Random Stuff in Probably - Not Definitely - the Last Camping Post

 1. Remember my post on my chaotic medication set-up? Yeah, some pictures have disappeared like they keep doing because Blogger sucks but I'm still too scared to move to Wordpress, but you get the idea. Well I bought some cute pill organizers and fixed it up, and for the most part it's working very well. Throwing the pill organizers in my ziploc bag of medication for the week was not a good plan, however, and half a minute's thought would have confirmed this, but I was stressed about camping and didn't think about it, so here we were.

So the very first night I pulled out the nighttime pill organizer and it fell apart and there were pills everywhere on the ground. I gave a 'it's camping' shrug and picked most of them up and put them back in the organizer, figuring I would have forgotten that they were dirty by the next time I had to swallow them. Fortunately they're all pretty distinctive in appearance so they were easy to sort back into proper order. My one med I take one and a half pills, and a couple of the half pills were too ground into the dirt to bother with. It wouldn't be a big deal to miss the half for a couple of nights, and Eve and I speculated that we could just end up with an anti-depressed raccoon or two wandering around - like Cocaine Bear, but different.

The morning one only spilled inside the bag. Every morning I would dig my hand in to the bottom of the bag and see what kind of handful I came up with. Once it was the exact pills I needed. If we go next year I will bring my old, less-cute, more-securely-closing organizer.

2. We often play bocce ball on the beach. Each team of people throws three balls, and whoever is closest to the placer ball gets a point. We played three girls against three guys, and with the guys we had to measure who was closest by centimeters. With the girls it was by three feet or more. Oh well, we have other talents. 

3. We often play Washers at campfire. Collette started thinking that we'd played so much that it was getting too easy, so she changed it to Backwards Washers. It was extremely exciting when one went in.

4. I used up the last piece of ham making lunch on the last beach day, and it was inexpressibly satisfying.

5. This was a first - the first night we went to the beach, we couldn't see the stars, but the moon was so crazy bright it was almost like daylight.

6. On our first beach day, Eve saw a pair of sunglasses buried in the sand at the bottom of the lake. I dug them out and they were good quality and looked great on her (we went out swimming again and she said 'can you hold these so I don't lose them while I dunk? Ha, that's what the last person should have said') The next day I was walking to the beach and found a t-shirt a little ways back in the trees that was covered with sand and looked like it had been there a while. I washed it and it fits her perfectly. If we'd stayed a few days longer we figure Sandbanks would have provided an entire outfit.

7. We ate a fuckton of Pringles and Twizzlers, two things that I have found only taste good on the beach. Usually I try to get a family picture of everyone. This year I think I only got one of the Walshes, and only because they all had Twizzlers.

8. My little washstand set-up worked really well for the most part, but the thing I loved most about getting home was not having to balance my contact case on the water jug.

9. We don't take Lucy camping. This is admittedly because it would be stressful for us, but I think it would also be stressful for her - we took her to a cottage once and when I went in the water she whined and paced on the dock the whole time. She would bark her head off any time she wasn't with all of us, and it would be a bad scene. But our friends brought their dog Lynzi, and Eve loves her, but she's a little more standoffish than Lucy, except now and then when she is feeling more friendly.

10. The first night I was awake for hours. The bright moon through the tent window made it a little more bearable. 

The second-last night I crawled in the tent, got onto my air mattress - usually a time when I felt the most dissatisfied with camping, while being too hot, too dirty and too uncomfortable compared to how I usually go to bed. But on this night I suddenly had this immense feeling of contentment, sleeping basically outside, a little out of my comfort zone, with so many people I love close by. But I still couldn't fall asleep for another hour - I am who I am.