Sunburn @ MindSay 
fun
Two solid hours of driving.
Hours spent setting up camp (including a quick trip to a local store for a stand-alone shade canopy because, alas, there were NO TREES at our spot).
And still, my guys and I found ourselves...ready?
Watching DVDs on a portable DVD player. Princess Bride. We have good taste.
With unfavorable weather conditions predicted on Weather.com, we nevertheless went because it was a camping trip with Spousal Unit's Sunday School Class. We had paid for our spot months in advance. We really felt we wanted to go. Have some family togetherness. Have some time out and away.
However, it didn't work that way, really. Cyclone is antisocial. Had no interest in being out camping. Kicked himself for forgetting the adapter for his DVD player so he was limited to one movie a day, really, since we had to recharge the battery via the car and we weren't going to do THAT all the time. He has no interest in hiking or sports, so the usual activities were not appealing. He did, though, do a lot of reading. :) Of course!
Cartoon Ranger was less than thrilled too, though we tried to allow him to experience different things. He is a contrary kidlet, and if you say "it's raining" he'll say "I want sunshine" just because it's the opposite. If it's sunny, he'll say, "I want snow!" In Florida. In April. Yeah. Not. He does it on purpose, of course. We do extend great patience as we explain the realities of a situation, try to make jokes about it, but there you go. He will not be reasoned with, on occasion.
A very very rare appearance of The Cartoon Ranger!
The cool thing is that he spoke to people he never met, this weekend. He did so rationally, with appropriate (if you could follow his train of thought as Mom does, lol) contexts and with good manners. He really did well. Except when he didn't. Fortunately, most of the adults from our church's group have met CR and understand that he has limitations, so no one was too weirded out, but the kids didn't quite "get" him.
It isn't every eight-year-old that understands what to do when you hand a pine cone to him, after all. <smile>
It rained. Saturday night, it rained. Fairly good storm. We got wet.
It rained inside the tent, you see. We watched it. And, through it all, the boys slept like the proverbials rocks. Both of 'em. So only Spousal Unit and myself were up, using the dirty laundry to help dam the water on one side of our tent. Covering the boys with a rainproofed poncho. Making sure that -- of course! -- the cell phones were not damaged as they recharged. (We had electrical and an extension cord!)
The tent, after having served our family for about a decade, had rather deteriorated. Patched in many places, it still didn't work to keep us weather-safe. So, unlike the Coleman stove, which we've had since before the birth of our firstborn, the tent met the dumpster on intimate terms.
On the way home, I asked Spousal Unit if he -- maybe? -- had fun. He worked the most for this, did almost all the cooking, etc. I had hoped he had had a good time.
No, but he did say it was interesting.
Sunburnt, exhausted from being up all night to keep the water from the children, and having listened to CR whine for a solid hour before we left the camp site (he wanted to be "clean and dry" when we had just finished with the storm. It wasn't feasible, but he is, remember, contrary...), Spousal Unit was not a happy camper.
Oddly enough, within an hour of walking in the front door of our house again, he was on the computer, looking for a new tent.
"A bigger one," he said.
I have to smile.
Damn it! I still have Sweeney Todd songs stuck in my brain. I saw the movie twice. Downloaded the songs. Have played them repeatedly for days. They won't come out of my head. And so I walk around singing random songs. "With the price of meat what it is, when you get it, if you get it . . . . good you got it." I even have the timing perfect on that one. And Helena Bonham Carter does have about the same intonation as me.
Another BS day. We did have a conversation about rentamidget.com that was absolutely hilarious at about 3:00p. I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. Then I went back inside and realized I'm going to be moving furniture all day tomorrow. As well as translating French. Damn Labplas.
Then I overdid it at the tanning bed. I am crispy. In January. Now THAT's funny. But it kinda hurts. So I'm going to go soak my skin in hot water. I know I know. But it always works for me. Oh yeah! And I have a line. Right down the middle of my stomach. God I miss Island Shack right about now.
Okay, I guess that wasn't entirely sarcastic. I've had some things going on. But let's at least approach it all chronologically.
The weekend before the holiday, I did an author appearance at the Celtic Faerie Festival in Fair Oaks. (Please don't ask me what a Celtic faerie is. I really don't know.) It was a similar event to the Harvest Festival I've appeared at for the past couple years, but not as well advertised. Attendance was poor. But that was also due to lots going on that weekend, and a holiday in the middle of the following week.
But, while my book sales were poor, and I got a sunburn, I did get something really great out of it: a new friend. Let's see. She needs a pseudonym, here. Let's call her Smartass. Oh, wait. That's what she calls me. Um, I'll call her Kitty.
And the following night (Monday) after the festival, she invited me to a birthday party. Not hers, but a friend of hers, who owns a pagan shop up in Loomis. So I went. And it turns out I actually knew more people there than just Kitty. But I didn't know any of them very well. I got there at 5:30, and when people started arriving in large numbers (around 7:00), my introversion kicked into high gear. I could only tolerate being there for another hour, and left at 8:00.
It would've been better if I could've spent more time with Kitty, but she had others to see, not just me. But I'm still glad I went.
I'm doing some work for him, on the side. He's getting his landscaping business up and running again, so I'm doing a lot of his promotional items, including his website. We talked business for an hour or so, before and after lunch.
Aside from that, I didn't really do much for the holiday. But then, I'm not really much into holidays.
Over the past week, I've reconnected with three acquaintances from my home town, all via MySpace. Damn handy sometimes, MySpace.
One of these folks was actually much more than an acquaintance. We were close friends for a while, but drifted apart, as friends often do.
Well... in my mind, our drifting apart sort of had a cause. See, Jon and I were friends during the period where I was just a fresh little atheist. And, as many baby atheists are, I was a little... well... touchy. Jon and I had had many discussions on religion, and he himself was in a sort of questioning phase.
And then, his father passed away. Very sad. I liked his parents a good deal.
Understandably, this rocked Jon's world a bit, and his questioning phase took a turn toward acceptance of religious claims. And I, in my brash youth, said something like, "You're only saying that because you're having trouble dealing with the loss of your dad, and you don't want to accept the idea that he's not 'continuing on,' somewhere."
That was... insensitive, at best. At worst, it was fucking rude. Not that I meant it that way, but I could see that it upset him. And it wasn't long afterward that our friendship was pretty much a thing of the past.
I brought this up to him last night, since our email conversation (oh, sorry, Lucky... our MySpace message conversation) had turned to the topic of death, somehow. I told him I hoped the statute of limitations on apologies hadn't expired, yet, because this has been mildly troubling to me ever since it happened.
His reaction? "OMG....no... I have NO recollection of that...and I can promise you it's nothing I ever held against you."
One of the things we folks with abandonment issues do... we blame ourselves for stuff like this, even when it isn't even a factor. And this simple sentence of his... geez. I was actually stunned at how much relief I felt after he said it.
I got some new strings for the Les Paul. As an experiment, I got them in three different gauges. Yesterday, I put on the heaviest gauge, which are actually jazz strings. They're similar to the ones I used to play with, back in the day.
Holy crap. They're way too thick. How did I ever play with these damn cables? Guess my playing back then lacked the subtlety it now has.
And no wonder.
Kitty and I have chatted for hours, the past couple nights, on Yahoo. We're still early in that "getting to know you" phase of friendships. But it's been fun.
I shared with her some of the humorous blog entries from here, and some of the funnier ones from the Cardigan's Corner days. She seemed to get a kick out of them.
But I dunno... How good of friends can I really be with someone who doesn't like Alfredo sauce?
Thats my baby sister warming up to pitch in her game today. I wish the quality was better, but it was taken with my camera phone. I guess something is better than nothing though.
She hit an out of the park home run today, and my other sister had some fantastic plays at first base. They won, keeping their undefeated record still intact.
I got sunburned watching, and feel like i'm about 100000 degrees right now. You could probably cook something on my shoulders, back, and chest, its so hot. I'm so dumb for wearing a tank top, and only putting spf 15 on. Antibiotics + sun - sunscreen = pain.
I went and watched Rach play softball today/tonight. Her college had a double-header. I drove an hour and then watched both games. Somehow, between 4pm and 9pm I got really really sunburnt and my whole face is bright red now. Hooray for meds that say "You should avoid prolonged or excessive exposure to direct and/or artificial sunlight while taking this medicine" my bad. I really didn't think it was possible to get any sun after 2pm, especially this early in the season.
Hooray for driving on my own and having my license.
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