Life's little recipes

My life is like a big cookbook full of recipes for the day-- lists of dos and don’ts, goals, failures and memories. And so every day, I get out of bed and check off things on my list.

Get up 5 a.m., make coffee, study
7:00 a.m. look at clock and freak out, jump in shower, turn in a circle, get out, get dressed and throw peanut butter onto bread.
7:15-- dress the sleeping children
7:30 rush the kids across the street to the good sitter’s house-- one kid at a time because they always refuse to put on their shoes
7:40 rush off to Spanish class-- I’m 10 minutes late if I drive fast enough I’ll get their closer to on time
12:00 school is out
Lunch, play with kids, dinner, study bed midnight

OK, you get the picture-- same old thing day in, day out . My life had become my mother’s meatloaf and my grandma’s Sunday chicken-- until--

Last week I decided to take the kids to the lake.

Now I am not an outdoorsy kind of person. I want to be-- don’t get me wrong. If I were single,
my ad would say “loves the outdoors” “Adventurous” and “likes long hikes through the woods.”

And I do. I’ve just have never done it without the right accessories-- mainly a man to cook, set up the tent and chase away wild animals. Yes, my husband has always been the bear bait.

But alas, he is off playing firefighter and who knows when I‘ll see him again?

And so, why not take the kids to the lake? It’s cheap entertainment. The scenery is magnificent- who cares that I have never in my God-given life started a fire much less cooked over one.

Going to the lake only requires -- lawn chairs, an ice chest and charcoal for lunch so we can feel all woodsy.

This was until I saw it-- the screened-in vacation home, 14X14 with a living room and one huge bedroom-- and something called an awning. It even had two bay windows, shelves and skylights! But it looked complicated. I remembered the last time I tried to be all outdoorsy. I bought the kids these little dome tents that supposedly set themselves up-- only I managed to snap all the rods or poles or what have you before it popped up.

The salesman assured me-- heck he practically said he’d do it for me-- I’d have no problem.

“You’re a good looking woman,” he said with a hey baby-what-you-do-smile, “Someone will help you don’t worry.”

In the past, before the kids popped out, this was true. I once took a bus from Northern California to Wyoming, showed up to a kind of historical reenactment event with only a small bag of clothes and managed to score a place to stay within minutes of arriving-- no, I didn’t trade my womanly goods for a room. I also sweet talked my way into dinner at various campsites-- no I didn’t beg like a dog. I was cute and those college boys were suckers.

And so feeling overconfident, I bought the tent. Had I looked in the mirror and remembered I had three new accessories (Maggie, Abby and Nikki), I might have seen the error in this logic.

Instead, I through my list out the window and stuffed the kids, the Taj Mahal of tents and four lawn chairs into my tiny sports car. We were going camping!

Upon arriving, I lugged the tent out of the car and proceeded to be educated in outdoorsiness. First of all, the directions made no sense. Essentially it read: Attach the center pole to the gable pole and the gable poles to the side poles. Insert the tent’s S-hooks into holes on poles, snap things around poles to keep them from moving, insert legs into side-- wait you have to put it in the ring first and not the stake loop---

What the???? Which one is which? They all look alike and nothing is numbered.

An hour later, my illustrious daughter Maggie said, “You’re not very good at putting up a tent, huh?”

I shot her the stink eye.

Thirty minutes later as I lay on the dusty ground-- my face coal miner extraordinaire-- my fingers blistered from trying to make everything snap, my daughter finally sees the error of her ways.

“Not many moms would take their kids camping without dad. That is pretty cool. I didn’t think moms did that,“ she said.

OK I felt pretty good about myself. My attempt at a bonding experience was working.
And then, she brought me a notch.

“I’ll bet you’re happy I’m here to help you put the tent up because you don’t know what you are doing,” she said.

Well, I’ll have you all know, I got the tent up. It took me two hours, but I got it up. I also cooked hotdogs over the campfire, hiked with a flash light, blew up a water raft using my lung power-- and figured out how to deflate it. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know you had to squeeze the valve to get the air out. We sat there for an hour waiting for it to deflate until by accident I squeezed it and heard the “hiss.”

I chased away flies, stomped on beetles and chased off evil teenage boys who were harassing my daughter. And I never once reached for my list, but I did find a new recipe for fun.


****I’ve been busy with school, taking care of the kids and working so I apologize if I haven’t been commenting as much as I used to. I promise once things settle down I’ll visit and write more often.