Relaxation is a Relative Term

When Sean and I haven't been busy watching people engage ska bands in fisticuffs this week, we've been getting ready for the camping trip we have on this Memorial Day Weekend's agenda. The camping trip was my idea. I sent Sean a bubbly email, saying "I have a great idea! Why don't we go camping next weekend? I already have all the gear! It will be fun! We can go hiking, go geocaching, even go by Mass MoCA!"

Notorious city-boy Sean surprised me a bit by agreeing right off. So it must be a good idea! Camping is such a cheap way to go! Sheesh, that state park only charges 10 bucks a night!

I haven't been camping in about six years. Maybe more like seven. It seems like much less, but I say this so you'll understand the later catastrophes a bit better.

Anywho. Sean had his big Rescue Diver Certification Test last weekend, so he was either playing aquaman or exhausted from a long day of playing aquaman all weekend. (But he passed with flying colors. Yay Rescue Diver Honey! If you had your own blog you could talk more about it! But you don't so that's all the acknowledgement you get!) We did get a chance to venture down to the basement and bring my camping gear back upstairs.

The excitement that I'm certain will ensue tomorrow began at that very point, when my 6'4" boyfriend screamed like a woman and lept 20 feet in the air at the husk of a dead bug that lay, dried out and flat, in the bottom of one of the crates holding the gear. This was likely an Important Sign that should have been heeded at all costs.

I was happy to find that a good deal of the stuff I was certain had disappeared was waiting patiently for me. Not only that, but I had forgotten that my parents had given me a camping grill and an air mattress as gifts last year. So two less things I'd have to think about buying!

The mess kit was one of the casualties. The ancient metal (we're talking my parents bought this mess kit before I was born, people. And I was in high school in the days of turtlenecks with college sweatshirts and necklaces pulled out the top of the turtlenecks to dangle there precariously and for no good reason) had finally given up and started to corrode. So, I had to buy a mess kit.

Now, the Berkshires (that's where we're going, did I mention that?) may have been downgraded to "hills", but rest assured that they are as rocky and pockmarked as William H. Macy on a bad, hungover day. Sean's K-mart special "hiking boots" probably weren't going to cut it. So he'd have to find time to pick up some of those, too.

So, fine. We can deal with that. We can deal with having to buy a new air mattress inflator because I can't find my old one anywhere, even though I know very well that I carried it and my rollerblades for miles and miles and miles from the junkyard where my stolen-and-wrecked-by-the-asshat-who-stole-it care was waiting to be crushed up back to the nearest bus station, and then eventually back to my apartment. These are just glitches.

Then I went to pull out the tent and the fucking stakes were gone.

Fine, I can buy more stakes.

Till I realized the fucking poles were gone, too. Now, where in the fucketist fuck of all fucks could my tent poles possibly have gone? I mean, it's not like you're going to take them out and play javelin with them. They're not too handy for balancing while walking a tightrope. Really, they're not good for much more than HOLDING UP A FUCKING TENT.

Fine.

At this point, we have bought new hiking boots for Sean, a new mess kit, food, and whatever accessories we deemed were necessary during a trip to R.E.I. We have assembled the grill and cleaned up the camp stove. We have bought a new inflator and subsequently located the old inflator, right in the closet next to the Linux machine where it makes perfect sense for a camping accessory to be. So we're not about to cancel at this point.

R.E.I. saved the day by offering tent rental services. Yay for R.E.I.!

Now, the car is mostly packed with more worldly possessions than any human being could possibly need for 2 nights of camping fun. I packed at least 27 different combinations of outfit so I won't freeze/boil/drown. I am flopped on a kitchen chair, typing out a blog on Sean's Mac, Knife. (Get it?)

I am freaking beat. Beat. And I have yet to even see a freaking mountain.