Pertinent to my Interests

I took the kids to a local destination playground yesterday. We call it Chutes & Ladders but that’s not its real name.

I used to hate Chutes & Ladders. I lost my oldest there when he was maybe four years old, and he was missing long enough that I was considering calling the police. On another visit to this same playground a kind woman returned my youngest to me after she had found him stuck and crying in some corner of some structure.

It is a terrible playground for two little kids, but a great playground for big kids. My big kids ran off and I settled on a bench with my book.

Now that I no longer have to constantly supervise my children, I have more time to discreetly listen to the people around me.

Behind me a group of fashionable, young stay-at-home moms was chatting about how nice it was that there were no daycare or camp groups here today and how those big groups always ruin this playground. The way they discussed it made it clear that they did not think that children of working parents should be able to use nice playgrounds and that these playgrounds should be reserved in the summer for stay-at-home parents and their blessed progeny. It gave me pause because I’m certainly guilty of being deeply annoyed when I’ve pulled into the parking lot of the pool and seen the big yellow school bus full of kids in matching neon green shirts pull in right behind me.

When does annoyance cross the line into entitlement? I will have to think about this.

A mom with three smaller kids (6yo, 4yo, toddler) in tow arrived and took the bench next to me. She announced that everyone needed sunscreen before they could go play. This resulted in an immediate screaming tantrum from the 4yo who wanted to put the sunscreen on herself but was not allowed to.

“You have three seconds to stop screaming! Three seconds!” the mom kept yelling at her middle child while she applied sunscreen to the oldest and youngest.

The 4yo did not stop screaming, and the mom changed tactics.

“You’re going to get SPANKED if you don’t stop it right now!” she whisper-yelled at her daughter. “Do you want to get SPANKED in front of all these people?!”

This also did not work and the 4yo continued to scream.

“Okay, that’s it, you’re just going to have to sit in the car! Come on, we’re going to go sit in the car!” she shouted. “Darren!” she called to her oldest child. “You have to watch Carrie now because Lydia and I have to go sit in the car because she won’t stop screaming!”

Now, I overheard this entire thing and was very unconcerned right up until the mom announced she was putting the 6yo in charge of the toddler. Here?! At this massive playground?! This was when I started paying attention. Maybe I should try to keep an eye on this little toddler if the mom really was planning to sit in the car with the screaming 4yo.

It turns out there is a reason the 4yo kept wailing and screaming without regard for her mother’s reprimands: the mom followed up on exactly 0 of her threats. I think the 4yo even ended up avoiding sunscreen completely. Well played, 4yo, well played.

On the other side of me was a grandma who was there at the playground with her two very little granddaughters. This poor grandma was up and down and up and down the entire time. She clearly just wanted to sit. She seemed exhausted. I wondered if she was doing full-time childcare all summer long. Or all year long?

I used to run into grandparents doing full-time childcare all the time back when I was doing full-time childcare all the time myself. They always seemed very tired, and most of them didn’t seem like they were enjoying themselves very much. I wondered how many of them regretted volunteering for this gig but then couldn’t seem to find a way to back out of it once they were committed.

I am personally committed to never providing full-time childcare for anybody ever again. Fill-in childcare, because daycare is closed for two days? Sure. Weekend childcare because mom and dad need a goddamn break? Yes, absolutely. Full-time? Never. Absolutely not. I have been there, I have done that, and now I read books in the shade at Chutes & Ladders and listen to other people’s conversations.

“Ugh, Mom, can we go soon?” my oldest said, interrupting my thoughts. “Some camp group just got here and it’s too crowded now.” I looked up and saw a sea of neon pink shirts flowing into all corners of the playground.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said.

I spent last week at the cabin slathering myself and my kids in sunscreen as if it was my job (it actually is). This time of year, I seem to read an article every week in which I am reminded that “there is no safe amount of sun exposure.” It is not, they tell me, even safe to slowly get a tan, and every time you burn your chance of getting skin cancer ticks up a notch. So I have dutifully purchased fresh sunscreen, long sleeve rash guards, and hats. I gave myself a pep talk re: sun protection protocols way back in June. This year will be different! This year we will do better!

Instead, we’ve all returned home with beautiful tans that would have made many teenage girls envious back in 1993. I am frustrated, feeling like I’ve done all that I possibly can to avoid sun exposure and still it’s not enough.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to try to protect my own forty-year-old skin at this late stage in the game. I’ve already got some serious sun damage: brown spots on my forehead that never go away, a permanent farmer’s tan of pink freckles on my arms. I’m sure there’s some bullshit happening on the back of my shoulders that I can’t quite see.

Strategizing about ways to avoid sun exposure in the future got me thinking about my sun exposure in the past, and how I got here.

I grew up in a very sunny part of the world. We lived maybe a mile and a half from a gorgeous lake filled with clear blue glacier water. My mom would take us swimming almost every afternoon in the summer. We did have sunscreen and I do remember using it from time to time, but it was the 90s and we mostly swam in the late afternoons and didn’t need it. I don’t remember burning a lot as a kid, but I do remember getting very, very tan every summer. I look ridiculous in some of my childhood pictures with my dark brown skin and bright blonde sun-bleached hair.

We spent a lot of time in the sun with our dad as well. Dad owned a boat, Dad loved his boat, and we all spent a lot of time on that boat. With the sun bright above us and the water reflecting from below it was a good thing we already had those base tans! And if we weren’t on the boat, we were probably camping at one of the lakeside campgrounds, eating pop-tarts in the morning sun, swimming in the mid-day sun, jumping from rock to rock on the shoreline in the afternoon sun. I recall my father putting 90 SPF sunscreen on his own nose once or twice. I do not recall him ever putting sunscreen on us, but I think he must have from time to time.

One week of the summer we would always be away from the lake at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. It was a little less sunny there, but we made up for it by spending almost the entire day outside biking up and down their long gravel driveway or pretending to be varmints in the field. I don’t believe my grandparents even owned sunscreen. They certainly never put any on us.

Childhood summers gave way to college summers, and I spent three of those college summers in Greece working on an archaeological dig. We all used sunscreen and hats, but we also all burned at least once per season (I think it was impossible not to). I swam in the Mediterranean every afternoon with the sun shining on my back. I hiked up Acrocorinth with the sun beating down on my arms, and I touched the massive column blocks of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia with the sun beating down on my hands.

Not too many years later my husband and I took an epic honeymoon trip through the national parks of the West. We climbed five miles up to Grinnell Glacier on a beautiful sunny day and stood at the edge of the eerie blue glacier water with September UV rays reflecting right back up into our faces. We drove through Arches National Park with the sun screaming down on us through the windshield. We stopped at a small cheese factory in California and sat in the parking lot eating fresh cheese while the sun beat down on us.

When I examine my sun damage in the mirror and start to consider everything that has led to it, I get angry. Not angry at myself for not being better about sun protection (although I certainly could have been better), but angry at the dermatologists of the world who continue to insist that “there is no safe level of sun exposure.”

Sun exposure is the small thread that binds together this patchwork of active, outdoors-based memories that make up my childhood and my young adult years. My life would have been very different if I had spent the first forty years of it trying to avoid the sun. I would have missed out on a lot of memories with my grandparents, siblings, parents, friends, husband, and now my children.

“There is no safe level of sun exposure” just doesn’t work for me. I want a more reasonable statement from the American Academy of Dermatology. “Try to avoid sun exposure as much as you can without interfering with your outdoor activities” would be a good start. I would like “It’s actually okay to get a little bit tan if it happens accidentally, just really try to not burn” even more.

I think these more reasonable statements would be helpful not just for me, but for other parents who are trying their best and still coming up short. It might be good for the dad who wants to take his kids camping but is overwhelmed by the prospect of reapplying sunscreen to his hyperactive toddler sixteen times. They might be helpful for the mom who wants to let the tweens go to the pool but just can’t stand having to fight over the long sleeve rash guard again.

I don’t think the recommendations are going to change the way I want them to, so I have had to make some personal decisions about what I am and am not willing to do to protect us from the sun.

I am not willing to keep my kids inside at the cabin, even during the hottest/brightest part of the day. I am not willing to stand in the shade much at all. I’m not going to limit my swimming time, or their tubing time. I’m not going to mow the lawn at 6 AM.

I am willing to wear sunscreen every time we go outside, and to reapply every two hours (or so). Sometimes we will wear long sleeve rash guards and sometimes we will wear hats. But sometimes we won’t, and I will still sit at the end of the dock with my feet in the water, a book in one hand, and a beer in the other, and the sun beating down on my back.

If you are willing and able to do better at this than me, then good for you. Your skin is going to look great, and you probably won’t get skin cancer and I am envious of both of those things while also fully admitting that I was unwilling to put in the effort for the same reward.

“Her skin was such a wreck,” my gravestone will read. “And she had so much skin cancer, but she didn’t regret standing in the sunny huckleberry field for hours with her grandmother. Also she really liked cheese and beer so that’s three health strikes against her and probably how she ended up here if we’re being honest about the whole situation.”

I just hope my kids will forgive me for all the sun damage that will pepper their foreheads someday, and all the great memories that came with it.

We’re spending the week at our cabin in Wisconsin, our annual tradition. I’m pretty sure every other cabin owner in northwest Wisconsin does the same, at least judging from the number of watercraft on the lake and people in line at the local grocery store.

This is our fourth summer owning this place. I remember it feeling very overwhelming at first. I struggled to understand what sort of yardwork needed to be done. I didn’t have any strategies in place for cleaning or hosting. I’ve since developed some tips and tricks; I should do a real blog post on this someday. But so far my top cabin-owning/hosting tips are:

1. Buy a rainbow of bath towels so that everyone can have a different color. And put hooks in all the bedrooms so that people can squirrel away their towels.
2. Buy tons of hand towels. You will want to change out the bathroom hand towel at least once a day when there are guests.
3. Even if you are a minimalist like me, you must have an extra set of sheets for every bed.
4. Buy the kid sleeping bags with built-in pillows; fewer things to keep track of!
5. Pick two kinds of beer and only keep those on hand. Guests can bring up other stuff if they want it, but if you expand your own beer purchases beyond just two kinds the refrigerator will quickly become a disaster.
6. Sandwiches for lunch; burgers for dinner. This allows the lettuce, onion, and tomato to be sliced up in the morning and used for multiple meals in a row!

This list ended up being longer than I expected. Maybe I do know what I’m doing.

I have been busy this week mostly with mowing and yardwork. I had to break up the mowing into a two-day project because there was so much to do. I cleared some raspberries (terrible job!) and I’ve been spending the afternoons de-mucking and weeding our beach area. I did not expect to be spending my 40s carefully collecting muck from a lake with my bare hands but here we are.

I have not seen my beaver friend, but I did see the water snake and he is disturbingly large and I am really still not okay with swimming snakes.

I am also very pleased with the fact that our cabin has an upstairs living area and a downstairs living area. We’ve brought the kids’ favorite cousin up with us for the week and they are all having a great time. It’s nice that they can take over the basement but I can still read on the couch upstairs undisturbed by their boisterous wrestling and even-more-boisterous farting.

And I’m not big into journaling. It takes special skill to record events and activities in a compelling way and I lack that skill. Nevertheless, if this blog is meant to record memories for my children I think I owe it to them to try to write about this vacation as thoroughly as I can stand to.

I think vacation details are one of the more tiresome conversation topics in existence. Even my four most-devoted readers may wish to skip this entry.

Friday

We landed in Seattle at 9 AM and had to wait in a massively long line for the shuttle bus to the car rental place. Found out later that this Friday was the biggest air travel day in the history of the United States.

My entire living nuclear family met at my sister’s house. We hit two playgrounds, a seafood restaurant, and an ice cream shop that makes their ice cream right in front of you with liquid nitrogen. My nuclear family was still on central time and we all passed out in our hotel early.

Saturday

We drove to Crescent City: two cars, four adults, two kids. We switched around people at every stop, and that helped a lot to make the drive feel faster. Lunch was at In N Out in Roseburg, Oregon.

We drove through the redwoods on the way to our AirBnB and both children were amazed at the giant trees. Those forests really feel like stepping backward in time! We passed a redwood that was growing so close to the highway they had cut a big notch in it for cars!

Our AirBnB was separated from the ocean by a quiet two-lane highway, so as soon as we had dropped our bags we had to go down to the beach with the kids. They were stunned by the enormity, the salt, and the waves. My oldest was especially so excited. He found a rock with a cup-like hole formed in it. He dubbed it “the shot rock” and brought it home.

Sunday

My sister started the day by taking a shot of rum out of the shot rock. It was a special moment.

Some of us went to explore the beach that morning before we headed into to Stout Grove in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. I had worried we would not be able to find a banana slug during our time in the redwoods, but this turned out to be a very stupid thing to worry about. There were banana slugs everywhere!

The kids climbed and ran all over the fallen trees. They loved it. I remember doing the same as a child. I think the kids could have stayed in Stout Grove all day.

Some of us returned to the beach that afternoon to explore tide pools and look for good rocks. My oldest and I stayed later than everyone else to build a small sandcastle and dig a small hole with the crappy plastic shovels we borrowed from the AirBnB.

This was Father’s Day, and my sister has a tradition of going to the casino on Father’s Day in memory of our deceased dad. So my sister and husband and I drove out to the casino for a few hours that evening. Everyone walked out with thinner wallets.

Then we drove north to Oregon to have dinner at Zola’s, which was fantastic but maybe not worth the extra hour in the car.

Monday

We had family photos planned for this morning, and I was dreading them. I hate family photos, and was annoyed to spend precious vacation time on such a terrible project. But the photographer ended up being great, and she even spent extra time taking us to a hollowed-out cave of a redwood tree which we would never have noticed without her direction.

We had promised my oldest that he could have this entire afternoon as a beach day, and we kept that promise. He was out on the beach for eight hours in total that day, digging and building and digging and building and waiting for the tide to come in to destroy his efforts. The adults engaged in some healthy alcohol consumption between shifts of assisting his work. It is possible that this was the best afternoon of his life.

Tuesday

This was my mom’s birthday, and we had acquired a permit to hike the Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

Fern Canyon was a gorgeous traipse through a crystal-clear creek surrounded by sheer cliffs bursting with ferns. It was one of those hikes that you can’t do anywhere else and was well worth the 2+ hours of driving.

My mom’s birthday dinner that night was at SeaQuake Brewing. Her two college friends, who are local to Crescent City, joined us and it was a good time. Afterward they brought us to the Northcoast Marine Mammal Center to see the recuperating seals and sea lions relaxing in their outdoor pens.

Wednesday

My youngest son and my sister both had bubblegum ice cream on this day.

My mom’s college friends live in Crescent City because their daughter lives just outside Crescent City. We went to visit her family on Wednesday.

The first thing you should know is that my oldest loves bunnies. He’s always wanted a pet rabbit and although I am a sucker for bunnies too I have so far refused his requests. This family had a lovely pet bunny (Baby) which my oldest got to hold multiple times during our visit. I got to hold a chicken, which is something I have somehow never done!

This place was a child’s paradise. They had an archery setup, a small treehouse, a swingset, a swing made from a buoy, a ninja slackline, a dog, a bunny, eleven chickens, and a kitten.

And they had a gorgeous river right behind their house. We spent the afternoon swimming in the cold, crystal-clear waters. My sister found serpentine on the riverbank. My kids tried a stand-up paddleboard for the first time.

It was the kind of place that makes you wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere else in the world.

Thursday

We did Trees of Mystery on Thursday morning. It’s a massive tourist trap right on the 101: great fun. They have a canopy trail, which is just a non-nerdy word for an Ewok village trail. They have a gondola that takes you to the top of a hill. They have a massive gift shop and fudge and I am of the age now where I am interested in fudge.

My youngest so desperately wanted to do the canopy trail but he was also so frightened of it that he never did manage it despite three separate tries. I am proud of him for trying. Twice he got out about 15-20 feet on the first bridge and had to turn around weeping. We told him it was okay and we could come back someday for him to try again when he’s older.

We drove my mom’s Subaru through the Tour-Through Tree in Klamath. I can’t bring my kids all the way to the redwoods and not drive through a tree, right?!

We had sushi for lunch, and then a long afternoon on the beach again, this time with a nice campfire to celebrate the summer solstice. We drank beer and wine and gin & tonic, and ate Little Caesar’s pizza and my sister and the kids dug another giant hole and the ocean filled it back in.

Friday

This was our last full day in Crescent City. We had borrowed boogie boards from my mother’s friends and had been waiting all week for the weather to warm up but it never did.

My sister, husband, and the kids rented wetsuits and went boogie boarding at the local swimming beach. The waves were not really fit for boogie boarding that day, but everyone had a blast and they all stayed in the freezing cold water for several hours.

That evening I sorted through the small collection of rocks I had picked up on the shoreline that week. Ten were coming home with me, but about thirty would stay here for future rockhounds. I walked them back to the ocean, tossing them one by one into the wet sand and then waited for a wave to wash over them and reclaim them.

We all packed up.

Saturday

We left early, driving back the way we came. We stopped at In N Out again (apparently In N Out is famous even among the elementary school set?). Our cars and families parted ways at the French Prairie Rest Area, and my little nuclear family continued on to Portland, Oregon.

Our first stop was to visit old law school friends whom we have not seen in nearly a decade. These are some of my favorite people from our New York City years, and I have many fond memories of drinking too much at their apartment in Astoria and babysitting their cat at our apartment in Woodside. They are still both interesting and lovely and it was somehow reassuring to see them and remember that they still exist in this world! The older kids even got along great and did weird kid stuff in the basement while the adults visited on the main floor (the dream!).

After checking into our hotel, we hit Powell’s Books in Portland. We found a conveyor belt sushi place, and then we went to Voodoo Donuts to get a pink box of delights for dessert.

Sunday

This was a flying day. I enjoyed some Alaska Airlines themed beer on my flight. The kids complained about the Internet on the plane. We got home to some much-missed kitties who actually seemed a little disappointed that we weren’t the cat-sitter. We unpacked. I started laundry. I mourned the end of the 65 degree weather we had been experiencing, and packed away my jeans in preparation for the hot, humid Midwest summer.

“I have to keep reminding myself this isn’t a once in a lifetime thing,” my oldest had told me on our first day in Crescent City as he stared in awe at the ocean having just returned from climbing around a forest full of 2,000-year-old trees.

It was truly an epic vacation and worth the two days of travel on both ends. If you ever get a chance to plan a trip to Crescent City, California, you should take it! And take my oldest kid with you!

We have returned from our trip to Crescent City, California, and after a week of living my life by the tide tables I’m back to concerning myself with the patterns of the pedestrian walk signals in my city instead.

Navigating my urban neighborhood is a completely different skillset than driving on a cliffside road and scrambling over tide pools!

We have reached that stage of summer in Minnesota where I stand at the top of the stairs, shirtless, right in front of the air conditioner when I’m braiding my hair after a shower. So much sweat. I don’t think I’ll ever fully adjust to living in a humid climate.

It feels like the first real week of summer break. The kids are home. All the time. They’re just… here. And they don’t leave unless I bring them somewhere. It’s taking some adjustment on my part; I no longer feel (f)unemployed.

I’m trying to get us eating more produce. I’ve done an excellent job during my mothering years of serving a vegetable with almost every dinner and most lunches, but they rarely get eaten. I’m trying to be okay with making cooking mistakes and wasting money on new vegetables nobody eats. I grilled eggplant the other night and it was delicious. I bought beets that only I will eat. We will see how long this experiment lasts.

This week also marked my triumphant return to the gym after three weeks away. Well, more like my grudging return to the gym. But I’m watching Wednesday and enjoying it.

I also returned to my Japanese study on Duolingo. I had to quit Duolingo during vacation because I started a new unit while we were in California and they wanted me to learn all these new words and it was just too much for me to handle at the time. But wow Duolingo really puts on the guilt trip when you fuck up your streak! I’m back now to my usual routine of one regular lesson and one kana lesson per day.

And I managed to put off my book club book until the very last minute; I just started reading it last night! I never pulled shit like this in college.

I also got started on my summer volunteer project. Remember how I really love to tromp through cemeteries? I thought I should turn my weird hobby into a volunteer project and I’m now fulfilling photo requests on FindAGrave.com while I tromp. My kids are not excited.

We are packing for a big trip and I am feeling some angst about the whole thing.

I’m not a good traveler. I don’t like doing new things or meeting new people, and I definitely don’t enjoy the uncertainties inherent in the act of traveling.

I like to be home. Home is reliable. Home is comfortable and safe.

It occurred to me recently that this desire to be home may be the root of my impatience. Maybe I hate waiting in line at Starbucks because it just prevents me from getting home sooner. The slow cashier at the grocery store is cruelly delaying my reunion with my cats and my piano. The waitress who takes forever to get us our check is diminishing my evening reading time.

I begin anticipating my return to my house pretty much as soon as I depart, and I’m starting to think this is maybe less cute quirk and more… clinical diagnosis?

I also had an insight recently about my travel style and how it differs from my husband’s travel style.

When I am flying I want to get to the airport as early as possible. I plan my airport arrival time based on the assumption that things are going to go horribly wrong. The Uber driver won’t show up. Construction will prevent us from taking the shortest route to the airport. The bag drop line will be a mile long. The precheck line at security will be two miles long. This is why we aim to get there two hours early!

My husband plans his travel based on the assumption that everything will go smoothly. The Uber driver will zoom down the highway at record (but safe!) speed. Bag check will take five minutes, security will take three. With this sort of math we really only have to arrive at the airport maybe forty-five minutes before our flight departs.

So here we are, a pessimist and an optimist trying to travel together with two kids. And what if we have to get Starbucks?!

We went camping this weekend for the first time in almost four years.

Well, we went camper cabin camping. This is significantly easier than tent camping, in my opinion, but I do believe it still counts as camping.

I felt like a camping noob, even during the packing process. How many bottles of propane do we really need? What about the clothesline, can that stay behind? And we made some beginner mistakes too like leaving the chairs out overnight and therefore having wet chairs in the morning. (To be fair, the forecast said no rain, but experienced campers know that everything gets packed up under the picnic table every night.)

I brought a coffee maker, and my husband rolled his eyes but sure seemed to appreciate the fresh, easy coffee every morning. I made an effort to make decent breakfasts on the camp stove, and they actually turned out pretty well and were worth the extra dishes.

The kids found a hidden fort area near our site but out of sight, and spent a great deal of time just hanging out down there. I remember doing the same thing as a kid, exploring the forest and finding secret spaces.

All of our children are old enough to walk to the outhouse by themselves, even in the dark, and that was a major improvement to our camping experience.

We ate Pop-Tarts, the best camping snack.

My oldest fell out of a tree. He thought–for a moment–that he was going to die. Another tree broke his fall, scratching the crap out of him on his way down to the ground. If that second tree hadn’t stepped in this would probably have been an emergency room situation, so I am very grateful to that other tree and grateful that he came out with only a ton of gnarly, superficial scratches. He did appear to be in a little bit of shock when he climbed back up the hill to find us. I made him sit down and drink some cold water while we cleaned up his scratches.

The bugs weren’t great, but they weren’t as bad as I expected. I dislike the permanently dirty feeling of camping, but washing my face in cold water from the bucket every morning really helped.

Camping made me really nostalgic. As I lay awake the first night (sleep is a struggle for me all the time, but especially in new places) I entertained myself by reviewing all my camping memories. There are so many! Camping–in many forms–was a very formative experience for me. Scrubbing dishes in cold water on the ground and attempting to cook over a fire and playing card games at the picnic table reminded me of my parents and my grandparents, a long line of camping enthusiasts.

And we only needed one bottle of propane but I’m glad I brought the extra just in case!

I have been battling acne for more than twenty-five years, and I only recently discovered something that really works: Lush’s Cosmetic Warrior face mask.

I have to give my sister credit for this find. She has the same skin as me but is more adventurous about cosmetic products. I was amazed the first time I tried Cosmetic Warrior. Just one fifteen-minute session per week and my acne was cleared up!

But.

Cosmetic Warrior is one of Lush’s “fresh” face masks. It has to be made fresh, kept in the fridge, and it expires quickly. I cannot order it online, and it was often inexplicably sold out in stores.

My sister may be adventurous and that is to her advantage, but I am very committed to never leaving my house and that is also to my advantage. I decided to experiment with my own recipe for Cosmetic Warrior, and after months of interesting results I think I’ve just about perfected it.

Casey’s Cosmetic Warrior Face Mask Copycat
1 egg white
2 tsps honey
2 tsps garlic paste
1 tbsp vegetable glycerin
2 tbsp Fullers Earth Powder
20 drops tea tree oil

Whisk all the ingredients together, place in a sealed container in the fridge for at least a few hours before applying. Apply to your face twice a week for fifteen minutes each time. This recipe makes at least four applications.

Not only does this recipe allow me to skip the mall, it’s significantly cheaper to make it yourself at home!

This was a very niche post, but I hope it helps someone out there on the Internet who has bad skin but doesn’t have great access to a Lush.

We are going camping this weekend for the first time in almost four years.

This is what happens when you buy a cabin. The cabin is all the good things about camping (catching frogs! morning campfire! drinking beer outside all afternoon!) and none of the bad things about camping (dealing with coolers for days! never feeling clean! having to go outside to pee!). But the kids miss camping and have been begging to go camping again so we are going with friends this weekend.

I am not excited.

I grew up camping, and will probably write an exhaustive post about that someday. We used to take the kids camping at least once every summer, even when they were babies. I do not recommend this. For me at least the combination stress of dealing with toddlers around the fire all day combined with the frustration of trying to get my baby and two-year-old to sleep in the tent while the sun was still up was not worth it. If could go back and do it again I would wait until they were older.

In the summer of 2020 the pandemic was in full swing. My kids were five and seven years old. I spent this entire summer fretting about whether or not schools were going to open in the fall (spoiler alert: ours didn’t). This was also the summer that none of the public pools opened in our area, most summer camps and programs were closed, and for a while we weren’t even supposed to use the public playgrounds.

I think we hit every nature center and every hiking trail within an hour radius of the city that year. There was literally nothing else we could do.

I decided we should go camping a couple times that summer, but when I went to book campsites I realized that everyone else in the area had the same idea. Every weekend, every site was booked. I was irrationally annoyed. Who were all these new campers who thought they could take up space in a campground on the weekend? I had been camping my entire life, and every year since becoming a parent! I had a right to those spots!

I did not have a right to those spots, but that didn’t stop me from grumbling about it.

When I looked more closely, I realized there were a good number of spots available mid-week, particularly Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But… my husband wouldn’t be able to come on those days. I looked at my kids who were currently in the backyard having a swordfight with sticks. One of them was in his underwear and the other was wearing a banana costume. Could I handle these two kids camping by myself?

I decided it was worth a shot as long as the banana costume stayed home. I booked some mid-week trips.

That’s how we ended up spending one night each that summer in William O’Brien State Park, Moose Lake State Park, and Jay Cooke State Park.

It turns out that a one-night camping trip is just about right from the packing perspective. I brought a change of clothes for everyone, but mostly we just stayed dirty for the full 24 hours. I only had to plan one dinner, and I went back to the basics on that: hot dogs roasted on sticks accompanied by a can of beans warmed directly on the fire. Pop-tarts for breakfast.

This was back when my youngest was in his Yoshi phase, so a rainbow of Yoshis often accompanied us on these trips. The Yoshis would perch on the picnic table and judge me while I drank cold instant coffee in the morning. I let the kids do all sorts of weird stuff with the fire and the food. We almost ended up sleeping in the car one night due to thunderstorms. We hiked to an old cemetery at one park and there was an eeriness to the air that made me uneasy. I ushered the kids out of there as fast I could trying to hide the fact that I was a little freaked out.

And it was in one of these state parks that I realized my youngest had somehow learned to read when he started reading out loud from a wayfinding sign on one of our hikes.

“Hey! Are you able to read that?” I asked him, surprised.

“No, I can’t read,” he insisted. “I just know what it says.”

In the past we had almost always gone camping with another family; this was very fun, and we made a lot of good memories that way. I did miss having my husband on these trips. but in some ways it felt much easier to be the only adult. It felt like the kids’ camping trip and I was just along for the ride. We did what they wanted to do, ate when they wanted to eat, stopped to check out all the rotten stumps that they wanted to investigate on the hike. There was no schedule, no pressure.

It was actually kind of great.

Those were the last times we went camping because we bought our cabin in May of the next year. I know the kids miss camping because they have told me so many times since then. I suppose it’s a good thing we’re going again this weekend, even if it means I need to inventory the cabin supply bins and figure out meals and find all the sleeping bags. In fact, now that I’ve gone on this walk through my memories, I am feeling much more positive about the coming weekend, and might even let the kids bring the banana costume this time.

1. A tired-looking woman reading The Family Guide to Getting Over OCD: Reclaim Your Life and Help Your Loved One.
2. A harried mother yelling at her preschooler “Hurry up! We have to go straight to hockey now! No, put that book down, we don’t have time for that! Hocky starts in fifteen minutes!” Lady, what wrong turns have you taken in your life to end up in this predicament at 7:45 PM on a Thursday night?
3. A child weeping loudly in the changing rooms and repeatedly declaring that “everyone is making me sad! everyone is making me sad today!”
4. Me, wearing my Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers t-shirt and my Beauty and the Beast Loungefly purse, reading Bob Iger’s memoir like the ridiculous Disney Adult that I am.