Life in America: donettes, sore fannies & Pink Flamingos (Ruby)

Here’s my first scary thought of the day, completely random, just drifting through my head as I tidy up (attack) the endless pieces of the midnight-snacking puzzle that my hungry-at-strange-hours 20 year old has left for me to deal with as I enter the early morning kitchen…with eager fantasies of peace and solitude (open bread bag on counter, mayonnaise left out, 2 bags of Hostess Mini donettes tumbled on their sides and left open in the closet where I hid them so they would be here for the other children’s breakfast today, the zip-lock feature of the baggie of ham broken so that it no longer closes – but miraculously in the fridge vs. out on the counter, cheese out of the cheese drawer, all the cupboards in the kitchen left in various states of “open”, a knife left in the butter, crumbs on the floor that were not there when I went to bed, etc.)…yep, here’s my scary thought: I will never have a job again because I cannot break free from the constant onslaught of assignments in my kitchen, my personal straight-jacket. I think I stood at that sink for four straight hours yesterday. I got up at 6:00am this morning to write and am finally sitting down almost 2 hours later, after an over dose of speed-laundry-dog-duty-kitchen-patrol.

Then I get my footing again as the scary thought passes; ahhhh, my first sip of coffee is delicious, pleasing…and at this particular moment, no one else is up. Triumph. I have nothing to complain about…I may even find a job someday. Directly to my right are the 2 recovered bags of donettes that I have placed on the counter; one bag is chocolate frosted, the other is powdered sugar and there should still be enough for the ravenous ones who will scurry in like desperate looters trying to score in their own kitchen …any minute now.

And like I just said, nothing to complain about, really...except that I can relate all too well to your comments about having a sore butt. For years now I have wanted to get us all to fess up about the fact that nothing hurts like a woman’s fanny. I remember being at focus groups a handful of years ago with a group of women I worked with, no men. We’d had time to get a little shopping in before the groups started on the second day and when I wandered into a fabulous store with every imaginable massage item, I could not pass up the “Thumper”, a small-but serious thumping and vibrating gizmo for my sore back, neck and butt. It turns out we were all so damn sore already from one full day of sitting and observing consumers (and life in general) that not one more minute went by when one of us wasn’t thumping ourselves or each other in the back room and I’d be naïve to think that this doesn’t sound a little lewd, but rest assured, this was simple, innocent, pain management. And this is when I heard the confession for the first time: every one of us had a seriously sore butt…admitting that we’d often ask our husbands for “backrubs” but what we really wanted was for someone to squeeze all that pain out of our frikkin’ fannies; I don’t know what to make of this, I have no idea why we have such tender tushies but it’s the facts-Jack!! I lied, there was ONE MAN in the room with us – the guy who was running the video streaming of the groups for the folks who could not attend and he was a silent, almost invisible presence…until one faint snicker came out of him and he divulged, without looking any one of us in the eyes, that he had to rub his wife’s sore butt all the time….before returning to his invisible man status again. So before I got up this morning to write - I mean, clean the kitchen – I was lying in bed, so sore, thinking of you and your sore fanny (the word fanny makes me laugh, so I am going to just repeat it until I get it out of my system) and then I just HAD to get up to get a hot water bottle against my lower back, aka – “FANNY”, which I have finally just done, as I have my 2nd (Yay!!!) cup of coffee. So maybe the pain comes from the whole birthing thing, who knows…but I will say one thing here with certainty: IT IS NOT FROM SITTING ON OUR BUTTS in a lazy way, God NO…

I wanted to share more “observations from nature / the outside world according to Ruby”, with you this morning, after our first camping trip ever as a family…I will try to keep this brief (HA!) …

Let’s just say that I should have read the many helpful hints at campingearth.com BEFORE we went camping because I would have read this nifty tidbit of info and avoided one of my panic attacks on Tuesday night: “Raccoons are even more crafty and often develop sophisticated ways to beg or find their ways into your food. They can open coolers and get into protected areas…”. The storm was approaching, the wind had picked up dramatically, which was enough to ruffle my feathers…but hearing that damn raccoon in the vicinity of the cooler which we had left next to the firepit – despite concerned suggestions from our daughter, ‘Medusa’, to put it in the car – was alarming. When I aimed my flashlight out of the tent into the black night, I saw that animal poised over the cooler like a guy grabbing a beer at a tailgate party. Scot hissed and banged at the side of the tent to “scare” him away but that raccoon looked back at us with so much attitude, like…”excuse me, I see your lips moving but I don’t believe I hear you SAYING ANYTHING…” (not unlike the warm response I get from my kids these days). Because the storm suddenly picked up and there was torrential rain for the remainder of the night, Rocky only stayed engaged long enough to help himself to my Peach flavored Greek yogurt and an omelet morsel that Scot had saved. The storm scared me silly and this was just one more validation that there is not enough Valium in the world when it comes to my personal nervous system. I left Scot to die in our 'parents-only' tent since he was unmoved by my second source of panic that night, and went to hunker down in the car…where my boys joined me from the kid-tent. Medusa was quite impressive on this trip; not only did she not wear a hint of makeup, she also wore old and almost camp-appropriate attire, let her hair dry naturally and used her time well…never complaining about being bored. She came to the car eventually but declared, in her characteristic deadpan style: “…only because I didn’t feel like being in the tent alone…not because of the STUPID storm…” (sidenote: she is so gorgeous right now that there is nothing she can do to ugly it up, not camping, not nothin’…but I caution myself as I am almost drawn and compelled to look at her sometimes…to AVOID AT ALL COSTS making eye contact…you know…the whole turn-you-to-stone-thing…one cannot be too careful).

Oh, I forgot to mention the hiking extravaganza…I am not a hiker…even my “hiking boots” have a 2 or 3 inch heel…although chunky vs. stiletto, to my credit. I have the startle reflex of an infant and loathe a bird’s eye view of anything…even standing on a step-stool in my kitchen leaves me jittery…so let’s just say that the climb DOWN on that slippery (yet beautifully purple-hued), DIZZYINGLY STEEP rock-cliff-thing was a very hard pill to swallow. I came down the majority of it on my famously sore FANNY, slowly, methodically, with a terrorized look in my eyes.

All in all, we loved the trip; it was cozy and refreshing in spite of my panic attacks, and my fire-roasted root vegetables were so undeniably yummy I could have just yelped with pleasure with each bite. Unlike Medusa, I maintained my lipstick and eyeliner routine the whole time and we had enough hand sanitizer to sink a ship; note to self: next time - more fire wood, more warm clothes and blankets, more wine, more meal-planning, possibly less hand sanitizer. I couldn’t look at Ollie without wincing after the first couple of hours; he looked like one of the Lord-of-the-Flies boys…really wild, really dirty, caked in remnants of food and a layer of stickiness…I stopped offering hand sanitizer after I realized it doesn’t work on some people. He and Bowie were business-as-usual as they measured the value of every moment of their day according to how soon they’d be allowed to have to have their next treat from the concession area by the little beach. Favorite items: Snickers Ice Cream Bars, hot pretzels and the usual lure-of-all-lures, SODA…what would any camping trip be without some partially-hydrogentated creature comforts?

For Scot, it was all about his very cute Oberon Pony Keg from Barriques : ) and I had my wine.
And my final observation: there are campers who are so at home in their spot in the woods that they actually decorate. I aspire to be this evolved one day. My favorite was the site right next to the bathrooms. It had electricity, unlike our site, and it was adorned with strings of lights that gave it holiday appeal. There were a couple pop-up campers and tents strewn around the site and the pièce de résistance: an American Flag and 2 Pink Flamingos at its entrance. I wanted to take a picture but didn’t want to act like a tourist in the woods.

Gotta go work out…see if I can get the blood to flow to the vicinity of my fanny today.

Ruby