Sent Home?? From Camp??

Evidently exhaustion is only half of it.

My campers rock, btw. They like to get up at five a.m. Sunday night, I told them that anyone who got up before me and Starfish (my junior counselor) had to shower first, and help clean the cabin second. That was a mistake on my part. Admittedly, our cabin took the lead in points that day, because our cabin practically glowed, but Starfish and I were shot for the day. Monday night, I told them that they could wake up whatever time they wanted, but nobody could get out of bed or talk before 6 a.m.

 One of my girls this week is from Russia, and enjoys into the night games. It made me laugh to hear, last night, "Vahn, two, fhree, Breetish Boolldog!!" :D

But, there is a bit of sickness going around the Camp. The good news is that, so far, it's only striking the staff - the campers are fine. Unfortunately, it's striking the staff pretty hard. Cheez and Leaf were ordered home this morning (with face masks, numerous symptoms, and fevers of 104), and in the nurse's opinion, should have gone home last night. I was supposed to be subbing for Cheez, for his Skills Track, which I'll explain in a sec. One of my campers had morning meds, so I took her to the nurse, and on a whim, asked her if she could check my temperature while I was there.

Turns out that I'm a tenth of a degree shy of being ordered home myself. Hmm. I knew that I hadn't been doing so great for at least the last day or two, but I didn't know that it was this bad. I headed off at this point to have a chat with Parks.

Parks is the coordinator for everything to do with overnight camp, which includes Skills Tracks. This is a more organized activity that the kids sign up for - they pick one or two at registration, and spend their mornings working on just those, which progress in difficulty as the week goes on. Sunday, they surprised me with, "Hey Phirefly! How do you feel about doing the Nature Skills Track?" Me, surprised, "Surrre! Why not?"

I haven't led a Skills Track at all before, and I've had absolutely nothing to do with the Nature Track. In the past, I've been the assistant for the Ropes Course Skills Track. Rather different. I was informed that, when she was looking for someone to lead Nature, Parks thought I was the most qualified to do it. This is the part where Signscout starts laughing uproariously.

This morning, as soon as leadership let her know that she was losing her mountain boarding and archery instructors, Parks started scrambling to find subs. This ended up being entertaining, because it's a week where the programs that have the most kids are all off-campus. So, the staff that might normally be extras have all been pulled to fill in for these programs. There are no extras. We're actually short for a lot of afternoon activities this week. Parks ended up pulling the Sports Instructor to go do Mountain Boarding (a lesson I'm sorry to have missed, as Juice Box told Starfish and me over breakfast that he'd never seen a mountain board before), and I have no idea who covered Sports. There are about five staff certified for Archery, so, before breakfast is over, Parks grabs me and Splash. It is worked out that I will cover Archery, Splash will take my Nature class. Cool.

Until that point where it turns out that I'm really sick. Not yet ridiculously sick - evidently, if I'd made the call to keep teaching and counseling for the rest of the day, I would have hit the Cheez-Leaf fever tomorrow. This is irritating, as I'm supposed to be leading a canoe trip tomorrow. Blah. Parks orders me to bed until at least lunchtime, and sets about finding a sub for her sub.

The rest of the day passed in naps and hallucinations for me. At some point, Gopher, Thunder, and Stripes (my program director from last year, who's no longer at Camp) were in my room, or so I thought, arguing not about theology itself, but the origins of some part of theology. Doc showed up twice, and one time, he was my doctor and I was telling him that my baby wouldn't come. When my imagination is let off the leash, it gets going - I had a whole life that I'm sure nobody else knew about. Doc asked my birthday, and I told him, immediately, that it was five years earlier than he knew it was. He asked about my marriage (if anybody knows a Stephen Chisholm, evidently he's my husband, he was a kinesiology major and is now an instructor down at SCC, and we've been married two and a half years), and my past medical history (I was only four months pregnant, so I'm not sure why I was so concerned about the baby), and seemed to be trying to reason me back into reality.

No, the irony is not lost on me of a hallucination trying to use logic to get me back to reality. That's what Doc does.

I'm not sure which part was giving Doc more of a headache - the part where I had an extra five years in my memory that couldn't have happened (I had all the details, too - if you asked about how Stephen and I met, or our wedding, or anything about college, whatever - complete memory of five years that didn't ever happen), or the fact that he had a patient who was concerned because her baby "wouldn't come" when she was in her second trimester. Or the part where he had to convince a patient (as an RN, he was the highest medical authority present at Camp) that she wasn't pregnant at all.

I was hoping that by suppertime, I'd be fit and dandy to go back with my campers. It was not to be. I was very upset about this - to the point where Cubby, Twinks, and Splat each asked me what was wrong. I have since been sent home, described the Stephen Chisholm story to Santas (she says I need to go to bed), and am on my way to bed.

We'll see who comes by to visit this time.

Not a hallucination, but a dream, where the lobby of Signscout's hall was blended a bit with the construction of the cabins. I came in, and Signscout and Stryder are hanging out, just chilling, wearing identical mint-green suits. I have no idea why they're dressed this way, but the three of us end up having to fend off this...angry...Flubber...stuff that feeds off of people's emotions. If you get angry, there's more of it. If you get scared, it gets bigger. If you're a virgin and you scream at it, it gets blown apart into much smaller pieces, and has to take some time to regroup.

There was also a school bus somehow involved, but that stayed outside, and most of our fight was inside. Because Stryder was a dumbhead and opened up the window to get a better look at the Flubberstuff on the ground.