dailydiatribes

I have just returned from our family sojourn to the piney woods of Tannehill State Park.  We experienced much family bonding and did not lose a single child, no matter how hard we tried.  We took Kiki's daughter AW with us and our friend Tom met up with us on Friday night with his daughter.  We had fun, but I need to rest up before I go camping again.

We arrived at the state park late Thursday afternoon.  Tim had the foresight to go earlier in the day, pick out a camp site and set up our tent.  So all we had to do was cruise in and unload our sleeping bags and gear and we were ready to camp. 

That first night was pretty easy.  The camp site wasn't very crowded and we cooked dinner and ate in relative peace.  After dinner, I went into my section of the tent to change into my pajamas because I was cold.  In the zippered privacy of my tent, I inadvertently broke a bit of wind, which I hoped no one heard.  Unfortunately, it was a trumpet blast in the silence of the woods.

"Oh mom, that's so gross," they hollered.

"Well, um, I was hoping you would think it was a zipper," I said defensively.

That sort of became a catch phrase for the rest of the trip as in "look out, here comes a zipper."

The next day, we ate breakfast and hiked in the morning.  Then we came back, had lunch and the kids played in the creek for hours.  Tom arrived with his daughter Kelsey, and they set up a croquet game and played in the field, while I read.  It was all going so smoothly, and I was enjoying this time of family bonding.

But at about 3:00, the people started rolling in, looking for campsites.  They filled in all around us and I feared we were in for a long night.  The blonde goddess had tired of the croquet game, which had gotten a bit violent.  Considering my son joined the game with a cry of "I love to hit things!!", brandishing the mallet like a weapon, it's not hard to see why she decided to quit.

So we hiked up campsite 21, which led straight up the side of a steep hill to a boulder field.  Once we got up there and my heart stopped trying to shoot out of my chest, I was glad I had done it.  We were on a ridge high above the campsite and it was beautiful.  We found a path and followed it through the woods and came out onto a broad trail.  Tim turned back, but we followed it a bit and were rewarded with the sight of a doe nibbling at the underbrush.

She didn't acknowledge us, but continued to step through the tangle of leaves, looking for green shoots to eat.  We got really close and snapped several pictures.  This sounds so stupid, but I have never been that close to a wild creature in the actual wild.  It was pretty cool.

As we headed back to camp, I asked the blonde goddess if she could ever shoot a deer, now that she had seen one up close.  You see, she fancies herself quite the huntress and is always pestering her Uncle Bob to take her bear hunting.  She seriously wants to shoot an animal.

She responded to my question immediately in her sweet little lisp.  "Well, no mommy, I wouldn't shoot that deer because it was a girl deer.  I only want to shoot a boy deer."

This puzzled me, so I made the mistake of asking why she would only shoot a boy deer.  "Because I want to chop his head off and hang it on my wall," she told me sweetly, batting her big baby blues at me and looking at me like I was stupid.  I mean duh, mom, of course you don't hang a doe's head on your wall.  I got this visual of a buck's head, severed raggedly at the neck, terror filled eyes bulging from it's head as blood pooled beneath it on the floor.  Such a sweet child I have! 

Tim looked at me and said "where did that come from?"  I shrugged; if there's one thing we know about the goddess, it's that she has her own mind!

We got back to the campsite and to my dismay, we were now surrounded by tents on all sides.  It was going to be a long night.  We cleaned up the kids and loaded them into the car for dinner at the restaurant in the park.  Since it was Friday night, we had to eat fish and the restaurant had a seafood buffet.

We got there and were seated and it all started going wrong.  I asked the waitress if those were chicken fingers on the buffet because I was trying to figure out if there was anything on there I could eat and I was hoping it was fried fish.  She said "well, uh, I really don't know," so Tim helpfully said "she means the things behind the frog's legs; those are frog legs right?"  I thought the waitress was going to throw up on the table.  "Oh my God, oh my God, that is soooooooo gross," she said, going green around the gills. 

"Never mind," I said.  "I'll just order off the menu."  She took our drink order and then never returned.  I took the goddess up to the buffet to get her some food.  Tim pointed out the frog legs to her and she looked at me puzzled, so the ancient gentleman in front of us helpfully said "look here honey, you got to keep them from jumpin' off the plate," and made the legs jerk like they were trying to escape.  Needless to say, we skipped right over the frog legs. 

By now, I was wishing we could just all go to McDonald's and get a nice, safe Filet o' Fish, but I gamely went back and sat down, waiting for the waitress to appear and take my order.  But she was not showing any signs of returning.  Meanwhile, AW had discovered that the claws on the snow crab legs were jointed and she was happily brandishing a pincer and snatching napkins off the table with it and doing little shadow plays.  Abby was moaning about the grotesqueness of being in a restaurant that served seafood and I was dehydrating and starving all at once.

A waitress came by and brought Abby's food (she had ordered while I was at the buffet) and asked what else we needed.  "Well, our drinks for starters," Tim said, "and she needs to order."  She apologized profusely and went and found our waitress who finally appeared with the drinks.  By the time she had handed them all out, Josh and Kelsey had already drained theirs, so she had to go get more.  But she did take my order.

When we finally escaped the restaurant, we went back to the campsite and found the people behind us had multiplied; there were now six tents on the site, and they were still setting up.  We sat up until 11:00, but finally threw in the towel.  They were only just getting going behind us; I had taken some Advil PM, but I knew this would not be enough.  In desperation, I reached for the godess's MP3 player and plugged myself in. 

This should indicate for you how desperate the situation was; her playlist is bizarre, to say the least.  But it did drown out the noise.  The first few songs are from a Disney cd, then out of nowhere, Gloria Gaynor starts belting out "I Will Survive".  After the disco, there are three songs from the Barbie Princess and the Pauper soundtrack ("I'm just like you, you're just like me....") then Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody plays.  There is no rhyme or reason to it at all.  The MP3 player used to be Josh's, so when she assumed ownership, we just added her songs to his, creating a truly eclectic mix.

But it did the trick and I was able to fall asleep.  For two hours, then the battery ran out.  Fortunately, my flashlight had brand new Double A batteries, and I popped them out and resumed my musical interlude.  Thank goodness I had it, because the people behind us partied until dawn. 

I had it better than Tim though.  Josh didn't bring a sleeping bag (idiot boy) because he thought it was going to be hot, so all he brought was a liner.  In  the middle of the night, he threw up (outside, thank God!!!) and Tim ended up giving him his sleeping bag because he felt sorry for him.  The goddess's cute little pink bag was evidently not designed for real camping, and he gave her the fleece liner and wound up sleeping on the floor of the tent with nothing.

By that morning, the kids were refreshed and ready to go again and Tim and I were 3/4 of the way dead.  Tom had suffered a severe disagreement with the seafood buffet, leading to a midnight trip to the bathhouse to rid himself of the $18 buffet.  Tim made breakfast and we broke camp and hit the road, eager to get back to civilization and mattresses.

All in all, we had a great time for our first family camping trip.  But I will need a couple of months to recover.  And next time, I am bringing my own MP3 player!