If You Are Cold...It's Because Hell Froze Over

And why did hell freeze over this weekend you ask? Because I went camping. Yep, you read that correctly. Camping - in a tent, for more than one night, where I had to use an outhouse, and the rocknroll princess slept on an air mattress.
For anyone still reading that hasn't collapsed into absolute shock, this will put you there - I actually had fun.
I pulled together a babysitter and two dog sitters to take care of my entourage from Saturday through Monday. I got lots of advice as to how to make it through the weekend... "if you really aren't having fun, just remember it's time without kids and dogs" and "just relax and go with things" but I think the best was "just drink the whole time and the dirt and bugs won't bother you."

Cowboy and I left on Saturday afternoon and drove up to where his friends had spots at a campground. I took that last piece of advice to heart and started drinking as soon as the tent was set up. I will say that the rest of the gang has campers and motor homes, which makes it a lot nicer even in a tent because you can go into their campers and motor homes.
Sunday morning was HELL! Thank god for coffee, bacon, and Aleve. The other piece of camping equipment the rest of the gang has is they all own jet boats. We all put in to the river early afternoon (I think there was about 10 people), went for a few runs, floated around, and just had a fun time.

Now M's dad is a big outdoors guy, and put a lot of pressure on me to go camping with him when we were together. I tried early on a couple times and simply put, it amounted to several miserable experiences. I never got enough enjoyment out of it to warrant the effort I had to put into it so I just stopped going. I realize now there are two reasons I hated camping with M's dad. First, the reason I was already aware of is that there was no compromise on his part to do something I wanted to do. Second, the reason I realized only this weekend, was that it was because we didn't have any toys. I don't know how to swim so I need a life jacket any time I go in the water thus swimming is eliminated as an activity. We never owned a boat, or quads, or sea doo's, so I really had nothing to do when M's dad took us. Looking for deer just doesn't fulfill my weekend recreational needs.

After a Sunday on the water, I sunburned my thighs and have a bruise from my knee to my ankle from slipping trying to get into the boat. I'm pretty proud of the fact I didn't sunburn my pasty glow-in-the-dark skin but I still don't understand how in the hell I sunburned the tops of my thighs and not my shoulders or my chest.

If this camping thing is going to occur on a regular basis, I have to convince cowboy that he needs a camper (and a jet boat).