Camping

Rob's employer, as it does periodically, momentarily forgot about its mission to destroy our family life, and actually scheduled Rob two weekend days off. I believe that the last time this happened was sometime last year. Since we were going up north to pick up Fiona from her week at summer music camp, Rob had the scathingly brilliant idea that we should rent a campsite at a State park nearby, and camp for the weekend.

Since Rob gets his schedule on Wednesday, we didn't learn this soon enough to reserve a campground in advance; we had to depend on getting one of the sites reserved for first-come-first-served visitors. The weather reports were not good for Friday night, either, so we debated anxiously whether we should go up that night or Saturday morning. But the prediction of thunderstorms for Friday dropped from 70% to 30% by the time I got home from work on Friday. Since we were learning about this at the last minute, our getaway was quite a scramble, and yes, we did leave some things behind.

We got to the campsite at 9:30, which meant we set the tent up in the dark, and yes, it was sprinkling. That was stressful. But aside from that, everything went beautifully, and after a brief shower on Saturday morning when we were in the car anyway, the weather was splendid. We were at the St. Croix State Park, which is the site where we were so miserable from the mosquitoes last summer. This time we had our screened pavilion along, but I don't think I got a single mosquito bite all weekend. There just weren't any around at all.

We drove to Fiona's Saturday morning, and saw the program they'd spent the week preparing. They did excerpts from "The Wiz." Then, as we hoped, Fiona buried herself in her book for the trip back and noticed nothing until we were actually pulling into the campground, and so got a great surprise.

The rest of the weekend was happy and relaxing. We rented bikes for one hour, but otherwise hung around the campground, where I prepared our meals (the set of camp cookware we'd bought on the trip up proved itself unworthy; we exchanged it for another on the way back) and the girls tended the fire. We got back in good order yesterday at 6:00. I have not had a chance to check my friends page and can't now; have to dash for work.

Considering camp chuck boxes

I want us to get a camping chuck box. As I mentioned in my last entry, when we go camping, it sometimes has to be a spur of the moment thing, because Rob gets his schedule for the weekend on Wednesday. Having a box which is already all organized with the kitchen stuff we might need sure would be handy.

I've been looking on the Internet and have seen a variety of models and prices. See here,
here (equipped) or here (unequipped),
here (you can either order it as a kit, or assembled, unfinished, or totally finished),
here,
and here (another picture of same item here).

Here are some do-it-yourself plans, made available by the Boy Scouts.
This is intriguing, but not quite what I had in mind, and perhaps more than we need.

Do you have a camping chuck box? Did you build it yourself or buy it? What do you like/dislike about it? What are useful features to look for?

A guilty pleasure passed on

I was in one of my fretful I-don't-know-what-to-read states of mind and impulsively pulled out my collection of Elfquest comic compendiums (hey, blame kijjohnson, she's the one who introduced me to Elfquest). To compound my sin, I mentioned them to Fiona. Now she's hooked and is galloping through book 4--in fact some lively skirmishes have broken out over the two of us over who gets to read one of the books first.

Should I have mentioned them to her? I feel sorta guilty about this. But she's enjoying herself hugely.

Equalibrium and disequalibrium

I mentioned that things are going rather well with Delia lately. This is a pleasant change.

Which means that it must be time for Fiona to enter disequalibrium, and right on schedule, that is what has happened. Come to think of it, she was in an equally bad state when school started last year. She has come back from camp mentally rumpled, with a tendency toward teariness--she has cried herself to sleep the least three nights. And she can't in the least explain why; she is perplexed at her own moodiness and has no idea what is going on.

She is also insisting, even more stridently, that she wants her own room.

This makes me want to cry myself.

I think we have definitely entered puberty. I don't feel ready for this.

I can't give up my office entirely.

Damnation.

Happy birthday

Happy birthday to elisem!