#161. or, Camping and the Decline of Human Civilization.

 So, we went camping last week. It was our big holiday for the year. There's going to be a couple other weekend camping getaways, but this was the big one. We left on the Tuesday after Canada Day, because it's impossible get a site anymore on a long weekend, arrived in the midst of a terrible storm, and got back home last night. So, 5 nights.

  While we were gone, I did my best to stay away from here. I wanted to recharge my brain and aside from bombarding social media with various pictures of campfire food, I pretty much stuck to that.

  I missed you.........really, I did.

  Anyways, while I was gone, I did write a post on paper, with my pencil, on the beach. Which is something I find I'm doing more lately before I bring it here. Well, not the beach part, that was new. But now, because that post was about events that happened nearly 2 weeks ago, and now feels like ancient history, I'll probably just trash it. Unless I can find a way to resurrect it, that post about the Canadian Football League and Jesus will most likely never happen.

  What you get instead is a post about camping. Because it's fresh, and relevant, and topical as people head out on summer vacation. More than that, it's a post about observations I've made over the last week that hopefully, you might find useful if you find yourself heading out this summer to spend some time in the woods.

  Now, I'm not going to lie to you, we do our camping in a trailer, so we bring along a lot of the comforts of home. I'm not really sure if that qualifies as roughing it? In fact, we park in numbered sites, along side endless other trailers, so it's more like the city than where I actually live, except that there's more trees.......and fires......and outdoor crappers.

  Our trailer has it's own toilet. It's more of a closet, but it still serves the purpose. My family uses it, and it's quite nice to have it there in the middle of the night. Also, since my wife has an aversion to outhouses, it's a necessity. But if I get sticken to do some real damage, I'd rather take my business to an outside source. The thing is, campground outhouse toilet paper is only that in the broadest sense of the term. It's my suspicion, it's created by the same people who would have been in charge of coming up with devilish torture devices if this was medieval times. The same guy who thought of the rat in the bucket, strapped to your stomach, you saw on Game of Thrones. Campground outhouse toilet paper has approximately the same structural integrity, and softness of touch to the skin, as a dried leaf. Use too little, and your fingers crush right through, which is unpleasant as it sounds, and NO amount of squeeze bottle hand sanitizer is going to make OK! Use too much and you get the same unpleasant scrubbing sensation that you would get if you were to attack your backside with a handful of Caesar salad croutons. My advice is to bring your own! Toilet, or toilet paper, I don't care, you're not going to go wrong with either.

  Also, if you're the one who has to empty the chemical toilet, you should do your best to argue against corn being on any part of the menu while you're camping. Trust me on this.

  If you go camping, it's completely alright to spend the whole day in your pajamas. You can wear them to the store, you can wear them to the beach, when you're cooking, everywhere!  It's awesome and it's normal there. But don't forget to wear regular clothes your first day back to work. People will look at you oddly.

  When you're camping, you will see, and be quite alright with, more dudes with big knives than you have ANY business EVER being comfortable with.

  Unless you have an exceptionally big trailer, you are never going to feel comfortable having sex with your wife at one end of the trailer while your kid is sleeping at the other end. Or possibly more accurately, your wife will not be comfortable with it. If you're a guy, and you're in the mood, it probably won't be such a big deal.

  Two things that probably should never go together, open fires and drinking will be common place, and if you're lucky, will happen every night.

   I pride myself a tiny bit on my ability to make a fire in the most efficient manner possible. As a rule, if it takes more than one match, I begin to question my manly fire making skills. (most of which, I learned from my wife) I'm a little anal about it. I'll have kindling of various sizes in small piles, all within reaching distance to use consecutively as I move from tinder to substantial sized wood. Just in case the only wood available is damp,  I keep a supply of dry wood to use to start my fires, in the trailer. Although I'm not so hardcore as to try to start my fire by rubbing 2 sticks together or by sparking a couple rocks against each other, I rarely use paper or a lighter.

  The thing is, I have a bit of a handicap, when it comes to the use of lighters. Not with Zippos or the pocket jet lighters I use to light my cigars with when I'm sitting around the fire at night. Those are fine. I just can't work those long stemmed BBQ lighter things. Those ones that require you to move 2 tiny leavers in opposite directions, while contorting your mouth just right as you squeeze the trigger. They never ever work for me, and on the off chance I do get fire to spew from one end, I'll inevitably let go of one of the levers just before I can actually start the thing I want to on fire. Then I have to begin the whole process over again, only to end up throwing the frickin thing in the bush after about the 8th try.

  My wife keeps saying it's because my penis gets in the way. I know she's mocking me and my ability to operate that damned lighter because I'm a man. I like to think she means that I have an incredibly impressive appendage that keeps getting in the way of my proper operation minor hand tools.

  .....................whichever it is, if you're a guy, hearing an attractive woman tell you your penis is getting in the way of menial tasks, it's probably going to make you quietly nod your head as say "OH YA!" to yourself, rather than be offended for your fellow male, gendered comrades.


This week, I'm joining up with the Humor Me Blog Hop as well as the I Don't Like Monday's Blog Hop. If you like you some funny,or just some darned good writing, follow the links (click on the picture)