camping, hypothermia, and that time i heard a dinosaur in the woods.
Try all you want, people just don’t change. Sure, minor changes happen. But the big stuff? That stays the same. I’ve watched enough relationships crumble to know that you can’t change another person. Of course, none of these relationships were mine because I’m emotionally crippled and have serious commitment issues. Plus I’m not so much with the looks. But let’s open that can of worms for a blog entry when I’m super duper PMS-y.
I’ve learned this weekend that, even if I want to, I am who I am… and I will not eat green eggs and ham. Mostly because I’m a vegetarian. And there’s something very wrong with green eggs and I don’t feel like having my stomach pumped any time soon.
In my mission to be more free-spirited, I have been agreeing to do more things. Some things have been easy to go along with (like drinking on a Tuesday night), other things may have taken a bit of convincing on Brian’s part. Like camping. In the woods. Without a tent. With coyotes. And something that could have possibly been a T-Rex.
I have never been an outdoorsy person. I went camping with my grandparents all the time when I was a kid. But they had a camper. I am all for camping when I know that there’s a kitchen table that can convert into a bed in three seconds flat. It’s not the camping part so much that I’ve minded over the years. It’s the bugs. Bugs love me. Actually, let me rephrase that. Bugs love to bite the shit of me. On a trip to Orange Beach, Alabama one year, I came back with 32 bug bites on me. And we were staying indoors. Seriously. My blood is like cocaine to bugs.
I also dislike snakes and things that could tear me to shreds, such as coyotes and T-Rex.
But whatever. I was going to rough it Saturday night. I had some bug spray that will probably give me horrific cancer one day, but I was excited to go camping.
After a quick trip to the WalMart for s’more ingredients and veggie hot dogs, Brian and I headed out to a hollow about twenty minutes of town. There was a sign that said “no camping” and, under the darkness of night, we disobeyed that sign and headed into the wilderness. Our camp site was snuggled between two giant ass rocks, one with an overhang to keep dew and rain out. Which is good since we didn’t bring a tent.
If I ever go camping again, I’m going to need a tent. A tent, or someone to stay awake all night on guard with a shotgun. Hey, I may not eat meat, but I will take a coyote out. Or have someone else do it. I don’t want blood on my hands.
We ate baked beans and had veggie hot dogs over the camp fire. Veggie hot dogs aren’t bad, but do not do well over open flame. They get very… blistery. Which isn’t the best feature on a phallic-shaped food. S’mores were made and we talked about ghosts and shit. You know, normal camping stuff. Then we went to sleep.
Scratch that, Brian went to sleep. I woke up every twenty to sixty minutes. At four a.m., I was shaking so violently from the cold that I was pretty sure I was going to die, and I clung to Brian who tends to keep a werewolf’s body temperature year round.
If I ever go camping again, it will not be in October. It will be at least the middle of May before I agree to do any such thing.
I slept on and off from four to eight a.m. A lot of my interrupted sleep came from a combination of being terrified that I was THISCLOSE to being killed by a pack of hungry coyotes and the fact that our sleeping bag was sitting on a rock and whatever side of my body I was laying on at any point in the night would fall asleep every hour or so, meaning that I had to roll over. There’s nothing worse than trying to outrun wild animals when your left leg is asleep.
I finally got up around 8:30 and done something that I have not done since I was four-years-old. I peed outside.
I know that may be TMI, but that’s a huge step for me. I haven’t done that in 21 years. I’m quite proud of myself. Of course, I have no desire to repeat it, seeing as how I got a bug bite in an unfortunate area for my efforts. I’m not even kidding a little bit when I say that bugs love me.
Brian accused me of not being outdoorsy. I agreed with him, until I retold the story at work today. Several people seemed impressed that I camped in October without a tent and without adequate bedding. They seemed to think that that was pretty outdoorsy of me.
Or maybe they thought it was stupid of me. Whatever they thought, this camping trip has proved one thing:
*** I cross-posted this entry in my personal blog, Sloppy Words and Movie Lines. You should check it out. It’s totally rufus.
