Let's Cook Our Weiners

 We're going camping tomorrow. We've been in hardcore prep the past two days, which means I do not want to go camping anymore, and also I might be getting a divorce. Why do we do this? How did we convince ourselves this is fun? Once when we got home I sent around this quote from the book All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews:

"...my parents decided we should go camping in the Badlands of South Dakota. We spent the whole time, it seemed, setting everything up and then tearing it all down. My sister, Elfrieda, said it wasn't really life -- it was like being in a mental hospital where everyone walked around with the sole purpose of surviving and conserving energy, it was like being in a refugee camp, it was a halfway house for recovering neurotics, it was this and that, she didn't like camping -- and our mother said well, honey, it's meant to alter our perception of things. Paris would do that too, said Elf, or LSD, and our mother said c'mon, the point is we're all together, let's cook our weiners."

(We started this when we were in our late thirties. I'm 53. Maybe next year we'll just try LSD)

The comments on my post about Eve passing her driving test were awesome - Suzanne, I LITERALLY used that "what do you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his medical class" adage at least a dozen times throughout this process. She is not the least bit perturbed about the less-than-glowing report - everything that went wrong was due to being nervous about the test, not nervous about driving. Now she can drive like your average fully-licensed person who makes stupid mistakes on the regular. 

ccr in MA, we have the same thing with our weather network, with ingredients for tacos and we're having tacos NOW!, but this is why I was confused about how we had a watch and a warning at the same time. So many tacos flying around! Lettuce and salsa everywhere! 

Engie - what. WHAT. No. Driving. Test. If we had found that out earlier, Eve might be mid-immigration, so I guess it's good that we didn't?

Swistle, it was exceedingly rash of me to say Eve and I had a mini-crash after her driving test without specifying it was a crash of the existential sort. In point of fact, Eve is rather of the opinion that passing the test means she never has to drive again (she did drive Jackson home last night).

Angus is driving back to Ithaca tomorrow to move into his new apartment before heading to Rochester for the wedding (the friend is a couple years older than him, at least, but I agree, HOW ARE WE AT THIS POINT). We are awash in boxes and coolers and bags, and will have to move carefully to make sure we don't end up at Sandbanks with a bunch of athletic wear and texbooks and Angus doesn't end up in Ithaca with a tent and sleeping bags. 

Scheduled camping posts about years past to begin tomorrow. Will report on this year's experience next week. Happy beginning of August, everyone. Please enjoy this picture of my parents, and Eve about to clobber Angus.