Camping - It was fun while it lasted...

It was a good idea - while it lasted, that is.

Growing up in England and Montana  - I camped a lot. Naturally I want to share this experience with my little family. Now I'm not ready to go into the Bob Marshall Wilderness with them - but I thought it might be fun to do a trial night in my parent's backyard. We were going to practice camping, that is.

Apparently we need a lot more practice!

Overall things went well - we set up the tent quickly and moved in with our inflatable air mattress, blankets and pillows. The kids had a blast playing in the tent through the afternoon and early evening. For dinner we roasted hot dogs over the campfire I built and nurtured in my parent's outdoor fireplace. I roasted some ears of corn and baked some amazing melt-in-your-mouth potatoes. For the grown-ups I grilled ribeyes (we were really roughing it!). The kids had a blast eating the hot dogs on their roasting sticks and the adults moved inside (mosquitoes were getting bad) and enjoyed their meal. After dinner we roasted marshmallows although I was the only one besides my mom who ate any. Maddie enjoyed cooking them, but then refused to eat any!

Mike came by after his fishing trip and enjoyed a steak and potato while I fussed over the nasty bite on his leg - from a wahoo (fish). The kids had baths and were relaxed and ready for bed so we made our way out to the tent after a rousing game of finding batteries for the flashlight (rolls eyes).

We got out into the tent and I noticed that the air mattress was deflated considerably a little low. Being the Girl Scout that I am not I had planned head and ran an extension cord out to the tent so I could adjust the mattress if needed. I added some air and the kids piled on for bedtime stories.

Wyatt immediately started complaining that he didn't like the tent and wanted to go inside and sleep with Mimi. I made it through two stories and he was relentless so I unzipped the door, padded back inside and begged my mom to let him sleep inside. I think he would have just come inside on his own if I didn't try to plea on his behalf - he was determined not to sleep outside. Ten minutes later he was asleep in her bed.

Maddie and I chatted for a while about the stars and other silly things that people discuss late at night under the stars. As she prattled on I could feel the air seeping out of the mattress as my body seemed to drift lower and lower. I must have fallen asleep eventually - Maddie was snoring quite loudly and the dewpoint had been reached as everything in the tent was damp.

Instead of up high on the mattress we were rather engulfed in it and I decided that the tent was a lost cause at the same moment Maddie awoke and exclaimed that she had to pee NOW.

I gathered up our pillows and blankets and somehow managed to get both of our shoes on and the door unzipped and rezipped and she raced into the house - only to race back to where I was trying to walk and not drop anything on the ground - because she couldn't open the door. I don't think she was really awake honestly!

Crisis averted I helped her to the bathroom then explained to my mom our dire situation with the mattress. We devised a sleeping plan that included leaving my dad in the spare room (where he retired after losing his side of the bed to Wyatt) and moving Wyatt to my sister's bed and putting Maddie in with my mom. Unfortunately this puts poor Natalie on the couch, but she'll stay up watching her Anime movies until who knows when so she typically doesn't mind terribly. I moved her pillows and blankets and wrote her a cute note from Wyatt explaining our dilemma and left her a piece of chocolate.

So now I'm inside (actually relieved at the moment) where I'm swatting at imaginary bugs because my skin is crawling and itchy. I'm also now (not thankfully at all) experiencing the allergies that everyone has been complaining about that I've smugly avoided until my brief stint in the backyard "camping." Thankfully my mom gave me a zyrtec and I'll be less itchy in the morning.

So hopefully the next adventure will be more successful - only time will tell.

At least we tried, right? I'd much rather pack up and come inside my parents house than have to pack up camp at 1 a.m. and go home!

Siren Call

Where to start - that's the question I'm always faced with when I give in to the writer's block I am dealing with on a daily basis. It's not that I don't want to write or that I have nothing to write about - rather it's the opposite - there are so many things I want to write about and ponder - but I'm choosing to not write and here I am months later depressed at the lack of writing and feeling rather like I'm going to implode if I don't start writing again.

Every year around the time of Fall - or Indian Summer - I get melancholy for the mountains - Montana - specifically. It's been 13 years since I left my home state - with my family. We've never been back. I am pining for the mountains, the prairies - for Monarch and Neihart - for Memorial Falls - for the view from the back porch of our house. I miss the bluffs of the Missouri river - the Giant Springs park and the monstrous falls of my town's namesake : Great Falls.

I feel trapped in Florida. I love my husband and my kids and my family - and I have a few very dear friends here - but there's nothing else that keeps me wanting to stay here. Maybe it's just my eternal wanderlust  - but I want to be elsewhere.

Go ahead and judge me but I hate the South. All I see here is intolerance and judgement. I'm not ignorant - I know that those things exist everywhere - it just seems to me that they exist even more HERE in the South than other parts of the country where I've lived (and I've lived in several places of our great country, plus abroad for 6 years of my life!). I've seen lots of positive things here as well - but it's hard to keep seeing the beauty when you're seeing so much ugly.

It's possible that I'm just burned out - on people, on heat, humidity and the lack of elevation - the constant barrage of mosquitoes, the oil spill, the days upon days without a break of silence and time for myself.

I went to the beach last night with Wyatt. Just me and him - we took a blanket and a frisbee and went to watch the sun dip into the water. It was pretty and as the light waned and the temperature dropped I found a brief moment of quiet as Wyatt was happily playing in the sand and I wrote in my journal in the first time in forever. We were almost alone on the beach - there was a couple probably several hundred feet away. And then a large family came down the beach access and plopped their stuff just feet away from me. I mean they had the whole beach - why did they have to interrupt my little bit of solitude? When the woman started taking pictures (it was dark out!) with her larger than life flash - I found myself increasingly irritated as the night sky was lit up over and over by something that was no act of nature. We packed up and left.

So where does all this leave me? I'm not sure. The kids and I are packing up and heading to the mountains in TN in a week or two (once maddie's arm is healed). Mike can't come because he's trying to recap lost fishing money now that snapper season is open on the weekends.

I had a small meltdown last night when I told him I thought I needed a break and wanted to take a trip by myself somewhere in November. I'm debating between going to MT or Seattle where my good friend lives. I'm leaning towards Seattle because she's a kindred spirit and she gets what my issues are! She understands completely and it would be great to spend some time with her (and meet her newest little one).

The mountains call to my soul and I've been burying their song in the depths of my heart for too long. It's like a siren call - I need to go.