30
  Christine: D, Mr.
• 1:33:31
  Christine: T, you know.
• 1:33:32
  Christine: He would wear like four or five necklaces, bracelets, all that.
• 1:33:35
  Christine: And I love jewelry too.
• 1:33:37
  Christine: I just like to wear a lot of it.
• 1:33:39
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:33:39
  Christine: But it all tells a story, too.
• 1:33:41
  Douglas: Okay, tell us.
• 1:33:42
  Christine: Like, okay, my mom and I just bought uh I bought this from my mom and me, and it's a matching pinky ring.
• 1:33:48
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:33:48
  Christine: So I got that.
• 1:33:49
  Christine: Um, my best friend Holly and I, I bought these for us, matching pinky rings.
• 1:33:54
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:33:55
  Christine: Were you guys into horses when you were kids?
• 1:33:56
  Christine: Is that why the horseshoe?
• 1:33:57
  Christine: I've never been on a horse in my life.
• 1:33:58
  Christine: I just like good luck symbols.
• 1:34:00
  Christine: Okay.
• 1:34:00
  Christine: That works.
• 1:34:01
  Christine: Do not put me on a horse.
• 1:34:02
  Christine: Um, of course, we got the wedding ring, um, which was my wedding ring is actually a lab diamond because we didn't have the money at the time to buy a bigger stone, and you know, me, I like big things.
• 1:34:15
  Christine: So I'm like, okay, honey, let's go with the lab instead of the real because I wanted a bigger ring.
• 1:34:19
  Christine: So, um, and then we have this I bought two years ago.
• 1:34:23
  Christine: I haven't taken it off yet.
• 1:34:25
  Christine: Um, we don't have the earrings at my jacket.
• 1:34:27
  Douglas: What's that called?
• 1:34:27
  Douglas: I've never seen that from your bracelets.
• 1:34:30
  Christine: A chain, but I haven't taken it off in two years.
• 1:34:31
  Douglas: You go see a ring.
• 1:34:32
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:34:33
  Christine: Um, my mom and I bought matching um bracelets, so we both have two matching.
• 1:34:38
  Christine: Notice the mom thing, you know.
• 1:34:39
  Douglas: I mom and I have a lot of jewelry.
• 1:34:41
  Douglas: What about you and Delaney?
• 1:34:42
  Douglas: Does she share your love of jewelry?
• 1:34:44
  Christine: No, she likes Kenderscott.
• 1:34:45
  Christine: She likes the gold stuff.
• 1:34:46
  Christine: Luckily, from Target.
• 1:34:48
  Christine: I have bought her a lot of jewelry around the world, though.
• 1:34:50
  Christine: She has a lot of jewelry.
• 1:34:51
  Christine: Um, but she doesn't like white gold, she likes the yellow gold.
• 1:34:54
  Christine: So she's like, Mom, I just wish you would like have yellow gold.
• 1:34:57
  Christine: I'm like, Delaney, someday you can rhodium plate all of this yellow gold.
• 1:35:01
  Christine: Because technically it was all yellow gold before it was white gold.
• 1:35:04
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:35:05
  Christine: There you go.
• 1:35:05
  Christine: There you go.
• 1:35:06
  Christine: So but don't, and she doesn't have a love for travel either.
• 1:35:10
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:35:10
  Christine: No, she she goes to she travels with us a lot.
• 1:35:12
  Christine: We've taken her to like 12 different countries, and she travels with us, but she doesn't like to travel.
• 1:35:17
  Christine: She doesn't like being on a plane in a car.
• 1:35:19
  Christine: Um, but she's probably good.
• 1:35:21
  Christine: Her dreams are gonna be whatever my dreams are, you know, like are her dreams are my dreams.
• 1:35:27
  Christine: Does that make sense?
• 1:35:28
  Douglas: Yes.
• 1:35:28
  Christine: Yes.
• 1:35:28
  Christine: So whatever she wants to do, but I really think her dream is going to be living in the US and having a family, being married, and I I know I've watched some of her videos where she saves them, she doesn't know I can see it, and I know a big thing to her is wanting kids, never wanting to be divorced.
• 1:35:46
  Christine: I I know these things.
• 1:35:48
  Christine: So I her dream is the picket fence house dream, which is completely opposite what mine was.
• 1:35:54
  Christine: But what's great is my goal in life is to to keep going with this success so that someday I can retire.
• 1:36:03
  Christine: And if she has kids, which she wants to, hopefully she's blessed with them.
• 1:36:06
  Christine: I want to be grandma.
• 1:36:07
  Christine: I've done my traveling.
• 1:36:08
  Christine: I've been to 112 countries now.
• 1:36:10
  Christine: I've I've done my traveling.
• 1:36:11
  Christine: Yes, in the future I want to like do some RV traveling, but I want to be grandma.
• 1:36:14
  Christine: I want to like, and she's like, girl, you can move in, you can take care of them all the time.
• 1:36:19
  Christine: I'm like awesome.
• 1:36:20
  Christine: Free babysitting.
• 1:36:21
  Christine: Yeah, but you know what?
• 1:36:22
  Christine: And one of the reasons I want that is because I missed out with my job and stuff of being there completely 100% and getting to be mom 24-7.
• 1:36:33
  Christine: I missed out on that by choice, but I missed out on that.
• 1:36:37
  Christine: So now hopefully in life, I will get to make up for that with being a good grandma.
• 1:36:42
  Christine: You know, I was a great mom, but I just was I was a different kind of mom.
• 1:36:45
  Christine: I was an unconventional mom.
• 1:36:47
  Christine: You know, I've always been there for her, but it I just wasn't.
• 1:36:50
  Christine: You know how some, you know, you like rich families, they send their kids away to a boarding school and it's it's looked up upon.
• 1:36:57
  Christine: But me, if I'm not there 24-7 because I'm not rich, it's looked down upon, you know.
• 1:37:01
  Christine: There's just different ways to parent.
• 1:37:03
  Christine: And my parents have parented, um, my ex-husband, uh, his new wife.
• 1:37:08
  Christine: We've all chipped in, so she's been loved from all these different places.
• 1:37:11
  Christine: So she is has lived a very good life, but I just I the one thing I've missed out on throughout all this is just getting to be there 24-7 for her.
• 1:37:22
  Christine: So I just hope, and that's why I'm just making up for lost time every time I'm with her.
• 1:37:27
  Christine: I video chat or everything.
• 1:37:29
  Christine: I just I just hope I can be a grandma someday.
• 1:37:32
  Douglas: So when that time comes, are you and Pete moving back to the state?
• 1:37:35
  Christine: Yeah, yeah, I've already to he and he's so supportive.
• 1:37:37
  Christine: He is all about it.
• 1:37:39
  Christine: Um, because he never had any kids.
• 1:37:40
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:37:40
  Christine: So Delaney's our one and only, and he knows that I want to live back in the US.
• 1:37:44
  Christine: I mean, we'll keep the place in the Netherlands and stuff, but he knows that it's important to me be to be next to her and to, you know, be there for her, and I want to be there when her kids are born and all that stuff.
• 1:37:56
  Christine: That's my goal.
• 1:37:58
  Douglas: Sounds like a great goal.
• 1:37:59
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:38:00
  Christine: Yeah, I just did things in reverse, big time in reverse, you know.
• 1:38:03
  Christine: A lot of people re travel after retirement and you know, they're home and that sort of thing.
• 1:38:07
  Christine: So we all have a different path.
• 1:38:09
  Douglas: Yeah, we do.
• 1:38:09
  Christine: We stick take the path that's in front of us and but I'm very I I love to be open about my path.
• 1:38:15
  Christine: Um, I don't mind being judged about my path because we've all had different different ways about everything.
• 1:38:22
  Christine: I mean, no one's perfect, and everybody has to go a different way.
• 1:38:25
  Christine: I'm very happy with how everybody's life has turned out in my family.
• 1:38:29
  Christine: We're all doing wonderful, we all have a good life.
• 1:38:32
  Douglas: It's a good spot to be in.
• 1:38:34
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:38:34
  Christine: I'm living my best life right now.
• 1:38:36
  Christine: So that's why I just sometimes wish the sun would never set.
• 1:38:40
  Christine: Because you never know what tomorrow brings.
• 1:38:42
  Christine: And my summer in Alaska hardly does.
• 1:38:44
  Christine: I hate New Year's Eve.
• 1:38:46
  Christine: Really?
• 1:38:46
  Christine: Why?
• 1:38:47
  Christine: It's the only holiday I hate.
• 1:38:49
  Christine: I hate it.
• 1:38:50
  Christine: What because either there's people leaving people behind because they've passed away.
• 1:38:56
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:38:57
  Christine: Okay.
• 1:38:57
  Christine: And you you feel guilty going into next year without them.
• 1:39:00
  Christine: Or, oh my gosh, I just had the most amazing 2026 with a mom, dad, daughter, you know, husband.
• 1:39:07
  Christine: I don't know what 2027 was.
• 1:39:09
  Christine: You know, and I so I want that night over.
• 1:39:13
  Christine: I don't want to celebrate.
• 1:39:14
  Christine: I will never celebrate.
• 1:39:15
  Christine: I want it over, I want to sleep through it, wake me up so I can just move on with my life.
• 1:39:19
  Douglas: Is that a new thing, or is that when you did that start when you were a kid?
• 1:39:22
  Christine: When I was a kid, yeah.
• 1:39:22
  Christine: I've I have always hated New Year's.
• 1:39:24
  Christine: And actually, it started around college, actually.
• 1:39:26
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:39:27
  Christine: Yeah, college age.
• 1:39:28
  Christine: Before that, I didn't know much about anything, you know.
• 1:39:31
  Christine: I was just out chasing boys and uh just kidding.
• 1:39:35
  Christine: No, you're not.
• 1:39:36
  Christine: No, Pete knows.
• 1:39:37
  Christine: It's funny.
• 1:39:38
  Christine: It's funny.
• 1:39:39
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:39:40
  Douglas: So do you do you feel with 1.2 million followers, is there any kind of pressure that you feel like you don't want to lead them astray, that you're making sure you get the best information out there, or just with who you are, you just know each one that you're doing that's gonna be good.
• 1:39:55
  Christine: The only thing on my page, I never talk politics, I never talk religion, I don't talk those things, I talk my life, you know?
• 1:40:01
  Christine: Um, because I have followers from all over the world and I have friends from all over the world, and that stems from working on a cruise ship with over 60 different nationalities.
• 1:40:08
  Christine: I had people living next to me that were of this religion or next to me that loved, you know, their same sex or whatever it may be.
• 1:40:16
  Christine: So I love everyone.
• 1:40:18
  Christine: So I have a really hard time with talking those, you know, those things.
• 1:40:22
  Christine: So I um on my page, I keep it just to my my daily what I'm doing, how I'm feeling.
• 1:40:28
  Christine: I stay very um, what do you call it, authentic?
• 1:40:32
  Christine: Most of these ladies and gents see me waking up every day with no makeup on.
• 1:40:36
  Christine: I mean, I just came on camera to all you, and I've been walking around the hot heat all day.
• 1:40:40
  Christine: I'm sweating from every orifice of my body right now.
• 1:40:43
  Christine: Um this room is warm.
• 1:40:45
  Christine: It's hot in here, guys.
• 1:40:47
  Christine: We have no air conditioning.
• 1:40:48
  Christine: But yeah, I just show up my authentic self.
• 1:40:50
  Christine: I am not an Instagram girl.
• 1:40:52
  Christine: I am 45 years old, so I love Facebook because I can just be me.
• 1:40:56
  Christine: And I love yelling from the rooftops to everybody like you cannot be liked by everyone.
• 1:41:03
  Christine: Not everybody's gonna like you.
• 1:41:04
  Christine: You don't like everybody.
• 1:41:06
  Christine: Why do you think they're gonna like everybody?
• 1:41:08
  Christine: But as long as I'm just true to myself and be me, the right people are gonna stick around.
• 1:41:12
  Christine: And now I am, I'm sure there's lots of people that have unfollowed me, but 1.2 million on Facebook like me.
• 1:41:18
  Christine: You know, that's cool.
• 1:41:19
  Christine: Thanks, guys.
• 1:41:20
  Douglas: You know, it's gonna feel great.
• 1:41:21
  Christine: It does, you know.
• 1:41:22
  Christine: But every once in a while, like yesterday, I put up a picture I made with AI, and some girl said, Oh, you used AI, I've got to unfollow you.
• 1:41:30
  Christine: You know, if you want to unfollow me for AI, do it, you know, that's fine.
• 1:41:35
  Christine: I don't, I can't fight with one person of why, and I can't explain to one person why I'm doing this, why I want this, you know.
• 1:41:44
  Christine: So that's why with um, you know, talking about family and stuff, I do I have throughout the course taken hits like, why are you not this?
• 1:41:52
  Christine: Why are you not that?
• 1:41:52
  Christine: You know, whatever.
• 1:41:53
  Christine: But my following has learned how good of a daughter and mother I am in my own ways.
• 1:41:59
  Christine: They've learned that.
• 1:42:00
  Christine: But every once in a while we'll get some people on, like, who again is Pete?
• 1:42:03
  Christine: I'm like, it's my husband.
• 1:42:05
  Christine: You know, like, where is he?
• 1:42:06
  Christine: Why are you away?
• 1:42:07
  Christine: And that's the thing I got this last two months because I've been away.
• 1:42:10
  Christine: And they're like, where is he?
• 1:42:12
  Christine: You need to go home to him.
• 1:42:13
  Christine: I'm like, he wouldn't say that to a man.
• 1:42:14
  Christine: I'm like, I am a successful woman building a career, and I'm away, and my husband's very successful about or I'm very supportive about that.
• 1:42:22
  Christine: I said, you don't need to be with your husband all the time to be in a marriage.
• 1:42:26
  Christine: I'm like, yeah, all a marriage is is commitment, you know, commitment and love.
• 1:42:29
  Christine: But this lady's like, I said, I'm going back and I'm gonna be with him for 30 weeks.
• 1:42:34
  Christine: She goes, Oh, that sounds like a marriage.
• 1:42:36
  Christine: I'm like, yeah, Karen, but a marriage is literally commitment and love.
• 1:42:39
  Christine: You know, there's a lot of people that are still married to their spouses that have passed.
• 1:42:44
  Christine: And it's because they're still committed to them and they still love them.
• 1:42:46
  Christine: Yeah, you know.
• 1:42:47
  Christine: So, anyways, I can't uh teach everybody everything, and nor do I know everything myself.
• 1:42:52
  Christine: I just am winging it through life.
• 1:42:55
  Douglas: Best way to do it?
• 1:42:56
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:42:57
  Douglas: I'm still winging it.
• 1:42:58
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:42:58
  Douglas: I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
• 1:43:00
  Christine: Me too!
• 1:43:02
  Douglas: Nice!
• 1:43:03
  Christine: Yeah, well, as far as I know now, I want to be a grandma.
• 1:43:06
  Douglas: That's a good goal.
• 1:43:08
  Christine: And I want to have an RV someday.
• 1:43:09
  Douglas: A grandma with an RV.
• 1:43:11
  Christine: Yeah, but not a big RV.
• 1:43:12
  Christine: I don't think I could.
• 1:43:14
  Douglas: You can see it happening.
• 1:43:14
  Christine: Yeah, I want an RV.
• 1:43:15
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:43:16
  Christine: I just bought a house with in CatchCan with my business partner.
• 1:43:19
  Christine: You got a house.
• 1:43:21
  Douglas: You got a house in Catch Can.
• 1:43:22
  Christine: People went nuts about that when I bought a house with a woman.
• 1:43:25
  Christine: First off, they thought we were lovers, you know.
• 1:43:28
  Christine: And I'm like, she's just my friend, but we're business partners and in our Dune Travels and then Dune Jewelry and stuff, and we both have been saving our money um from Dune Travels, and then we um, yeah, we're almost done clo, you know, getting close to closing on it.
• 1:43:42
  Christine: But KetchCan, we're gonna have a place so that I can stay up there and she can stay up there when we're working.
• 1:43:46
  Christine: Um, but other than that, we'll Airbnb it sometimes too.
• 1:43:50
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:43:51
  Christine: So we're really excited about that because you know I love Alaska.
• 1:43:53
  Christine: I love KetchCan.
• 1:43:54
  Christine: I mean I love Han's and Skegway too, but Ketchikan just is more perfect for us um business wise business wise.
• 1:44:02
  Christine: What?
• 1:44:03
  Christine: Because you like the rain.
• 1:44:04
  Christine: I do like the rain.
• 1:44:05
  Christine: I love the rain.
• 1:44:06
  Christine: And every time I'm there in the summer, they get record rainfall, and I love it.
• 1:44:10
  Christine: I I like the rain more than sunshine.
• 1:44:12
  Christine: Isn't it?
• 1:44:13
  Christine: Really?
• 1:44:13
  Christine: Yep.
• 1:44:13
  Christine: That is, and I love thunderstorms, I love the weather, I love tornadoes, I want to still use tornado chicken.
• 1:44:19
  Douglas: You want to have the storm?
• 1:44:20
  Christine: I love bad storms.
• 1:44:21
  Christine: I get excited when I know we're gonna have like a bad weather, or I get excited, man.
• 1:44:27
  Douglas: So we need to get back to this.
• 1:44:28
  Douglas: How are we gonna start our TV channel?
• 1:44:29
  Douglas: I know.
• 1:44:30
  Douglas: We've got to brainstorm this.
• 1:44:32
  Douglas: Do you think Sam or Reba would be the do the news for us?
• 1:44:35
  Douglas: Who is that?
• 1:44:36
  Douglas: These other two people that are in the room with us.
• 1:44:38
  Christine: Oh, hi Sam.
• 1:44:40
  Douglas: Hi, Sam.
• 1:44:41
  Douglas: Oh, yeah, so I've got Sam and Reba, they could do the news.
• 1:44:45
  Christine: I didn't know your last name, Sam.
• 1:44:47
  Douglas: Sam and Reba.
• 1:44:49
  Douglas: The two of them, see?
• 1:44:50
  Christine: Okay, this comes down to when I was at this fancy restaurant trying to fake it before I make it.
• 1:44:55
  Douglas: You did get vodka, didn't you?
• 1:44:57
  Christine: Yeah, but listen, there they came by and I'm like in this this I was in St.
• 1:45:02
  Christine: Martin with the vice president of Norwegian Cruise Lines, and I was trying I was having to entertain him at the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association.
• 1:45:11
  Christine: We're at dinner, and they're like, what wine would you like?
• 1:45:13
  Christine: I'm like, I Kevin, I don't know.
• 1:45:15
  Christine: I've never had wine out of not a box, you know?
• 1:45:18
  Christine: And then they're like, okay, and what kind of uh what kind of escargot would you like to try tonight?
• 1:45:23
  Christine: And I'm like, I don't know, I've never had snails, you know, and then what what kind of this?
• 1:45:27
  Christine: What kind of I didn't know anything, but then they're like, okay, would you like the super salad?
• 1:45:31
  Christine: And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I will.
• 1:45:32
  Christine: Okay, yeah, would you like the super salad?
• 1:45:34
  Christine: And I'm like, yes, I'll take it, please.
• 1:45:36
  Christine: Thank you.
• 1:45:36
  Christine: They're like, what are you getting?
• 1:45:40
  Christine: I'm like, yes, I'll take the super salad.
• 1:45:42
  Christine: They're like, no, it's soup or salad.
• 1:45:45
  Christine: I'm like, ow.
• 1:45:48
  Douglas: Idiot.
• 1:45:49
  Douglas: So the blonde hair is natural.
• 1:45:50
  Christine: Yeah, no, I'm Burnett.
• 1:45:52
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:45:54
  Christine: So what other questions do you have for me?
• 1:45:57
  Christine: Because I gotta get back to the ship soon.
• 1:45:59
  Douglas: I was gonna say, we gotta we gotta wrap this up because you gotta get back to the ship soon.
• 1:46:02
  Christine: You didn't have any questions for me because I just went with it.
• 1:46:05
  Christine: I winged it.
• 1:46:06
  Christine: I just went through the whole thing.
• 1:46:07
  Christine: You just went through the whole thing?
• 1:46:08
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:46:08
  Christine: I made it easy.
• 1:46:09
  Christine: Oh, Reba, we gotta order food to go.
• 1:46:11
  Christine: Oh, okay.
• 1:46:12
  Christine: Thanks.
• 1:46:13
  Douglas: Sorry, my husband needs food.
• 1:46:14
  Douglas: Reba, Reba's got you covered.
• 1:46:16
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:46:16
  Douglas: I don't I don't I could probably go on for another couple hours, but you gotta get back to the ship.
• 1:46:20
  Christine: Reba, will you uh have them do a bowl of chili too?
• 1:46:23
  Christine: Thanks.
• 1:46:25
  Christine: I'll pay the bill when I get down there.
• 1:46:28
  Douglas: So thank you for joining us.
• 1:46:30
  Christine: Sorry, we keep it real, so I had to get my order in, guys.
• 1:46:32
  Christine: At Walmart, get the cans of Wendy's chili, add onion and cheese to it.
• 1:46:42
  Christine: It's good.
• 1:46:43
  Douglas: That's the way to go.
• 1:46:44
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:46:45
  Christine: So good.
• 1:46:46
  Douglas: Wendy's chili at Walmart.
• 1:46:48
  Christine: Yeah, because like when you can't get chili, you don't have to make it.
• 1:46:50
  Christine: I I'm every time I'm the Nallies guy.
• 1:46:53
  Christine: Where?
• 1:46:54
  Douglas: Nally's.
• 1:46:54
  Douglas: I don't know what that is.
• 1:46:55
  Douglas: It's a canned chili.
• 1:46:57
  Christine: Oh, oh yeah, yeah, Nally's.
• 1:46:58
  Christine: Yeah, that's that organic stuff, right?
• 1:47:00
  Christine: No.
• 1:47:00
  Christine: Oh, never mind.
• 1:47:01
  Christine: Anyways, chili up in Alaska costs $5.67 when it's on special, when it's on sale.
• 1:47:07
  Christine: It's really expensive up here.
• 1:47:09
  Christine: I like to take people grocery shopping on my my videos.
• 1:47:12
  Christine: I do.
• 1:47:12
  Christine: I take them all the time grocery shopping.
• 1:47:14
  Christine: And then they like to judge me for what I'm getting.
• 1:47:17
  Christine: So, anyways.
• 1:47:19
  Douglas: Well, you should probably expect that that's gonna happen.
• 1:47:21
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:47:22
  Christine: But yeah.
• 1:47:24
  Douglas: So when are we gonna see you next?
• 1:47:26
  Christine: Uh well, I'm gonna be here next week.
• 1:47:27
  Christine: You're gonna be here next week.
• 1:47:28
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:47:28
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:47:29
  Douglas: When are you gonna come to Haynes?
• 1:47:30
  Christine: I know, but see, that's the thing.
• 1:47:31
  Christine: I want to come to Haynes, I really want to come to Haynes, but I don't have the time to get over there this season.
• 1:47:36
  Christine: Because I'm only here till September 16th, and then after that, we're going to Iowa for about a week and a half.
• 1:47:41
  Christine: Then I have to head to New York City to do some video in the Diamond District, and then I go take 112 people to Canada, New England.
• 1:47:49
  Christine: Then I'm going to go home for three weeks, then St.
• 1:47:52
  Christine: Martin, then home for three weeks in the Netherlands again, and then it's Christmas.
• 1:47:56
  Douglas: Then it's Christmas.
• 1:47:58
  Christine: And then I'm doing all of South America in Antarctica this Christmas, this winter.
• 1:48:01
  Douglas: I'm taking them on a South America deal?
• 1:48:03
  Douglas: So two I had two friends that did the tour down to Antarca that I think they were on different ships, but this last February they said it was absolutely amazing.
• 1:48:12
  Christine: I'm excited.
• 1:48:12
  Christine: Two years ago, I took my parents on a 61 days to the Amazon rainforest.
• 1:48:16
  Christine: We did Amazon Rainforest and back.
• 1:48:19
  Christine: Last this last year I took them.
• 1:48:21
  Douglas: Is that on a cruise ship?
• 1:48:22
  Christine: Yeah, on a cruise ship, 61 days.
• 1:48:24
  Christine: And then this where do you go out of San Diego, Panama Canal, all the way down, then into the Amazon River, back up.
• 1:48:32
  Christine: Wow.
• 1:48:33
  Christine: Like that.
• 1:48:34
  Christine: And then this last year, I took my dad's bucket list trip was to go to Australia.
• 1:48:40
  Christine: So I took them on another 68 days.
• 1:48:42
  Christine: Out of San Diego, Hawaii, we did all the islands and Papua New Guinea, and then down all the way around Australia, and then New Zealand.
• 1:48:52
  Christine: And then this year we're doing all of South America.
• 1:48:54
  Christine: And so I'm making sure they spend their inheritance on, and I help out with the cost of it too.
• 1:48:59
  Douglas: And 68 days on a ship.
• 1:49:01
  Douglas: I know, but you know, it do most people do that in like week segments?
• 1:49:04
  Douglas: Is there week or two weeks?
• 1:49:05
  Douglas: Grand Voyages, so you sign up for the whole 68 days.
• 1:49:10
  Christine: It just happens to be on the same ship as my husband, so they just come on.
• 1:49:13
  Christine: So I people join the ship on December 15th.
• 1:49:16
  Christine: I'm gonna stay in Iowa for those two weeks, and then I'll wait for mom and dad on January 4th because I don't like them to fly alone.
• 1:49:22
  Christine: I'll fly with them January 4th, and then we'll be on the ship for two months and I'll get off with them.
• 1:49:26
  Christine: Pete'll stay on the ship for two more weeks and then that's that.
• 1:49:29
  Christine: But I I love it because being on the ship with my parents, it's not wasted time.
• 1:49:36
  Christine: I would absolutely hate being on a ship right now if my parents weren't coming with because my parents are getting old.
• 1:49:42
  Christine: We are limited, and so now I'm getting these like quality times with my parents.
• 1:49:46
  Christine: Like I got tattooed, you can't see this really, but I got tattooed on my leg.
• 1:49:50
  Christine: My dad's wheelchair let loose in Australia and gave me a big old cut down here.
• 1:49:54
  Christine: So my dad tattooed me, I say.
• 1:49:58
  Douglas: Wheelchairs can be tricky.
• 1:50:00
  Christine: I know, but you know what I do?
• 1:50:01
  Christine: I do videos to pay for my dad's wheelchair.
• 1:50:04
  Christine: I reach out to the company and I'm like, hey, my dad needs one of those electric wheelchairs and a regular one.
• 1:50:10
  Christine: Could I possibly do some videos for you in exchange?
• 1:50:13
  Christine: It's the special needs group out of Fort Lauder, Florida, and they do wheelchairs all around the world, and so I do videos and I pay for my dad's wheelchair.
• 1:50:22
  Douglas: Nice, because those electric wheelchairs, I know for the other things.
• 1:50:24
  Douglas: Full up and expensive, very, very expensive.
• 1:50:26
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:50:27
  Christine: But I just got them a free one in the mail, which I have to do a video for that.
• 1:50:30
  Christine: Um, it's only like 700 bucks or something, but it's one of those fold up ones.
• 1:50:33
  Christine: Some company asked to send it to me.
• 1:50:36
  Christine: I said, sure.
• 1:50:36
  Christine: So my dad's getting, you know, getting some benefits out of this, like wheelchairs.
• 1:50:40
  Douglas: Wheelchairs are expensive.
• 1:50:42
  Douglas: I know.
• 1:50:42
  Douglas: And they don't last forever.
• 1:50:43
  Douglas: I had to do a lot of maintenance on wheelchairs over the years.
• 1:50:46
  Christine: I don't know how to do any of that.
• 1:50:48
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:50:48
  Douglas: It's not easy.
• 1:50:49
  Douglas: Yeah, there's there's not a lot that can go wrong with it.
• 1:50:52
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:50:52
  Douglas: But after time, certain things break, and you gotta have friends that can weld, and because it takes a while to get all the paperwork to get if you're doing it through any kind of insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, it takes a while to get a new one.
• 1:51:04
  Douglas: And so yeah, we were lucky enough to have friends that knew how to weld and everything and keep them going until we could get to have a new one.
• 1:51:10
  Christine: Yeah.
• 1:51:10
  Christine: And friends, just in case he doesn't say something, he is from Haynes, Alaska.
• 1:51:15
  Christine: You guys know I talk about Skegway Brewing Company and how they get their halibut 15 miles away in the pristine waters.
• 1:51:21
  Christine: So Hanes, Alaska.
• 1:51:22
  Christine: A lot of you have been there probably for a cruise, but that's where he was born and raised, right?
• 1:51:26
  Christine: Born and raised.
• 1:51:26
  Christine: Born and raised.
• 1:51:27
  Christine: So we're with a true Alaskan here.
• 1:51:30
  Christine: Just in case, because he doesn't like talking about himself.
• 1:51:32
  Christine: Kind of like me.
• 1:51:33
  Christine: I hate talking about myself.
• 1:51:35
  Christine: You know?
• 1:51:36
  Douglas: We're gonna take your advice though.
• 1:51:37
  Douglas: We're gonna do a new when we get back to Hales.
• 1:51:39
  Douglas: Sam and I are gonna do a new new intro.
• 1:51:43
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:51:43
  Douglas: So we're gonna have new intros on the show.
• 1:51:45
  Douglas: Hopefully.
• 1:51:45
  Douglas: And the first time we're gonna do it is gonna be for just.
• 1:51:48
  Christine: I'm just worried about all the qu because I am gonna post this on my page.
• 1:51:51
  Christine: Um, and I'm just worried about all the questions that are gonna come in from everybody.
• 1:51:55
  Douglas: About about everything.
• 1:51:57
  Douglas: What we missed, or did I want further details?
• 1:52:00
  Christine: I don't know.
• 1:52:01
  Christine: I think we're good on everything.
• 1:52:03
  Douglas: Well, I'm sure there's stuff we've missed.
• 1:52:04
  Douglas: I can pretty much guarantee that.
• 1:52:06
  Douglas: Because we've had two hours to talk about a 45-year life.
• 1:52:09
  Douglas: That's it's kind of hard to wrap it all up in that point.
• 1:52:12
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:52:13
  Douglas: But I think we hit the high marks.
• 1:52:14
  Douglas: I think we got the big the big thing.
• 1:52:16
  Christine: Do you know what my resume looks like though?
• 1:52:17
  Christine: It's a freaking circus show.
• 1:52:18
  Christine: Oh, it is.
• 1:52:19
  Christine: It's crazy.
• 1:52:20
  Christine: And then I get these young people that are like, oh, I want to do social media, and I, you know, how do you do it or whatever?
• 1:52:27
  Christine: I'm like, guys, I've I've got I've had all this other entertainment stuff in b behind me.
• 1:52:33
  Christine: I'm like, if you want to do social media, the main thing is just to get started.
• 1:52:36
  Christine: You don't need to take buy a course, ask, you know, you just need to go.
• 1:52:40
  Christine: Like, I kind of like what you did.
• 1:52:41
  Christine: You just started, you know, you just went with it.
• 1:52:43
  Douglas: That was the that was it.
• 1:52:44
  Douglas: When I first started for the podcast, everybody, the people that I was asking that, I was like, how do I do this?
• 1:52:50
  Douglas: So just start recording.
• 1:52:52
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:52:52
  Douglas: Get people to sit down and just start recording.
• 1:52:55
  Christine: Just my iPhone that is four or five years old.
• 1:52:57
  Christine: Everybody's telling me I need a new phone.
• 1:52:59
  Christine: But I think it's stupid to upgrade your phone every year.
• 1:53:01
  Christine: I don't mind buying $1,000 worth of jewelry because I like jewelry, but I do have a problem trading in a phone that is still very good to just get a new one.
• 1:53:10
  Douglas: I hate it when the battery stops.
• 1:53:11
  Douglas: I hate it when the battery starts.
• 1:53:13
  Douglas: It doesn't last as long, it doesn't charge as well.
• 1:53:16
  Douglas: And it's it's like that's where I'm at.
• 1:53:18
  Douglas: That planned obsolescence.
• 1:53:19
  Douglas: That's where I'm at.
• 1:53:20
  Douglas: Ticks me off.
• 1:53:22
  Christine: Reba, how cold is it out there?
• 1:53:24
  Christine: How cold is it?
• 1:53:25
  Christine: Look, I've drank all my water my vodka.
• 1:53:30
  Douglas: Well, we'll we'll let you go so you can get outside so you can pick up your chili.
• 1:53:33
  Douglas: It's been wonderful.
• 1:53:34
  Douglas: Thank you for having me.
• 1:53:34
  Douglas: No, thank you.
• 1:53:36
  Douglas: I appreciate this.
• 1:53:37
  Christine: I'm really disappointed we didn't have an air and makeup crew on set here in Alaska.
• 1:53:40
  Douglas: We'll we'll work on that.
• 1:53:41
  Douglas: Yeah, okay.
• 1:53:42
  Douglas: We'll work on it.
• 1:53:42
  Christine: Because as you can see, this is kind of here like sweating, drinking water, like gotta be let go now.
• 1:53:49
  Douglas: Tell them more.
• 1:53:50
  Douglas: We planned this like two months ago, and weather's this is nor not normally Alaska weather, right?
• 1:53:55
  Douglas: You've been here long enough.
• 1:53:56
  Douglas: You know this is not.
• 1:53:58
  Christine: I'm gonna get up from the seat, and there's just gonna be like sweat.
• 1:54:02
  Christine: Isn't that wonderful?
• 1:54:03
  Douglas: We're not gonna we're not gonna tell anybody.
• 1:54:05
  Douglas: We're not gonna videotape it.
• 1:54:06
  Douglas: We won't we won't videotape it.
• 1:54:09
  Christine: Sweat.
• 1:54:10
  Christine: Anyways.
• 1:54:12
  Douglas: Thank you.
• 1:54:13
  Douglas: Thank you.
• 1:54:13
  Christine: It's been fun.
• 1:54:14
  Douglas: Appreciate it.
• 1:54:14
  Douglas: It's been great.
• 1:54:15
  Douglas: I look forward to seeing you in Haynes again.
• 1:54:16
  Christine: Okay, I'll see you guys later.
• 1:54:18
  Douglas: All right.
• 1:54:18
  Douglas: Take care.
• 1:54:19
  Christine: You don't need to say goodbye to him?
• 1:54:20
  Douglas: I don't say goodbye.
• 1:54:21
  Christine: Oh.
• 1:54:22
  Douglas: We're gonna see him again next week.
• 1:54:23
  Christine: Oh, yeah.
• 1:54:23
  Christine: Sorry, he won't see me.
• 1:54:25
  Christine: Bye.
• 1:54:28
  Douglas: Thanks for watching this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 1:54:30
  Douglas: I hope this episode has provided some better understanding, some inspiration, some connection for you.
• 1:54:36
  Douglas: If it has, or if you have any comments, reach out to us on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.
• 1:54:40
  Douglas: Thanks again for watching.