Camping Sucks So Much

You smug bastard. 

It's 11:11.  My wish? That I didn't have to go outside and sleep in the 2-person tent that Santa left for our children this year.  Razza-frazzin' Santa leaves a tent for my camping obsessed kiddos, and no note about how HE's gonna come back and camp with them or something. Nope.  Now Mama has to do it.  Ain't it always the way-- Santa gets the credit, Mama does the work.

So it's 11:11.

Let me rewind a second to the months of January, February and March, where my kids asked me every day, "Can we go camping yet, Mom?"  and I (much to my delight) had to say "Oh darlings, this is the worst winter ever. No, we cannot go camping."  Smile, smile, smile.

Then April, May and June roll into town and I have to pretend I keep forgetting to camp, and that we can't because the ground is too hard, or too wet or too... you get the picture.  Plus there's school... So. Many. Helpful. Excuses.

See, because the thing that Santa didn't think about is that neither Husband nor I are campers.  My ideal camping adventure includes a terrible (campy) 60's Sci-Fi and a FABULOUS (campy) drag show.  It doesn't include bugs, dirt or nature.  Just crap special effects and men who look better in dresses and heels than I do.  Muah! Love it!

All along, however, Husband has been telling the kids he'll camp with them in the basement and then "forgetting" or making sure the kids get into enough trouble that they lose camping as a reward.  Really, we're a match made in heaven, Husband and Me.

But here we were in July, summer vacation for the kiddos and me and finally, finally I gave in and told the kids we could camp outside.

Of course, having spent 6 months fake-forgetting to camp, we actually forgot to get out there Saturday night. Handy for Husband, let me tell you, because I was gonna trade him all sorts of whatever he needs--yes, even that, so that I don't actually have to go out there and sleep on Saturday night.  Unhandy for me because now I can't trade him anything because it's Sunday night and we forgot last night, and now he works in the morning. And I don't.

So I set up the tent with Kiddo #1, giddy and giggly.  I couldn't put the tent on the soft grass, though, because we paid umpteen dollars to have the lawn replaced.  So I cleared a spot off our paving stone patio and set up camp.

Me: I put the tent together.
Husband: Are you gonna sleep out there?
Me: Yes. I told the kids I would.
Husband: Well, you can't just leave them out there.
Me: (irritated because he figured me out) I wasn't GOING to. SHEESH!

Back to the tent I went with a ladybug looking sleeping bag.
Back into the house I come.

Husband: Are you gonna sleep out there?
Me: Yes. I told the kids I would.
Husband: Well, you can't just leave them out there.
Me: (irritated because he figured me out) I wasn't GOING to. SHEESH!

Back to the tent I went with an alligator sleeping bag.
Back into the house I come.

Husband: Are you gonna sleep out there?
Me: Yes. I told the kids I would.
Husband: Well, you can't just leave them out there.
Me: (irritated because he figured me out) I wasn't GOING to. SHEESH!

Back to the tent I went with two pillows and a frustrated rage in my heart.  I really, really just didn't want to sleep outside in a stupid tent, on our stupid paving stones, and how come Husband won't bail me out of this one like he usually does? Grr.

So I put the kids to bed in the tent, kissed and hugged them, zipped them in, and went back into the house.

Husband: Are you gonna sleep out there?
Me: Yes. I told the kids I would.
Husband: Well, you can't just leave them out there.
Me: (irritated because he figured me out) I wasn't GOING to! I am ... geez! I am just gonna go out there when I'm sleepy. Sheesh!

Yes. Totes beginner friendly. 

So I put in a yoga tape and did a cray cray routine that I can only hope was "advanced" because if this is the "beginner" tape, I've been really fooling myself for a long time.  Also, it was a DVD, not a tape, but I'm too old to keep up with the random letters of new technology.  Suck it, digital names.

I gave Husband several legitimate chances to be awesome and go sleep outside but he kept saying "I've gotta work in the morning. You don't. You're on summer vacation."  UGGGGGGH!

So at 11:13, I got into my jammies and went outside.  I entered the tent cautiously because the two children inside were sleeping like starfish.  Luckily the outside light was on so I could see inside and avoid smooshing my kids.  My stupid-camping-loving kids.

I immediately noticed that the pavers were still quite warm through the tent floor.  That's an unexpected perk for the tootsies, although... oh yes. It was quite stuffy in the tent because of the extra heat. And Kiddo #2 had sweat through his jammies.  I rolled him over so I might lay on my side and he made a gross velcro-y sound because he was so damp.  Gag.

My hips don't lie. Each of these sequins represents a throbbing pain point.  

I laid down on my side and instantly, everything hurt.  Because of the warm bricks beneath me, the pain was more of a throbbing instead of stabbing, which was okay I guess. I'm actually not sure which one is worse, but just know that my hips were talking to me, and they were saying "Get me the hell into a bed or shit's gonna get real."

And just like the lagoon animals in The Little Mermaid, the bullfrogs of the creek behind our house were singing "Let's Get It On" by Barry White while a bunch of teenagers yelled and carried on in some undisclosed backyard.

The warmth of the solid brick patio stones aggravated my hips and lower back. And the bullfrogs grunted. While the teenagers screamed. And the green grass grew all around, all around, and the green grass grew all around.

So I lay there with a moist preschool leg and arm draped over my abdomen. Gag.

And I listened while a slithery creature slowly entered the pond and ate all my fish and squinted its evil eyes on our tent.  I couldn't SEE this per se, but I could surely hear it happening. And I did peer cautiously out the tent door/window to spy if there were glowing red eyes coming from the pond or not. I've learned from Scooby Doo that all evil has glowing red eyes.

And the wind blew creepy long-fingered shadows onto our tent.  I exhaled slowly and thought of pleasant things like Smurfs and Bambi and Beauty and the Beast.  Oh that frickin' terrifying Beast.

I will gnaw on your toes and skull for kicks.

And then I thought about raccoons and opossums and their razor-sharp teeth and how one might, like our cats of old,
come up to my toes, which were pushing on the end of the tent, and want to just chew on my toes or my head or HOLY SHIT THERE"S SOMETHING MOVING IN OUR TENT and I screamed and covered my mouth because FRICKDY FRICK FRICK GODDAMMIT CHARLIE!

And while scream-crying, I quickly turned on my video camera and made a video of me begging for ... well, it's just as good to watch the Blair Witch Project again.  Ain't a lick of difference between the shakey snot-and-saline video of Heather Donahue and mine.  ... Except that I may have told the monster that I had two tender, juicy kids to trade for my own life.

"Listen, these other two are young. Take 'em. I'm mostly just fat anyways."

Oh, shut up. If razor-toothed ninja zombies were attacking YOU in the middle of the night, you'd throw your damn kids at them, too. And if you wouldn't, then you haven't been puked IN and pissed ON yet.

It'll happen.
Just believe.

Then I deleted the video because I think in the eyes of the law, "willingness to sacrifice one's young in an attempt at self-preservation during a zombie-ninja attack" is frowned upon.

I grunted and groaned and tried to get myself off the bricks and out of the tent.  I threw a shoe out of the zippy door so that the Killers might eat it first and I could still flee to safety.  Nothing ate my shoe, so I put it on and walked the 4 steps to the backdoor. I stood in the kitchen pacing back and forth like a crack addict trying to come up with a way that I could sleep in my own bed while headlines of "Mother left Kids 7&3 Overnight for Zombies to Eat" scrolled through my head.

Awesome.

And then, our tiny, old Jack Russell Terrier clicked her way into the kitchen. Sure I'd been pacing for 15 minutes before she realized I was in the house, but she came!  I smiled a Grinchy grin and called her to follow me. I giggled like a maniac.

In a flash of fur and triumphant tears, Rizzo was zipped inside the tent with the children, and I was gleefully slipping into our bed.  Rizzo wouldn't let anything eat the children! Rizzo would bark like a maniac if a ninja zombie appeared!  Huzzah for Rizzo!

Husband snuggled into me then realized I was in the bed and where were the kids and I said, "Don't worry, I zipped the dog in the tent."

I swear, I heard him giggle in his sleep.
Like I said, a match made in heaven.

Air Plant Jellyfish

Good God, it's so hot outside I think my skin melted off, going from my air-conditioning in my house, to the air-conditioning in my car.

"Oh, not that I'm complaining, after the winter we had..." says everyone else in the world.  

And then I say "Oh, I'm complaining. I didn't say one bad thing this winter so that I could continue to complain about the blasted sun and the heat and humidity."  

If this is June, what the frick is July gonna look like? Gah.

The Hubster and I had my parents take the kidlets for the weekend so we could do a bunch of dumb yard work (again, I keep voting for us to put in xeriscaping, which is the fancy word for ROCKS EVERYWHERE instead of stupid, high-maintenance, water-loving, grass) but since it's too hot to be outside, I sat down in the kitchen and figured out a cute project I'd been dreaming about for a while.

Say it with me:  Air Plant Jellyfish. 

Yes.

It's about the easiest thing to do on the planet, and I almost don't want to tell you because it's the Rice Krispie Squares of crafting and once you see how easy it is, you're gonna be off making your own air plant jellyfish and they'll look fantastic.  

Oh hell, who doesn't love Rice Krispie squares anyways? 

Eye Pins, or as I call them, lowercase-letter-i-pins

Materials:

Polymer clay (sculpey clay)  

eye pins 

air plants 

hot glue gun and glue 

glossy spray (optional)

*ask for all the materials at your local craft store

*ask for all the plants at your local greenhouse

First: Choose some colours that work well for you. 

First 2.0:  Preheat the oven to the package directions.

Second:  Squeeze the colours until you make something like a pinch-pot, but try not to make a flat bottom. The rounder the better.  One package of sculpey (or no-name) clay will make ONE large jellyfish, 2 medium jellyfish OR several small ones.  

Third: Poke two wee holes in the top (or sides, if you want the jellyfish to appear to be swimming in all sorts of fun directions) with your eye pins and remove, just leaving the holes. 

Fourth: Put the 'pots' in the oven for the amount of time specified on the package.  (I think it's about 20 minutes, if I recall correctly.)

Fifth: Remove and let cool.  (if you're inclined to spray them with high-gloss spray, this is the time to do this and let it dry for an hour.  It looks neato, but is not necessary.) 

Once they're cool, heat up the ol'glue gun.  Put a dot of glue on the inside of the pots, over the eye pin holes.  Re-insert the eye pins so that the glue hardens around the eye pins.  

The purple one at the top has holes in the side, while the rest have holes in the top. 

Sixth:  Add a quarter-sized circle of glue to the inside of the pot. Wait 30 seconds for the glue to be less HOT and squoosh an airplant (or two!) inside.  

Seventh:  String them up with fishing line and hang!  

I went hunting for driftwood and got a HUGE piece from a friend of mine.  The jellyfish look UNBELIEVABLE under driftwood. It was too heavy to put up where I wanted it to go, so I ended up finding a cool thing at The Paper Pickle that I could hang them from.  It's super cute above my soaker tub!  It would make an awesome baby mobile, too.  

Air plants don't need to be watered (just mist them once every week or so), and don't need soil, which makes them ideal for whimsical projects like this one.  

Honestly, I think the whole thing took an hour and mostly because I bought some cheap-o stuff that was brutally hard to squeeze and mold into shape.  Lots of bang for your buck, and would make an awesome wee gift to brighten any day.

If you give this a try let me know!  Send me pics and deets!

Check out the finished product at my Instagram.  

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