I'm including some pictures of the aforementioned scorpion today. One is close up but I've included the picture of Mr. Genius to provide some perspective to the scorpion's size. CLEARLY, one swift step would have taken care of Mr. Scorpion quite soundly.
I forgot to include the story about Daddy Doc's keychain black light. Some of you may know of his gadgets. He has collected a number of interesting pocket sized gadgets, his Laser Beam is probably his most famous, but that's "another post." At some point he found a pocket sized black light at a car supply store. And between various scavenger hunt related activities, reading maps at night (yes, he has reason to do this,) and so forth, he figured he'd use it. Well when someone asked if anyone had a black light, I don't think any of us expected anyone to actually have one at the campsite. But DD did! And when he came to see the scorpion, he pulled it out and let the boys see the scorpion glow in the dark. We turned down the lanterns to intensify the experience. The boys were suitably impressed.
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Saturday morning we woke up bright and early. I had a pretty decent night's sleep, I guess, but I did wake up quite a few times. The worst was when the coyotes got all hot and bothered. It was about 3 am and the theory in camp was that they had caught a rabbit. The racket was pretty intense with several coyotes howling together and then taking turns howling. I woke up enough that I had to work at getting back to sleep. I wasn't worried because I could tell they were a good distance away from our campsite - it was just annoying.
So we chowed on our (not-pancakes) cereal and our french pressed coffee. While I gathered breakfast, I forced DD to drive to the showers. He had never gotten a shower on Friday and I just don't do two-day old DD, even when we're camping. Blech.
After breakfast DD and some other leaders set up the Space Derby.
The Space Derby is my absolute least favorite Cub Scout "Derby". It's a royal pain in the tush if you ask me. The idea is that the boys sand down pre-cut block of soft wood into the shape of a rocket. The kit includes a propeller and big fat rubber bands. Once decorated with paint and assembled, these rockets are hung on fishing line strung between two sawhorses. The boys (and their fathers) twist up the rubber bands before the rockets are hung and at the exact time, the rubber bands are released to, hopefully, propel the rockets down the fishing line.
Oh, and the dads use KY Jelly to lube up. The rockets. Well, no, wait. They lube up the rubber bands in the rockets. (Technically, the dad who brought it bought the Target brand. He said to us "Don't read the label, just pass me my tube, please." Then all the other parents shared it. I think I better stop now.)
The thing is that twisting those rubber bands is a pain in the rear. One person holds the rubber band thingie and the other turns the propeller. 150 to 200 times. (Although we did have special twisters that were designed to twist 5 times per one rotation, but those presented other issues to deal with.)
Then once they were all set up, some rockets just don't... go.
THEN you have to sit there and watch. Race.After.Race.
Are you yawning yet?
I have to confess it just doesn't grab me. Pinewood Derbies are fun. Sometimes they get a little long but they're fun. Space Derby just gets tedious.
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Afterwards we ate lunch (sandwiches and chips) and moved on with our day. I had brought the lunch of champions: PB&J. Everyone LOVES PB&J. My older two have never been fans of hot dogs, but CS is my little buddy and not only does he love hot dogs, he digs the sauerkraut when I get it at Costco, too! So when another family had hot dogs, he started crying "I WANT A HOT DOG." Gotta love the scout families. "PerkyMommy, I have enough for CS if you don't mind..." So CS got a hot dog and we shared our chips with the family...
Now, I can go 24-36 hours without a shower. I can't really do a lot more than that. DD had promised me a shower. So the boys got dressed in their swim trunks and rash guards (thank you swanie for the tip on how to find them on sale,) and we drove out to the park "pool". DD and the boys hopped out and I drove back to the regular campsites to find... the Shower.
I know you are going to find the next part of this story almost difficult to believe. Some of you might find it difficult to read...
I went by the camp store to see if they sold flip-flops. I'd forgotten mine at home and one of the wonderful tips I learned from my husband's family is/was: have a pair of shower shoes for camp ground showers. Camp store had no flip-flops. Ok. I can survive this.
I found the showers. They were women only but really did lack privacy. There were two showers, one was being used. So I undressed and got out my soap and shampoo only to discover that the second shower would not turn on. I apologized to the woman in the first shower, wrapped myself in my towel and sat on the bench, telling her to take her time and not to mind me watching her shower. We shared a laugh. She had developed a migraine and was just trying to enjoy her time away from her family. Usually she doesn't shower on short campouts but she was trying to fight off the migraine. She finished and I got into the shower.
Here's the part you won't believe.
One month earlier, I was at the Fairmont Scottsdale. I was sitting under glorious waterfalls at the Willow Tree Spa, while the warm water cascaded down over my head. I was sitting in a eucalyptus infused steam room. That experience was heavenly.
I can tell you that standing in that not-warm shower with no shower flip-flops and no privacy while the other lady got dressed, I just lived in the moment. The water wasn't cold, it just wasn't warm. It was nice and strong. I washed my hair. I used my mango body wash to clean up. And I was for the most part finished in well under 5 minutes. But I was serene. I was nearly as serene as I had been under that waterfall. The serenity didn't quite last as long as the Fairmont Scottsdale serenity lasted... but the moment was there.
When I finished, I came out to get dressed. It was a typical camp shower. The floor was wet and gross. I had to balance to wipe off my foot, put on a sock and get it crammed into my gross dusty sneakers before my foot touched the wet cement floor. At some point one of my clean socks fell on the floor so I had to pull out one of my "old" socks and put it back on. But my hair was clean and wet and cool and I had a shower.
I drove back to our campsite because DD hadn't grabbed any chairs for the pool. I got our little "loveseat" model, threw it in the car, and headed back to the pool. We sat with some other parents for a bit under the shade while the boys played. There were frogs in the pool filters. MG held one of the frogs another boy had caught and Captain Stubborn giggled and touched the frog.
Our day progressed with various activities with the boys, I won't bore you with those details. In the late afternoon, DD and another dad were setting up a Ham radio rig that would serve as part of the evening program. Within a short time, they had made several HF connections from around the country and by dinner, the dad had contacted the South Cook Islands and Australia!
At some point, CS was crying. Please don't think I'm a bad mother, but it takes more than CS crying to get me too concerned. He cries rather regularly. I made a comment along the lines of "unless there's blood, and I don't see blood, I'm not worried." Shortly thereafter another child called out "HE'S BLEEDING!" Oops, spoke too soon.
One of the moms I was with at the time just so happens to be an RN. I quickly looked at her and said "Help. I'll go get a squirt bottle, Kevin has a first aid kit." It was a head wound and head wounds bleed bad. Another mom who I know quite well volunteered to get a towel. We had squirt bottles of water for keeping cool. DD did find his first aid kit. When we were back together again, I started to pull out the bactine soaked wipes. The nurse wiped the wound. I found the little packets of antibiotic ointment. The nurse pointed out the supply of cotton swabs in the kit and asked for one to apply the ointment. We couldn't find the right band-aid and a couple other dads went to check their first aid kits. It was really sweet how everyone was willing to help. Meanwhile, I'd squirted the towel to wipe CS's dirty (and bloody) face. We found a square band-aid in our kit and used that one. As a side-note, three hours later, some kids called me over to say that his head was bleeding again, coming out from under the band-aid. One of the parents is an MD, and he took a look at it but didn't think that it needed a stitch, so the nurse cleaned it and used more ointment on it. This time we found a butterfly band-aid and made it even more secure with two long band-aids over it.
Here's my commercial pause: Le Tarjay sells the First Aid Kit we use for $10. It's in a blue zippered bag. DaddyDoc is in love with this kit. It is incredibly well stocked for the price. In fact, he's commented to me that he doesn't know how they can sell it for only $10. If you do not have a first-aid kit that you regularly travel with, I highly recommend picking up this kit and keeping it in your car. Yes, we have kids, but I think Daddy Doc and I have used it a few times for ourselves, too. It's a very good thing.
For dinner I made spaghetti and meatballs. Another dad and son had barbecued burgers and let me use their coals to warm my garlic bread. Last year I didn't have garlic bread and I needed garlic bread. I had a sourdough loaf, margarine and garlic, wrapped it in heavy duty foil and just kept turning it on the bbq. The spaghetti was, uhm, well, past its prime. Nevermind how I knew it. It was past its prime. But it was the only spaghetti we had. So I, uhm, carefully selected which spaghettis I was using, and trashed the rest. I really haven't had an issue with, uhm, old, uhm, wheat products that, uh, have been obviously on the shelf of my pantry for too long. I don't even keep my flour in the refrigerator anymore. But apparently I might need to go back to doing that. Or at least I need to go through my pasta. The water was boiling, no one died. So there you go.
After dinner, being the Head Honcho, DD had to move on to the evening program.
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About two years ago, maybe even more, we knew were destined for DD to become the Cubmaster of our Pack. We saw the writing on the wall. DD takes his commitment to his boys very seriously and Scouting is a big part of that. His Scouting story is very personal, so I won't be telling it here. The point is: He is determined to support and encourage the love of scouting in his boys and to do whatever he can to let them know how important it is to him that they pursue scouting through to Eagle Scout. That is one of our goals for our sons. About 18 months ago or so, DD went to his first more intense training and was introduced to Dutch Oven cooking. Camping and Dutch Oven cooking are very closely related crafts and are very near and dear to the hearts of most hard-core Scouters. DaddyDoc fell in love with the idea. He could not stop talking about his training experiences for days. He talked about all the wonderful things the leaders did with their cast iron dutch ovens. He knew exactly what kind of dutch oven he wanted. And for Father's Day a year ago, I went to the man in town who every Scout in the council knows by first name, and purchased a Lodge Dutch Oven for DaddyDoc from that man's store. Oh, and the cool thingiemabob lid lifter, too.
DaddyDoc's signature recipe is Lazy Cobbler. So far, anyway. The idea is simple: Dump cans of fruit pie filling (or canned fruit) into the dutch oven, mix some cake mix and oil and water in a ziplock bag, pour it over the fruit, and bake it in the dutch oven with hot coals.
As he did last year, DD arranged for MG's den to prepare three Dutch Oven Lazy Cobblers for the entire assembly at Family camp. And by arranged I mean that I went to the store to buy the ingredients, the bowls and the spoons and the serving spoons and I pulled the cake mixes off the garage pantry shelf. Every time cake mixes go on sale, I'm buying a bundle of them so that we have plenty on hand whenever we need a Gooey Butter Cake or a dutch oven lazy cobbler. Another leader in the pack, a long time scouter, brought two of his dutch ovens to lend to the project. (Yes, I said that correctly: Two OF his. He has three. His third actually takes two men to carry it, due to the size. But I digress.)
The boys started to assemble their cobblers. Several families contributed can openers to speed up the process. But the coals were not quite getting hot fast enough and it was getting late. I asked the other leader with years of experience if he might take over the coals so that DD could get the campfire started. He agreed. It was amazing to watch how he managed the coals. He put some of them in the campfire to get going faster (DD has aluminum pans and a coffee can chimney he uses for this job, but it did not work as it normally does, so Mr D was using the pans to juggle the coals from the pit to the ovens.) Mr. D ended up with the three dutch ovens stacked to cook the cobblers.
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I know this post is getting very long but so much happened this day. This night was DD's first real Campfire as Cubmaster. He'd worked with Mr. D on the graduation event but this was different. Our den broke him in as Cubmaster with our Creature from Lake Skinner skit. (Which was, by the way, DD's idea...) For those of you unfamiliar with the 'creature' skit, it goes like this:
Our den had found a truly hideous creature lurking in the nearby lake that day. He was so hideous we'd concealed him with a towel to protect the scout families from the sight of him. One scout from my den was BRAVE ENOUGH! to look under the towel at the creature... but the scout SCREAMED and ran away when he saw him. The second scout was BRAVE ENOUGH! to look. He looked. And he looked. And then I whispered to him, but everyone heard me say it, "scream and run away" so he SCREAMED and ran away. (And the audience laughed.) Finally I asked DaddyDoc, the Cubmaster, if HE was BRAVE ENOUGH! to look at the HIDEOUS creature. He came over. He looked. And the CREATURE SCREAMED! and ran away.
AH HAHAHAHAHHHHHAAAAAAA! So funny. Poor Cubmaster DaddyDoc. (The next day a group of boys were "playing" the skit over again, taking turns being cubmaster daddy doc.)
But oh, how I WISH I'd had a video camera to tape DaddyDoc leading the Pack in the Shark Attack song.
If there were an Academy Award for campfire songs, Tom Hanks would've looked at DaddyDoc and said "Yeah, I've got nothing. I can't even try to compete."
He was just that good.
The man SOLD us on the shark attack. Other parents were looking at me saying "Did you know he could do this?" I looked at them and said "Is it my imagination or is my husband enjoying this entirely too much?" They told me it was not my imagination. One dad asked if he could book DD for his country club's supper club.
DaddyDoc was swimming away from the shark with one arm and then one leg and we BELIEVED that he was scared poopless. There is a video of someone else singing it online but please understand, DaddyDoc's was 1000 times more priceless. His last three were lose an arm, a leg and then he stops, looks happy, rubs his stomach and sings "Happy Shark..." Maybe sometime he should lead a ballroom full of scavenger hunters in this song as a little stress reliever or something...
At some point, CS fell asleep sitting upright in his chair. He was POOPED.
After the campfire it was about 20 minutes before the cobblers were finished but it was some of the best lazy cobbler I've seen. (We've only done this three times but it was some pretty good lazy cobbler...) Three parents helped serve, one mom helped pass out spoons, I passed out bowls, and when it was done, at least three people were talking about going to the guy everyone in town knows to buy a dutch oven, too!
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CS woke up after cobbler and was very upset because he tried to walk but he could barely stand up. I sat by the campfire and just held my sleeping boy on my lap until it was time to head back to the tent. There is nothing better than holding a sleeping angel in your lap. Nothing. And when they're asleep, they're all angels...
The big one wasn't so much of an angel. This isn't the parenting angst blog, and this thing is darn long enough. While DD dealt with trying to get them in bed, I went to the porta potty. Those things were stinking up BAD. Even a good distance away, you could smell them. It was to the point that I wasn't going to be able to handle them much more.
But I was way tired. When DD finally got into our tent that night, it was pretty late but our air mattress needed a little pick me up. We very quickly turned on the blower thingie because yes, it was late, but we DO have our priorities. It didn't take much to get it nice and full again. I was so tired that I barely heard the coyote parties that night. Either of them...
(I have to apologize, I am too tired to edit. This thing is going to live and I'm going to bed...)
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1 comment:
So what happened that resulted in CS's head wound?
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