The Myth & The Majesty

... from the last couple of weeks. 1. When you have a group of kids, no matter how large or small, their behavior will be determined by what kind of adult leaders they have. 2. "Flexibility" can be a very convenient way of saying "indecision." 3. It can also be a very convenient way of saying, "Well, on to plan G." 4. Sometimes you can like your job well enough to only really consider it work when things go sour. (Like when someone pukes on the stairs.) 5. I really need to meet some new people around here. Maybe that should be a goal for September ... "Make new friends. NOW." [PS - I love my coworkers. I just need to meet some folks that are my own age. Any suggestions?]

It's been a crazy week already and it's only Tuesday. Instead of regaling you with those stories right now (which I may or may not get around to later), I'm just going to send you to this morning's What If . It's pretty fun. Have a good day, all.

I know I wax semi-poetic about my job a lot. Okay, fine -- I'll use the right word. I gloat. A lot. You see, I'm pretty much a happy person -- and this job makes me happy. Which means I'm an absurdly happy person a lot of time. Maybe even annoyingly chipper. And okay. Maybe at one point I was greeted with, "Well, you're just sunshine and daisies all the time, aren't you?" And maybe that made me tone it down a tad. Clearly, though, there are things that aren't enjoyable. And it seems there are a few of you who would like to hear about those. Take, for instance, last night. Apparently someone got sick last night ... right on the stairs between our dining room and patio. Cleaning up puke easily qualifies as my least favorite task. Or the day I spent in waiting rooms when a kid needed stitches on his hand. That brought the trifecta of ickiness -- paperwork, calls to a mother, AND blood-soaked gauze. (He was okay, by the way.) Or the number of dini

We had 75 kids and counselors leave this morning after a full week of camp. Tonight, we have a group of 30-something arriving that will only sort of be around -- Hills Alive is going on and they'll be there most of the weekend. By all means, it is as quiet as it can get mid-summer in the middle of the day. After a morning that included a broken website, more rain, a bus departure, and a camp flip, I find myself at home not really wanting to move. [Side note: Shout out to 44i , our web design folks. They've handled each and every thing I've thrown at them, piddly or important, and they've always done it quickly.] In any case, as I tried to muster up the enthusiasm to do ... anything, I found myself staring blankly at a picture on my wall. This picture, in fact.  ... I had rather long hair then. Once upon a time, I had every intention of giving you the blow-by-blow of a whirlwind trip I took to England. It was never finished. I don't exactly inten

I love rain. I feel I need to state that outright because, as a west river South Dakotan, launching immediately into complaints of rain would be blasphemous. All the more so because I spent some of the better parts of my adult life living through drought out here and I really, truly do appreciate precipitation. I also love thunderstorms. They look cool. They sound even better when you live in a valley. However. This is a calm day. As the M-Man would say, it's amazing how much of a mess those little water molecules make when they get together with all of their buddies. (Okay, maybe I paraphrased a little.) Storms around here tend to be ... not calm. We get the wind, the hail, the torrential downpours. Trees fall. Lightning starts fires. Cars get destroyed by falling ice. Phones go out at the drop of a hat.  Anyone who was around in 1972 starts to get nervous. Around here, it also means our little creek turns into a muddy, churning mess. It means trails wash out and

5:15. My alarm clock goes off in a few minutes, but my body seems to be used to this now. No matter that I didn't get to bed till midnight or that it's been several days since I slept more than five hours -- I'm awake and apparently I should get up. It's mid-week, meaning a camp is in session and I don't have to worry about arrivals and departures. It's a comparatively straightforward day, and barring disaster it shouldn't be too stressful. Of course, last time I thought that I ended up sitting in the emergency room with a camper. So maybe I should be more careful about those kinds of conclusions. 6:45. I've done some yoga, checked my email, showered, and eaten my first breakfast of the day. Yesterday I went for a quick hike by this point, but today it's muddy from an overnight rain and I just didn't have the patience for that. My morning routine seems to change every week. A lot of days, I skip the yoga to get something done. Some morn

Yesterday, I had the day off and I decided I should actually leave and make the most of it. Which meant that shortly after breakfast, I loaded up my boat and headed to Sheridan Lake. Poor Sophie. No matter how often I do this, it always looks silly... I've talked about my kayaking adventures here and there, but I don't know if I've ever told you the story of this particular boat. It's not long. We had an outing with rented boats back in Wausau a few years ago. At that point, one of my coworkers owned a boat that he'd actually bought off another guy from Siemens; he hadn't had it long and he hadn't used it a lot yet. A year later, he still hadn't used it much. He mentioned his willingness to sell it and I, having fallen in love with kayaking after a single outing, jumped at the chance. And so it was that I bought my boat for $75 and a growler of beer. It was a steal. Anyway, last year by this point, I was pretty much done kayaking for

I was the last person in my family to really start drinking coffee. This is odd if you realize that I'm the oldest kid in the family. Mia Sorella started quite young; she'd finish other people's cold coffee at gatherings. Shorty, in the meantime, seemed to develop a taste for no particular reason before he turned 10. And then there was me, the late-bloomer, not really getting into the stuff until I was 16. [Side note: I'm also the shortest, thus squelching the idea that coffee stunts your growth.] [One of my awesome Russian roomies gave me this mug...] Of course, by then I only drank the stuff my mom's mother would have given me as a five-year-old -- milk with a hint of coffee. Or more accurately, milk and sugar and maybe a splash of a flavored syrup with a hint of coffee. Mia Sorella (whose tastebuds were probably permanently damaged by the cold coffee dregs she'd been drinking for so long) was justified in teasing me for my lack of coffee backbone

... people are awesome. This may seem like a boring story (at least at first), but it was a huge bright spot in my week, so I'm going to tell it. It's all about ... blankets. Now, I never thought I could get excited about blankets, but things have changed. In this case, it has to do with blankets that we couldn't find. For some groups (mostly adult ones in the "off-season" months) we provide bedding. At the moment, we don't actually have enough blankets on site to take care of multiple groups in multiple buildings, which is usually the situation for us ... plus a lot of what we do have is getting old and beaten up. So this spring, we spent some time trying to track down moderately inexpensive but decent quality blankets to fix this issue. When Chef Lady did happen to trip across something and get them ordered, they decided to discontinue them and we were out of luck. Last Tuesday, the Bossman found some at our local Kmart that were (a) the right s

Later, I'd like to tell you a story of people being awesome to us here at the camp. But for now, I'm going to send you over to Single Dad Laughing for a great bit he wrote about the perils of blogging. Not, you know, my blogging perils. You guys are few enough in number and very calm people, for the most part. But it's a good rant to read if you ever have the urge to unleash vitriol elsewhere. Plus it makes you feel better if you're not the vitriol-spitting type. Go on, go read it.

It's been a pretty good Fourth-week. On Tuesday there were some horses... [Right, so I say "horses" and then post a photo of "horse." Whoops.]  ... and some mammoths...   ... and some heads.   And then yesterday there was some uproarious laughter at the Black Hills Playhouse. All in all a great couple of days with staff outings.   Today, Cornish Turpheasantin Hen in Spearfish (I'm going to assume they couldn't find a duck...) and tomorrow, a drive to Sioux Falls for a cousin's wedding.   In the meantime, I think I'll wait out this thunderstorm from the comfort of my couch... Happy 4th, all.

So I'm thinking of going for a drive. More accurately, when the summer is over I'd really like to get out of Dodge for a week or so. I haven't been on a real vacation since I visited Mia Sorella a year and a half ago, and as I feel most relaxed when I'm on the road, I thought a solid drive might be in order. There are other things as well. 1. I've never set foot in the Pacific Ocean. 2. I've always wanted to visit Portland, particularly the City of Books . 3. After Shorty gets moved to Denver, I'd like to drop in on him. 4. There are multiple states in between that I've never visited. Waaaaay past due. As much as I'd like to feel spontaneous and just see what happens, I know myself. I'm a planner. In this case, it mostly means I need some semblance of an idea what to expect, even though it will likely change six times before I'd ever even leave and then twice a day while on the road. (Change is fine. Just need a "plan" b

By virtue of bouts with insomnia over a lot of years, I am something of a night owl. For the most part, it works out; I love the peace and quiet and I've always been a bit more productive late at night. Oddly enough, though, as long as I've had an active job (the lab, the daycare, here) I've been able to pull off "morning person" as well. Maybe it's because I sleep harder, or maybe I'm not dreading the alarm clock in the morning. Maybe it's the peace and quiet of an early morning to match that of the late evening. Basically, as long as I'm within a couple hours of the sky looking like this, I'm happy.   What I am not is an afternoon person.   I'm working on it. I've learned to eat something mid-afternoon to keep my energy up. (A peanut butter sandwich at 3:00 is my newest favorite thing.) I do what I can to avoid office work then. I'm trying to pay attention to my caffeine intake so as to avoid a crash.   But wo