Hi, everyone - poking my head in. The summer is flying by and I don’t think I’ve said hey since May. For what it’s worth, I haven’t yet smothered the husband unit, though it’s been a near miss.
Mom is still somewhat stable - for now. She has run out of treatment options for her cancer and the tumor has begun growing again despite the radiation. We have another “big” appointment next week. We’ll see. It won’t be good. Luckily, my sister has been visiting a lot more, so we’ll all be there. I’m scared shitless.
On another note, overlygirl broke her ankle, then the next day because her boot made her unsteady, she broke a toe. Then she rebroke the same danged toe the following week when she tripped over her own feet. She’s fine now - toes and ankle all intact.
On yet another note I’ve got a story about camp (not mine). Sorry for the length - I have to live up to my name somehow. So, overlygirl and her friend begged to go to sleepaway camp. We (meaning me and her best friend’s mom) let them pick which one at the local Y. They chose a hiking camp. The other mom & I read through the literature and thought, “Sounds like summer camp,” so we signed them up.
Despite a lot of protests that camping equipment isn’t cool, I got overlygirl to bring a sleeping bag & pad with her, plus a lot of bug spray and sturdier clothing than she wanted just in case (even when you’re cabin camping, you usually plow through clothes like they’re going out of style). Turns out the literature had been…kind of vague. Vague enough that the girls had chosen the equivalent of a survival camp and us moms didn’t really catch it because literally all the other camps involved cabins. The girls thought they’d be on easy street.
Imagine, if you will, two 13 yo girls expecting bougie cabins and being informed they were sleeping on the ground for five nights, cooking their own food over a fire and learning deep woods survival skills. After the initial shock, they apparently had a ball - made a few tight friends, had some insane stories about racoons eating some kid’s hair and being known as the Valkyries of the local camp after pretending to complete a 10-mile hike. They got all the glory, while doing approximately zero of the work and went swimming and played cards instead with their counselors who didn’t feel like hiking 10 miles on the hottest day of the year.
I was super impressed they were able to make the most of the situation, but having my kid tell me, “We will talk about this in the car,” when I picked her up was not the way I expected pickup to go. But they’ve already told us they want to go back next year, for longer if possible.