Pickles & Dimes

We went camping at our favorite campground, Baylor. There were 16 of us there, plus six dogs, but the campground sites are h-u-g-e, so each dog got their own tree and no one got tangled in a messy knot of dog cable. There was even room for the carnivorous mosquitoes, despite me spraying myself repeatedly with bug spray containing 29% DEET, and before I finally went to bed super early one night just to avoid the jerks, one of them bit me in the side, leaving a ginormous bite that would balloon up to the size of Brock Lesnar because it was in the precise spot as my shorts waistband. (Four days later, it’s still huge.)

Besides the bugs, it was a marvelous weekend. Shorty was wonderful; he hardly barked unless another dog startled him awake with their own barking, or when he saw some horses for the first time during the parade. (You could tell his frantic barking meant, “WTF are these things?!? Dear god we’re all going to die!”) But he met all kinds of strangers and never barked once, leading one of our friends to say, “He’s matured.” A little girl from another campsite came over to pet him and half-squatted down, leading Shorty to try to climb into her half-lap. (That dog is the definition of a lap dog, I swear. You bend over to pick something off the ground and he’s trying to crawl into your lap.)

The kids were beside themselves: they had glow sticks, water guns, giant balloons and a 3-in-1 toy that served as a flashlight, glow stick and whistle (we didn’t tell them about the whistle part).

I’m pretty sure this was the tree hideout of the bird that crapped on my hand as I was eating my delicious dinner of tacos. He kept up the crap catapulting until we moved the picnic tables, but not before he delivered three or four more direct hits, hitting a plate of tortilla chips and a container of lettuce. Stupid sniper bird! His aim was deadly.

When we got home, we discovered someone left us a stowaway: Dolly Woodboy! Argh. Jason had me put him in the garage on our bikes and I’ll tell you what: the next six times I went into the garage that night I responded the same way: “GAAAAAAH!”

Then Jason wanted to put Dolly in Shorty’s kennel with him, but HAHAHHAHA. No way, Jose. Shorty barked his head off until we apologized and backed out of his room sheepishly. So while his barking at strangers has improved dramatically, his barking at creepy dolls is still at an all-time high. Which is good, because my nightmare is that that stupid doll will break out of the garage and try to kill us in our sleep.

I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend (minus the bear).

What’s your 4th of July plans?

This year’s camping trip was affected slightly by the weather – twice – as we waited to drive to Jason’s parents’ house on Friday until after we made sure the storms weren’t going to shatter our windows at home. (Every time thunder rumbled, our basement windows rattled ominously. We also got two inches of rain in 90 minutes.)

Then on Saturday night, another nasty storm blew through, sending us sheets of rain propelled by gusty winds, tornado warnings and angry lightning, so half of us took refuge in the basement while the rest of us decided not to get drenched in the pouring rain and stayed in the garage. We sat there huddled with our friends, their two kids and two dogs, and right after the radio announced, “[Town we were in] is in the bullseye of this storm,” and we started to get a little scared, Jason’s dad threw open the garage door and bellowed, “What are you guys doing?” We all jumped a mile and sheepishly ran for the safety of the basement. Seriously, the only way that moment would’ve been scarier was if he had been wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a smoking chainsaw. So we all sat in the basement, shivering wetly: eight adults, four kids and four wet dogs that smelled like, well, wet dog. After the robotic weather radio man finally gave us the all-clear, we shuffled outside to our campers.

And then the power went out.

And that is how we ended up going to bed before 10 pm in our damp camper listening to our popup shake every time the ground rumbled from thunder and counting “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” every time lightning flashed.

Shorty slept through it all, obviously.

But besides the brief bad weather, the weekend was awesome. Lots of great food and games, and the kids had a blast on the bounce house, inflatable water slide and kiddie pool.

The adults played more Minute to Win It games.

Try to put the hat on your head. While it’s attached to a fishing pole. And you’re blindfolded.

Use a straw to suck up an M&M…

And transfer it across the way to deposit onto another straw.

Blow up a balloon and use the air to blow plastic cups off a table. (This one was my favorite. I skipped doing it last time because I figured “Me + Asthma = Nothing Good Can Come From This,” but it was easy.)

Stick a pedometer on your head and shake your head to see how many “steps” you get in 60 seconds. (This one hurts your neck SO BAD.)

Jason & Shorty were tuckered out. It was maybe 85 degrees, even though it was cloudy, but the humidity was INSANE.

Shorty was great. As spoiled at it may be, having a separate camping chair for him means he sits in it instead of getting wound up around other chairs or picnic tables. Jason & I even got to leave his sight to eat dinner. I went over to check on him and found him in doggie heaven, sitting contentedly in his camping chair while one of the men he used to habitually bark at was scratching him behind his ears. He did SO GOOD at not barking at people. SO GOOD. It might sound stupid, but we were so proud of him for being a good boy.

We kept Shorty on his cable tie-out because even though he gets along with all the other dogs that were there, he also likes to bolt for the road (and not listen when we yell for him to come back, choosing instead to bolt at high speed in the opposite direction). We did finally let him off-leash to play with the other dogs when they were running around the yard, and he immediately took off full-bore for the fastest dog, trying to herd her and play-growling the whole time, which is hilarious because his “growling” sounds exactly like trying to start a car with a dying battery: RowrRowrRowr. Then he got overexcited and started sprinting around at 100 mph and decided to take a flying leap onto his camping chair, which obviously wasn’t bolted to the ground, so he hit it hard, sent it flying and then did a nifty barrel roll while we laughed our asses off. He’s the best dog ever.

Last weekend, we had perfect weather. In April. Totally unheard of in Minnesota, especially since two years ago at this time, we had a foot of snow. This year, the snow’s been gone for almost a month and it’s been in the 70s. So we took advantage and did two of our favorite outside activities.

We broke in our new camper and went camping with Jason’s folks and their dog, Tobie:

Shorty refused to believe he wasn’t human. Not sure why I gotta be on the ground, like a dog.

The weather was fantastic. We spent our days doing everything I love: making campfires, hiking, eating, napping and playing cards. Ahhhh. No better way to spend the day.

OK, this not ground, which is better, I guess. (Yep, the dog has his own camping chair because he is spoiled.)

Hey, how comes you guys get to be in there?!? I wanna be in there, too. (Oh, he was, plenty of times, napping on the bed while we played cards with Jason’s parents. And at night, he s-l-o-w-l-y manuevered himself inside my sleeping bag, which at first I objected to, until I realized he was basically a furry furnace and it was only 36 degrees out. Then my attitude was: welcome, heater puppy! We also had a portable heater that kept us nice and toasty; I slept only in a long-sleeved t-shirt and shorts. Nothing like roughin’ it!)

We also went to the first official game at Target Field. The game didn’t start until 3 p.m., but we got there at 11 a.m. That’s how we roll.

I may have had a slight obsession with Scott Erickson in the early 90s. Speaking of which, I wonder where all his baseball cards that I non-obsessively collected went to?

It was pretty awesome when the jets flew over and the fireworks went off. There were people on top of the downtown office buildings trying to catch a glimpse of the action, and two news choppers circling the area all day.

Best Buy has a booth in Section 219 where you can get your picture taken for free. The couple in front of us has prime Christmas Card Material, because right as the automatic timer counted down to zero and snapped their picture, two oblivious guys walked right into the frame. Ha.