Deepbluesix’s Weblog

This coming week, I get to work with Jonathan again…I had him with our amazing and adorable and perfectly well-behaved mini campers last week. And we have senior high night owls. Which means we stay up all through the night until breakfast, sleep through the entire day, then wake up for dinner. It’s going to be a ton of fun, we do everything at night…high ropes, wall, swimming, sunrise hike at Sharp Top, perhaps caving…amazing. And we sleep in the AC, all through the hot part of the day. Fun stuff. But…I can’t imagine how it’s going to be recovering from that ridic sleep schedule. I also have to drag myself through the entire night tomorrow night if I have a prayer of living through the week. Still, it should be a ton of fun…with our freaking 17 campers.

Last week, also amazing. 5 and 6 year olds can be a handful but the whole 8 of them their were last week (for 3 days) were amazing and adorable. And then I got to spend the rest of the week with the coworkers I so adore. And THEN got spoiled with a weekend with something ELSE I love. It was wonderful, but now sleeping is lonely. Yeah, I’m sappy and just gave an itinerary of my life for the past week or so but. whatever. I don’t have anything clever to say…ever, really. But I am very happy with my life, and I’m all about documenting that.

If it’s the 4th of July, and you hate baseball, going to a game to see fireworks might be an okay trade off. However, when that baseball game lasts until ELEVEN THIRTY, it’s not. Luckily enough, we skipped out and watched pyrotechnics do their job from the roof. Seriously, who stays for a million extra innings…

I think I’m alright at being thankful but need to be more grateful. Blurry distinction but important anyway.
/two sentence and no more thought

My first week at camp was…ridiculous. My kids were absolutely crazy and wonderful. The way the first week was run was kind of iffy and one night, dinner was only a baked potato. Other than that, what can I say? I get paid to hang out with kids, do fun stuff, and be silly all the time. And nothing’s as fun as camp quotes, so here’s another installment.

Stephen and Branson: The gangsta washes the dishes. He’s probably with his gang right now.
Willoughby: This is god camp, not profiling camp.

Stephen: I’m running with propane!!

Grace: I hope a tornado hits the lodge and only takes the trim.

TK: Andrew, looks like you gotta do it.
Andrew: Well at least I’ve got practice.
TK: At removing ticks from other people’s genitals?!

?: My balls itch.
@: Yeah, it’s a guy thing.
?: Well I hope so, it usually is.

Jonathan: I feel so gay…

JJ: My best friend is a shark.

Tiffany: was it on…”the place”
TK: yes, “the place.
Tiffany: what do I call that?
TK: ummm….testicles.
Tiffany: there’s more than one??
TK: he’s got TWO!

Mimi: What do blind people rely on?
Ida: SONAR!

Daniel: What is that in your hand?
Ann Marie: a posthole digger
Daniel: why?
Ann Marie: I was digging a hole
Daniel: …..creepy.

some kid: if it wasn’t for fire, we’d still be eating caviar

Danielle: I’m allowed to drink anything I want…well, anything I want that’s legal

Charlotte: Lindsay, NOBODY likes to be fat. If you’re fat, you’re really heavy.

It’s kind of lame to just have 40 hours off every weekend, especially since I want to be sleeping most of that time (even though I’m exhausted right now…just can’t sleep). I’m glad, though, that my family decided to go to Richmond today so I could spend all of my hard-earned money and punctuate my pathetic loneliness with the company of a cool kid after one week rather than four. Camp’s great and better than home, really, but I miss being at school, living with my best friends (even though I’m kind of doing that now. I adore the people I work with) and having easy access to my favorite people.
Meh. In the meantime, I’m on support staff this week, which will either be great or depressing. Probably will lean towards great if I get some mail for the FIRST TIME IN THREE WEEKS. haha. sad face.

because I’m not eloquent enough to talk about the rest of staff training. but here’s some stuff I’ve kept record of.

“Walking in the dark ain’t nothing but my job” – Jonathan rapping

“Upside down….pineapple cake?” – Rebekah (4 year old bosses’ daughter)

“How can you tell if a giraffe has been in your refrigerator? Cause he ate all your cabbage and lettuce!” – Rebekah

Grace: I found a dead black widow.
Jonathan: Your mom is a dead black widow.
(later) Jonathan: so much for going to heaven.

Brittany: That dog loves you.
Jonathan (turning to dog): I love someone else.

Mimi: We used to eat triplets.

First Aid video: Amputations are injuries that can cause bleeding.

Thomas: I want my intestines to be a person!

Willoughby gets up before speaking to go to the bathroom.
Holly: Can I take your spot?
Willoughby: um, for a second
Holly: No, can I go number 2?

Monday June 2

It really is good to be back here. You can get caught with the familiar and get disappointed if it isn’t exactly how you left it (just like I’d be disappointed if I expected this summer to go as well and in the same way as last), but it’s also really easy and nice to fall back into a routine in a comfortable place with comfortable people. There are, of course, always, people I’m not big fans of…meh. But the rest I’m already good friends with, which is always good. Maybe it’s not always a good thing to be good friends with your boss and your coworkers (I just said good so many times), but it only helps here. Hooray. I don’t know, it’s noon on the second day and I’m tired already…probably because I was thinking about how exhausted I was last summer and it made me tired in anticipation.
But anyway, so last night at midnight I set up my slackline and played around on it with a couple of people. Found the perfect spot, right outside (what I hope will get cleaned out and become again) the staff lounge. It wasn’t too well lit, but a headlamp and not caring fixed that. I thought about leaving it til morning but didn’t want to do the dew, so. I took it down. And now after a morning of scrubbing pie irons, talking about what a counselor should be (handsome and “enthusiastically good”), and a nature hike, I’m sitting in the dark hogan on Flora until lunch. Baller.

Saturday June 7, 2008

It’s crazy how much days can run together—how one day seems forever long and you can’t even remember what you did, and how the entire timeline of a week can be totally blurred to just include “things I did this week” with no specific timeframe. We went on the trail on Thursday, which was a lot of fun, minus whiners who shouldn’t be employed here (why would you work at a camp if you hated strenuous activity AND the outdoors?) and not knowing exactly where to stop. We hiked from Petites Gap to the footbridge on the James, which ended up only being 10 miles. We also started after lunch Thursday and were done at 10:30 on Friday, so that was pretty good. Thru-hikers are some of the coolest people you can meet, as long as they haven’t already been jaded by an obnoxious large group (which we kind of were). We met these two guys from Israel who started us off at Petites Gap with a Hebrew chant of encouragement and ended up passing us at some point and being at the shelter when we got there. It was this father and son (25 and 50?) who had done all the major trails in Israel I guess, and they found the AT online and decided they wanted to do it together. So they picked up to the US to hike the whole thing. It’s so cool that they did that, and they were supremely nice people. I love when you’re reminded of just how many people there are that you’ll never know…probably tons of them with amazing stories that you’d love to know but never will. It’s awesome when you meet some of those people, feel inadequate about yourself, and are moved to go and do and see just to absorb all the diversity that the world is obviously teeming with.

On that note…today was a wonderful day. We got to stay in the AC all day, doing CPR and first aid training, then played with my bosses’ amazing kids, and got done by 8:20. That’s 12 whole hours all to myself. I love how getting done at 8:20 on a Saturday means a short workday, but whatever. I got a glorious shower and get to fart around until I go to bed early, if I can bring myself to. Something we were talking about today did get me thinking though, and reminded me of why I love this job so much. There really is no such thing as a bad kid. My old (wonderful) boss Zack used to say that all the time, and I love that it’s true. There are behaviors that are bad, and things we don’t like that kids do, but there’s no such thing as a bad kid; every bad behavior exists for a reason, whether it’s because they were taught bad habits, don’t get enough attention, or don’t get enough discipline. There’s always a reason though, and in almost all cases, there’s also a remedy. With the right kind of attention and love, all kids are good kids. I get to see that all the time. I love it. I also love the already good kids; the super perceptive ones, who come up to you and ask if that girl is homesick and what they can do to help. It’s amazing to me the depth to which kids understand things and really can achieve things…I know I really really love kids, but I also love just the fact that such young people can have so much to offer, and also that they have so much wonder about the world. It’s exciting when kids get excited about things like nature and how things work; being around that makes you young again. And even if you don’t like kids, you have to like seeing the world like one, because there’s nothing like it.

I might love my job too much. I should think about something else to talk about.

…achieving the perfect foot-five. [foot high five? high foot five?] Nothing warms the heart more.

I’m not actually kidding.

Camp Hat Creek
7141 Hat Creek Rd
Brookneal VA 24528

write me a letter. I’m back to the woods for two months, but only two weeks in this first dose.

Chicago is a beautiful city.

Vacation is a beautiful institution, because it means I get presents…

This trip I’m about to leave on in 3 hours is pure ridiculousness. So, we’re going to Wisconsin, then Chicago. A lot of my mom’s family is in Wisconsin, and her sister who lives in Maine is coming up this weekend too apparently, on a whim. So I get to see a lot of people I normally don’t get to, cool. But we’re driving…16 hours, roughly, to Milwaukee. Here’s where the ridic begins. My parents went to see the Eagles tonight…and got back 20 minutes ago. Mom’s planning on leaving around 4. This means one of my parents is going to be driving on 3-ish hours of sleep. Cool. I, however, am taking this opportunity just to stay up, because I would be pissed if I went to sleep and had to wake up at 3:30. In the meantime, I’m playing mommy; making sandwiches for everyone’s lunch tomorrow, packing, cleaning, gonna cook breakfast for us to take on the road…yeah.

So, we’re driving 16 hours to Wisconsin to stay at my aunt’s house…while all of its inhabitants are going to be at their cabin up north. Oops, timing, got this one wrong. We’re spending the night there (just outside Milwaukee), going to my great aunt’s house Friday evening (Sheboygan, hour and a half north), where we will later be joined by my aunt Julie (from Maine), probably Saturday morning. We’ll hang out in Sheboygan some more on Saturday, then driving back south to Chicago to check in to our shfancy hotel and going to see Wicked Saturday night. Then, we’ll fart around Chicago (my favorite city, though I admit I haven’t been to many) for awhile on Sunday, drive down to somewhere in Indiana to spend the night, then pick up Monday early morning to drive the rest of the way home.

I realize I just gave you a painstaking itinerary, but I’m just saying…this is madness. We’re going to have two full, non-traveling days up there…doing a ridiculous amount of things. The drive, though, is the killer. Luckily, I can’t imagine I’ll have any trouble sleeping 16 hours straight through. I won’t be missing much; almost half of that time is spent muddling through Indiana, which is corn, and not much else.

The preparation for this trip does remind me of one major way I differ from my mother. She is so not a go-with-the-flow kind of person. She tells me I’m an insufferably “don’t worry about it” kind of person. Eh, maybe, but I sleep better at night.

So when I get back late Monday night…I’ll have like 5 days before I’m at camp. For two weeks straight, for staff training. Staff training is basically treating the counselors like campers, doing all the cool stuff (ropes courses, canoing the james, hiking the AT, and I think we’re going legit rock climbing this year), and doing hard, obnoxious labor. I think I’m ready to start my two months of complete exhaustion. If not…….well, that’s gonna suck.

Flipping through the channels just now, I happened to stop on Austin City Limits, featuring Explosions in the Sky tonight. I’m definitely a fan, and it’ll make a good soundtrack to fall asleep to if I ever work up the energy to go to bed. Explosions in the Sky is an instrumental quartet with just drums and three guitars. The guitar is layered so complexly and…I don’t know…wonderfully, which is why no one I’ve coerced into trying to learn to play one of their songs fully achieves something that sounds as good. My favorite song, “Your Hand in Mine,” sounds like falling in love. I don’t know how else to describe it, and I love that that whole story can be told with guitar on top of guitar and a really strong drum phrase. Seriously, check it out. I think I’ll go read in bed with this as my lullaby.

So there was this piece on ABC 13 (Lynchburg) about this very young, fat, black child in the area who assaulted his grandmother in the grocery store…because she wouldn’t buy him chicken wings.

I’m not commenting, just passing on the news…