My Camptown Lady

I have returned from a bout of camping. What wonder is camping! I haven't camped in quite some time, you must imagine, and this camping was fun, even though the rain was a party-crasher. Diantha and I joined a group at their campsite for one night. And believe me, one night is the perfect amount for me. Perhaps two in a pinch. She and I had great fun talking in tents and sitting in cars and freaking out every time the canoe tilted slightly in either direction. Shit, do you know how unnerving a capsizing canoe can be? Picture that, now imagine you're wearing all the clothes you brought and it's chilly out. Also picture a dog-nazi who will simply not stand for screwing around. I swear to God, this dog Jack, he was a dog-nazi. Dancing? THERE'S NO DANCING IN THE MOUNTAINS. Skipping? SKIPPING PROHIBITED. Laughter? SHOW NO EMOTION. This dog, he scared the hell out of me.

Dog-Nazi Jack belonged to a threesome of people, two lesbians and a gay man who so closely resembled Heath Ledger at first sight that I nearly swallowed myself. Have any of you ever seen Lords of Dogtown? If you have, just imagine Skip Engblom, and you will know my astonishment. This man's name was Derek. He took us out in the canoe, as I've mentioned before, but alas, it was not just a canoe ride! It was "toodling around in the canoe." I know, right? I wanted this man to live in my closet and help me decide what to wear. He'd probably be very eco-friendly as he showed me which shirt really went with which pair of pants. There were also children on this camping bout, children belonging to the various lesbians of the group. Dobbl put it marvelously when she said "we're going to Gay Camp, aren't we?" One of those children was named, and so help me God, I have no idea how to spell this, Fay-Dress. That wasn't how it was spelled, I'm sure. But it was along those phonetic lines. Phaedrus? Faydres? I think children with difficult names should be assigned name tags with their name and the pronunciation. "Gwysenna - je-SEH-nay" or so forth. At least then they wouldn't be so constantly frustrated when an innocent simply didn't understand that that combination of vowels creates a Y sound.

It was fun and great, until my FEMININE PARTS began to bleed in spurts of awful. You know no discomfort until you have awoken to a pantyful of Chuck Berry Red blood. I wasn't panicking, I knew it was supposed to hit this weekend. I just didn't think it'd drip so much. Dobbl was asleep or so next to me, and I didn't want to wake her to my pantyful of Chuck Berry Red blood, so I slyly tucked a fresh panty into one pocket and a FEMININE HYGIENE PRODUCT into the other, and off I went to the bathroom-hole. Now, I'm all for saving the environment, but Lord. Could we please eliminate these campsite bathrooms consisting of a toilet mask and a semi-deep hole in the ground filled with raw sewage? I'm sorry, but I don't get my kicks from seeing fellow women's shits. I find it pretty fun though, to throw a used tampon down there. Start offering a disposal box and I'll stop throwing them down.

Dobbl and I were spelunking the area when Dobbl's mom called out to us that there was a caterpillar in the tent, and we had slept with it. I was picturing like, a huge caterpillar. You know, like the kind with poisonous fur and crawling legs. But no. This was an inchworm. And he was adorable. We named him Slyvestre H. B'Jesus III and we put him into an emptied Fiji water bottle. He died about an hour after that.

Earlier in the morning, it had rained. Hard. And Dobbl's back had become wet when we stood with an umbrella over the sputtering fire to try and keep it going. So she decided to go sit in the rental car with the heater on, and I decided to accompany her. You could call us lazy. We prefer clever. You see, although technically we were "missing out on the camping experience," we were not missing out on our camping experience. The same experience we'll be experiencing when we've moved out of the house and are stuck on a Nevada highway in the monsoon rains. We figured out how to not only turn on the heater, but work it, and then how to work the windshield wipers. It's a step forward for me, because I wasn't entirely clear on how to start the car.