the "vacation," part III

(read parts I and II here and here)

We did not encounter a bear on our hike.  This is a really good thing, considering that B and C had decided that they could totally handle the bear: they would throw a rock at his head, which would either hit him in the eye, damage his brain, and kill him instantly, or would miss his eye but still hit his head and knock him unconscious so we could make our great escape.

When we arrived back at our campsite, we were in high spirits, but soaked.  The rain had lasted long enough to drench the knee-length grass we were walking through, so our socks, shoes, and pants were saturated.  When I walked over to the clothesline, though, I was relieved to find that the towels and sheets hanging there were barely damp, and would probably be completely dry in an hour or so.

We stripped off our soggy shoes and socks and draped them over the cement edges of our fire pit to dry.  The fire pit was basically shaped like a C, with one side open so that you could add wood without lifting up the grill grate on top.  When we had a good fire going, we settled in around the picnic table, which was no longer shoved under a sagging tarp, and played Apples to Apples Junior while we ate snacks.  As Kathy was required to continue to slam her her hand on the top of her beer to open it, we realized we hadn't bought a can opener while we were in town (although we did pick up milk and sugar!).  When it was time to cook the dinner, we pulled out two cans of beans we could not open.

We settled on a group of bikers to ask for a can opener.  I walked down the hill to their site with a can of beans in each hand, while Kathy added another log to the fire.  After a while, kind of out of nowhere, a log rolled out of the open side of the fire pit and headed toward our picnic table.  PANIC!  Kathy tried to use a stick to pick up the flaming log and shove it back into the fire, while I stomped on smoldering bits of ash that were scattered around the ground.  At least it was wet.  When Kathy had the log almost back in, A screamed, "Your pants are on fire!"  Although we had been diligently moving our stuff away from the fire as it dried so that it would not catch on fire, we were distracted by the flaming log rolling toward us, and didn't notice when the bottom hem of one of my favorite pairs of pants went up in flames.  I used a shoe to smack the flames on the smoldering hem of my pants, then noticed that A's shoes (canvas converse high tops) had also caught on fire.  Also, a sock.

(fire damage, after being washed.  I am thinking they would make cute shorts?)

the "vacation," part II

(read part I of the "vacation" here)

Kathy and I decided to make coffee and formulate a plan of action while the kids slept in.  We had gotten the camp stove for Christmas from Kathy's mom, and while we had never set it up before, it was similar to one I had previously owned, so although we struggled with it and almost blew ourselves up a couple of times, we got it going without too much hassle.  One thing we had managed to pack was the coffee pot -- an essential if you feel like we do about coffee.  I love coffee so much that I vividly remember the day I figured out how I like it best (2% milk, no sugar).  Kathy loves coffee so much that if she has a particularly bad day, she says to herself as she climbs into bed, "At least this day is over, and when I wake up, I can have coffee."  The only reason I don't like to work out first thing in the morning is that it interferes with that first sleepy taste of coffee, as it rolls down my throat and through my warm, sleepy body.  If you've already run three miles, that feeling is diminished.  On previous camping trips, before we owned the camp stove or our blue speckled percolator, someone had to get in the car and drive to the nearest town to buy coffee at whatever 7 eleven or gas station that town happened to have.  So really the whole point of the camp stove, for us, was coffee.

the "vacation," part I

Two weeks ago, I was on "vacation."  I haven't posted in ages as a result of this "vacation."  Although my intention was to just take the week off, it's kind of gotten out of hand. 

Typically, we try to take the kids to do something fun for one week each summer.  Last year we spent the week on Fire Island, and seven days of five people in our one room house proved to be a bit too much for some people (me).  So this year, we thought we would divvy up the vacation into two chunks, and spend part of it camping and the other part at the beach.  It turned out that the only weekend our friends from Pittsburgh could come visit this summer and go to Fire Island with us was the weekend right before our vacation.  Then, we found out that our friends from Michigan were going to be in New York the week of our vacation and wanted to see us.  So our week was planned to go something like this:

Friday through Monday - Fire Island with Pittsburgh friends
Monday through Thursday - Camping with kids while Michigan friends house sit and explore NYC
Thursday through Sunday - Fire Island with 3 kids and 2 Michigan friends in one room house

Sunday of the first weekend, while we were out on Fire Island, it rained.  It really, seriously rained.  I had flooding nightmares all of Sunday night, which I thought was a little weird.  But whatever, we came home and started loading up the car to go camping and I chatted with my Michigan friends.  I went into the basement to get the tent, and when I stepped onto the carpet, something weird happened.  It sunk.  I realized that the carpet was actually floating on top of about two inches of water in our basement.  I also realized that I had ESP or had some kind of prophetic dream the night before.

I said something to Kathy about how the water seemed kind of gross, grosser than usual when the basement floods, but we decided that the storm sewer must have backed up or something.  We called the clean-up company and scheduled an appointment for them to come dry out the basement and get rid of the carpeting.  We set up the sump pump to pump out the water and bring the level down.  We wondered where our box with extra tarps that we had ordered from Campmor was, since it was supposed to arrive Monday, but it never showed up.  C complained that he was hot, and we found he had a slight fever (one degree).  He was tired, but he had just gotten back from an RV weekend with his father where it sounded like he barely slept, so we chalked it up to that.  We hemmed and hawed and debated, then finally decided to just go camping anyway.  After all, the water was going down, and we had our friends there to meet the clean-up crew, and a one degree fever is pretty much nothing for an exhausted 5 year old. 

(the ceiling of our tent, which will make sense later)

you can't hurry love

All summer, I have been lamenting my pitifully performing vegetable gardens.  Today, for the first time since our return from "vacation," (the quotes will be explained in a subsequent post!) I investigated what was going on with the green beans.  These lovely, forgiving plants had, in our absence, produced an enormous crop of green beans.  They are a bit over-mature since we were gone for so long, which probably means I will have to cook the heck out of them, but I don't care.  Because finally, FINALLY, I grew something which we can eat.

Incidentally, all four of the tomato plants have tons of flowers and unripe fruit.  So it turns out that I was lamenting all my non-producing vegetables, when really I just didn't wait long enough.  Next year, I'll plant a week or two earlier, and also be sure to include some early-producing vegetables (peas, I think?) so that I can enjoy those instead of obsessing over what isn't happening.

immature

Early this summer, one of my next door neighbors called to me from her deck when I was out working in the yard.  She pointed out a dead tree in the garden that separated our two back yards, and asked whether Kathy and I would be willing to split the cost of replacing the dead tree with her.  Of course, I said yes.  We left it at that, which left me to contemplate what kind of tree to put in the dead tree's place.  Which left me dreaming of stewartia pseudocamellia.

(this photo from awaytogarden.com)

Look at it, with it's mid-summer blooms, big beautiful buds, gorgeous peeling bark, and bright fall foliage.  It's so much more interesting that the same 5 things you can get from the local Home Depot.  So it seemed to me that convincing the neighbor that this tree was the way to go would be easy, right?  Nonetheless, I was nervous about the confrontation.  Finally, after weeks of agonizing over it, A said to me, "Well really, Erin.  It's not like she can say no."  She had a point.  If I went over there and made a pitch for a particular tree I wanted, and offered to be the one to put it in, it's not like she could say no, could she?