this one goes out to Austin

Hi, I'm back and I'm on the other side of 40 now.  I'll just pretend that there are no implications of mortality there.  So Friday, I took the kids to school and did my car line routine.  I had finally gotten one of those birthday cake hats and I wore that, affording me many, many opportunities for this exchange:

"OH, is it your birthday?"
"no, why?"

And then went straight to Greenbrier State Park because they don't take reservations and it's Labor Day weekend.  Only I get there and discover that now they DO take reservations and are booked up.  Um.  The nice lady said she'd check to see if there'd  been any cancellations for the night.  While she was looking, I thought to mention, "Well, it's my birthday and I was just going to camp out tonight with my friends..."  "Well," she said, "we DO keep a few sites in reserve for emergencies...like yours."  So I if some poor family stumbled off the road needing a place to stay, too bad. It's not THEIR birthday.

I secured the site and went home to get Ben his sneakers and lunch money (the ONE day he doesn't wear sneakers, it's PE.) and take them to the school.  Then home for a quick kitchen tidy and short nap.  Then back to the camp to pitch the tent.

The sites were a lot closer together than I expected, so it's just as well that I abandoned my plan to camp all by myself.  There would have been no introspection on that night anyway.  As soon as I started to unpack the tent, I began to hear the theme song of our stay:  "AuuuuSTIN!  Gitoverhere!"  Occasionally, sister Ashley (no, I'm serious) got a "WHERE do you think yer goin'?" but it was young Austin who was the real troublemaker.  But I got up the tent, hoped they were just stressed about pitching camp and would chill the hell out, and went to get my kids from school.

No, they didn't chill.  But you knew that already, didn't you?  When I got back to camp for the night, I had a couple of hours before Bev and Lara showed.  So I set up the chairs and unpacked the food and tried to start a fire. No outside firewood was allowed in b/c of some weevil infestation or something, so I had to buy wood at the camp store ("you can gather and chop any deadwood you find!"  Yeah,thanks).  I'd gathered loads of kindling, enoughfor the next morning's fire, too.  So I thought.  The wood from the store was greener than Ralph Nader.  It hissed and carried on in a  most discouraging way.  All the while, "AuuuuSTIN!  Whuddoyou think yer doin?" "DAMMIT AUSTIN!"  Good times.  This crew had two adjoining pad sites, many people of many ages.  Nothing like getting to join someone else's dysfunctional family reunion.  The site right next to mine had a mom and two kids.  Years of living downtown with a narrow back garden had taught me how to not see or hear people mere feet away, but they apparently had never lived downtown and insisted on saying hi.  And showing me bugs.  And telling me about snails.  Look kid.  I HAVE children.  If I'd wanted to camp with kids, I'd have brought my own.  Luckily mom called "Bree!  Did you move my cigarettes?"  I began to fear that this was not a state park, but a trailer park.  I realized that I should have just hopped on the AT and hiked to the next shelter to camp.  I also realized that I suck at building fires.  How hard can it BE?

Finally Bev and Lara showed up with cake and presents.  I put on my birthday hat.

Hello Kitty cupcakes!  yay!  They also brought wine and olives and dippy things.  It is very, very good to share your birthday with friends.  No sooner had I warned them about Austin than we heard "AuuuSTIN!Gitoverhere!" and cracked up.  And, about then, the fire really caught.  It never burned high, but it was warm and nice to look at.  So we ate and drank and felt bad for Austin and complained about the bright flippin' light our neigbors had.  When I went up for more wood, I managed to get dry stuff this time and all was well.  cozy, contented, nice.  Lara slept in her car on a memory foam mat.  Bev and I took the tent and the blow up mattress.  Bev, bless 'er, was out cold before she got horizontal.  I lay down and immediately had to pee.   Trudged up to the bath house.  Back.  Lay down.  Snooze.  Wake cold and needing to pee.  If I get up, I'll wake up completely.  but I can't sleep needing to pee.  but it's cold...and so on, pretty much all night until about 6 or so, when Lara got up to pee and set her car alarm off.  I later suggested that she should have just yelled "AuuuSTIN!  Turn that damned thing off!"  Of course, when MY alarm goes off, I panic and can't remember what to do and it just goes on and on while I curse like mad.  So I got up, went to the bath house, made fun of Lara, got another blanket out of the van and went back to sleep until 9.  got up, made the fire (so easy with dry wood!  I'm not a fire failure after all!), got the water on for coffee, and heated the danish.

Oh, did I not mention that I was dressed as a gnome?  I was. 

Then we just hung out. Lara didn't roll out of her bed until 11, by which point we'd broken camp and were musing about how funny it would be to just leave.  We were home by noon.  More later.  First, here are some other photos:


home, sweet, home



bedding folding action!



Crone in the woods.