Every couple of days I pack up the computer and head to McD’s for some quality WIFI time, catching up on reading my favorite blogs as I sip coffee and upload the latest pics for my Flickr page. My first stops are always Amy’s and DK’s blogs and Flickr pages before I start in on my blogging buddies whose words have come to mean so much to me over time. Most make me laugh as I read the words… some make me think and feel… one in particular never fails to make me do both.

The RunaMuck… precious Amber…her husband Seth and 3 boys… whose words, unconditional love and friendship have reached out to touch and minister to my heart more deeply than I could possibly imagine. Since the beginnings of the Mother Letter Project they have been a blessing in my life.

Yesterday morning I chose to start with RunaMuck first. As I read this post, I sat with tears rolling down my cheeks. Her observations of a grandmother and her rather “unorthodox” grandson, the incredible unconditional love between the two of them, and her realizations that you can’t and shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover rocked my heart. I am guilty of the same thing quite often… as humans we all are. I packed up to head back to the camper, my heart and head full of her words, vowing to remember what had touched me that day reading her post, not realizing that they would come back full force to become very personal in a few hours.

Being campground hosts, Joker and I meet people of all shapes, colors, sizes and walks of life. As the summer progresses, we see a lot of the same people come back every few weeks (and often every weekend) to camp… most are wonderful people yet there are some that will set your teeth on edge every time they appear and it is hard not to reach some (probably often) unjustified conclusions about them.

Such has been the case with a couple that Joker and I had dubbed “Dennis the Menace”. They come to the campground every other week and stay for a week at a time, ALWAYS parking in the site directly behind us. When they come in they bring the world… extra refrigerators, ovens, screen shelters, chairs, yard games… which takes them almost a full day to haul in and another full day to pack up leading us to wonder if it’s really worth all that effort despite the fact that they live only a short distance away. He often wanders around with a slightly goofy smile on his face, stopping for what seems to be hours telling the most incredibly awful jokes. She has one of those loud, rough, gravelly voices that carries for miles and can often be what people would consider obnoxious, making it a point to know everything that is going on with everyone in the campground. There isn’t a week that goes by as they leave that they stop by to say “see ya later” with the question of “Ya gonna miss us?” They are people who place themselves in your life whether you think you want them there or not, much like puppies or small children who attach themselves to your leg leading you to want to shake them off after a time.

In the course of the season so far, it stands to reason that they have been aware of the hours we work, Joker’s surgery, and the struggles we’ve been facing. Two weeks ago I came back to the camper for the night after being at the hospital all day and into the evening with Joker during surgery. I was looking forward to the time to decompress with the dogs and just be with myself and my thoughts that night before getting up the next morning to bring him home. Lo and behold what did I see as I pulled into the camper??? Yup! You got it… and in their favorite spot behind us too!

Hoping I wouldn’t offend them when they stopped by to see how Joker’s surgery had gone (for they had remembered that it was to be that day), I gave them the short version and then asked that they understand that I needed the alone time to decompress so I was going to cut the conversation short. “Don’t you think a thing about it honey cuz I know just how that goes. We’ll see you tomorrow”. And off they went with smiles on their faces.

I got Joker settled in at home the next day and headed out to start writing permits for the campers that were coming in. When we work evenings or weekends it’s often difficult to get a decent supper fixed at a decent time so we often grab what we can as we work and eat in between writing permits. Sometimes we don’t even get to eat until just before we go to bed. So it surprised us when we heard that gravelly voice coming around the camper loudly proclaiming “SUPPERTIME”! Plates of roast beef, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots were placed in front of us with the stern admonition to eat despite our protests of “you didn’t have to do this but thank you so much” And they stood over us beaming from ear to ear until we dug into the feast, then leaving us to our supper and beaming even more when I took washed dishes over to them with our thanks. There were no more suppers that weekend – not for lack of their offering but because we were busy with other plans and away from the campground when our hours were over. Just like clockwork as they left came the question… “gonna miss us”? And the usual polite answer… “well of course we will” as we watched them pull out, not thinking much of it after that.

Back they came the last weekend, choosing to brave the crazy July 4th weekend in the camper and landing…. you got it… in the spot behind us! Since we worked evenings all weekend, we were TOLD I would not be cooking all weekend… I do too much as it is in their opinion to even worry about that. The weekend was a procession of feasts… roast and pork steaks and chicken with all the accompaniments. Their trips to the produce stand outside of town yielded delicious sweet corn and peaches that were shared for snacks. All shared and served with smiles.

As they were leaving, we both thanked them for the weekend feasts… telling them that it certainly isn’t anything we expect them to do. In response we were told that they love doing it and that it makes her feel good to be able to do something like that for us. As she gave me a hug, I heard “Love youse”, then… “Ya gonna miss us?” Joker and I both admitted to each other later that we kinda would, though still a bit uncomfortable about it all because neither of us is used to many people in our lives who do things “just because”.

Yesterday I read Amber’s post… and last night it all came home.

As we wrote permits for the onslaught of campers last night, I spied a shiny square parcel being slid into the sideline of my vision. We looked up to see two beaming faces proclaiming “We wanted to bring you lasagna”. The usual “You didn’t need to do that but thank you” brought the answer “We wanted to… we love youse two”. We sat together for an hour, eating and talking and laughing until they left, having ourselves a fine time and a grand old reality check for Joker and I.

For we saw God’s face last night, personified in books who’s covers didn’t look like we’d normally want to read. We’d missed it earlier.

We both talked about how mistaken we were and how we WOULD miss them until we saw them again… not because of what they feed our bodies but because of what they feed our hearts.

We love youse guys too!

Thank you Amber for the reminder.  Thank you God for showing us!

　

Joker and I spent Sunday morning at Dave and Diana’s house (his brother and sis-in-law) doing copious amounts of laundry and sharing laughs and biscuits and gravy and tons of coffee. Since living in our camper means weekly trips to a laundromat in a nearby small town, Di’s offer of letting us use her washer and dryer at the house was a welcome change. Instead of sitting idly and listening to the washers run for 26 minutes… yes I have it down to the exact timing… and then being hypnotized by the sight of clothes tumbling in the dryers while I sit and twiddle my thumbs, I can now sit over coffee and enjoy the time with them while the clothes get done.

Her offer came with a word of warning though…”You’re more than welcome to do your laundry here if you can stand my creepy basement!”

I’ve seen creepier, Di!

It’s an older house most likely built sometime in the 40’s. The steps going down are sturdy but uneven and slanted due to the settling of the house over the years once you hit the 4th step from the top. The walls and floor are of heavy concrete. Spider cracks run the walls from over the years. The venting over the washer is low, causing me to duck my head when I load and unload clothes unless I want to risk concussion. The dryer sits in another concrete room with the furnace and a workbench. And the piece de resistance??? Directly across from the bottom of the inside stairs lies the outside cellar door entrance. You know the kind I’m talking about. The Wizard of Oz “c’mon Dorothy get your rearend down to the cellar” kind of double cellar doors that are SURE to fly back in a stiff wind if you were running from a twister. The view of them from the inside fascinates me though as I walk down the stairs… a crack of outside light peeking through the gloom that leads to them, promising a blinding light if they were thrown open to the world.

Creepy??? Nah, just a basement with character. However if I were a kid I might think differently!

At sometime in their life, everyone has encountered a creepy basement. It doesn’t have to be in an older house either… it can be a brand new house for all that matters. My great uncle’s basement creeped me out bigtime… stairs steeper than my little legs could handle, a light that turned on from the ceiling only AFTER you got all the way down into the basement, cobwebs brushing your face and hands as you went, sure that there was a little troll underneath the stairs who would trip you as you scampered back up. The house I grew up in had a place under the stairs where the sump pump was. Of course I was positive that the minute I came close to that one there would be long arms or tentacles or something equally as spooky reaching out to drag me down. Though these stairs were enclosed from the back, I would still race up to the top like I was being pursued by a pack of wolves stopping at the top to try and appear calm, cool and collected to everyone upstairs.

Amy was no different growing up. Even in a house of new construction with a well lit furnished basement, she was SURE there was a little troll living in the room underneath the stairs. Despite the fact that it was sealed off with a door AND a lock placed there to ease her young fears, she still pounded up the stairs at a furious rate while pausing just as I did at the top to nonchalantly re-enter the upstairs. When she wandered into my childhood basement, she was just as creeped out as I was years ago. And when we forgot to mute the Haunted Mansion screensaver on the computer downstairs??? And we heard Mickey Mouse and the ghosts moaning and groaning from down below us??? And despite the fact that we both laughed hysterically when we finally figured out where all the creepy sounds were coming from???

She didn’t go down there for several days and I have to admit I wasn’t comfy with it for a bit even though I knew full well what had happened.

We were both a little creeped!

Very little creeps me out nowadays. As I grow older, I tend to look at things with slightly different eyes… new perspectives.

No Diana…. you don’t have a creepy basement. You have a basement with character… with a story to tell. I don’t feel the need to race up the steps like a madwoman being pursued.

But I DO hurry up the steps so that I can step back into the warmth and laughter and chatter that is becoming my laundry day.

　

On our days off I’ve been spending time at the house… sorting through things and packing up those that will be kept in storage for future use or for Amy in preparation for an auction that will hopefully sell items inside and the house as well.  Joker and I made the committment many months ago that the way we’re living is the way we want to continue.  To continue paying for a house that has been unoccupied since February and will remain that way is ridiculous.  It has become a place for “stuff”… most of which is irrelevant and unnecessary in this life we lead.

And so the process of sorting and packing begins.  A cathartic process for sure but a journey that is bittersweet and painful at times.

It’s been easy to just keep things around since there has been a basement and a second garage around to hold it.  I haven’t had to face the questions of whether those items are truly necessary to anyone or if they hold incredible sentimental value and need to be kept because…there’s always been room!!! 

So I sit and sort through things…putting the keepers on one side of the basement and the things that will be sold on the other.  Occassionally I will lose myself for a short while, thumbing through Amy’s baby picture albums and reading the journal that I kept each day for the first two years of her life.  Tears are shed and tough decisions are made, sometimes with advice and often without.

When I finished up for the day I sat on my Nana’s stool from childhood and took a look.  The “goes” side was jammed.  The “keep” side was only a quarter of the size of the other but it was filled with the truly important pieces of my life and history, as well as Joker’s, that must be kept for our children and their families.

I feel no sense of loss… most of it is just “stuff” that clutters up our lives.  In the few boxes that remain lies my history, the important things in life, my legacy to my daughter and her children someday.

Life gets simpler every day!

It’s been ages since I’ve allowed myself the time to sit and just write to my heart’s content.  There are times in all the hubbub that is life when I yearn to just sit and get all my thoughts and impressions down on “web paper” but it hasn’t happened yet.

So today seemed the perfect day to do just that!  Joker was heading to PT… I was going to do the errands that needed doing… and then the plan was to head to McD’s for some quality WIFI time and coffee until I could swim.

I’m here…. see??? 

 

And for some reason the words won’t come…

So I’ll content myself with more coffee at the moment, hoping the caffeine will jar loose whatever thoughts I’ve been storing up.

Though there may be no words, at least there has been some precious “Me” time.

Memorial Day Weekend is typically the official start of the camping season. People flock to this lake and the surrounding campgrounds in hordes, bringing tents and trailers and boats and motorcycles and every other “toy” imaginable with them. There are kids and bikes and dogs everywhere you look… a constant beehive of activity. Grills fill the air with the smell of wood smoke and meat cooking, music filling the air from different campsites, kids yelling, dogs barking…a somewhat civilized chaos.

Sweetness and light, right? Not all the time it isn’t!

When the sun goes down it becomes a little less civilized. The Conservation Police and site security are constantly on rounds through the campground looking for problems and often finding them after a day spent with perhaps just a little too much beer intake than is good for the normal human liver. It’s as if the fact that it’s a holiday weekend gives a good excuse for pushing the envelope, though I have to say that it hasn’t been all that bad so far this year. For the most part people are behaving fairly well.

Joker and I can now say that we’ve officially survived our first major holiday weekend as campground hosts in fine style. We’ve written permits and answered questions and fielded complaints until we’re blue in the face. We’ve worn out 2 markers and 6 ink pens. We’ve dealt with man-eating baby garter snakes who dare to enter into the sanctuary of the women’s bathhouse. We’ve told countless people that our campground is full… yes we’re sure… contrary to popular belief we can not work magic and add another 300 sites to the campground in 15 minutes just because you chose to wait until late Friday night to come out. We’ve made endless suggestions to campers that perhaps they wouldn’t always be blowing the circuit breaker if they didn’t have everything ON including the air conditioner at the same time. We’ve seen more men who SHOULD be wearing shirts and more women who should be wearing MORE shirt than we can count. We’ve called the sheriff at 1:30 in the morning to break up a fight. We’ve found an emergency vet for a camper. We’ve repeatedly told a camper that you can’t hook up to the water permanently, continuing to be ignored. We’ve sat together in quiet numbness after a camper bombardment. We’ve eaten supper of sorts late at night because there was just no time to fix anything earlier. We’ve shared late night cups of coffee and deep breaths with other hosts at our table while we swap stories of the adventures of our night. And when we go inside at the end of the night, we’ve turned out every light and sat in the quiet so just maybe people might think we weren’t still up and knock on the door at midnight to let us know that people are walking through their yard… as if we all have a property deed for the small space we inhabit temporarily.

And through it all we’ve laughed… because overall, people are laughable.

Besides the fact that if we don’t laugh, we may scream!

All in all it’s been fun AND it’s been interesting…

We’re definitely looking forward to our days off though.