If This Trailer's a-Rockin'

You probably thought I was going to write about that.  Ha.  Boy were you wrong.  

I drove for a canoe trip put-in yesterday morning.  Jealous yet?

 This past week, while you may have been barbecuing with friends and going to committee meetings, I've been doing what I do every summer... living the life of a camp wife.  I suppose camp husbands do these sorts of things too, but since I'm a woman, we'll go ahead and be gender specific for now, despite how much I usually hate that sort of thing.

Every summer for the last 6 years, I have been either a staff member or volunteer at a summer camp program that my husband directs, and I still have a hard time verbalizing the exact details of what that nebulous position really entails.  I've plunged an unfathomable number of overflowing toilets, watched a staff member snort spaghetti up their nose and out their mouth (break the noodle and you fail), almost sunk a $40,000 boat filled with teenagers, eaten tubs of camp ice cream, whitewater canoed, pummeled campers with dodge balls (as satisfying as you can imagine) and gotten to hurl myself down a 100' slip and slide every July.  And sometimes, I get paid.  Go ahead and cry a few tears of bitter rage.

Before you throw yourself off of a building, keep in mind that there are some unique environmental requirements for this kind of job life, and it's a mixed bag of privilege and sacrifice.  For example, I am shocked that about a half-hour ago, my iphone got a text message.  Today is my day off this week, and I'm sitting on a sunny porch at camp, where until this year, a friendly cumulonimbus cloud could practically cut all off all of our communication with the outside world.  This is hardly an exaggeration.

If you have read some of my recent posts, you are aware that we now live in a camper here, tucked away in the staff parking lot.  When you shut your eyes and dream of heaven, you probably aren't seeing a 25-foot travel trailer, but I'm telling you, it's a pretty comfortable home base for us.  Starting Monday, we even had a guest, and mercifully it wasn't the local wildlife.  Our friend Amy, who I've mentioned before as being an angel of wisdom and good humor, is sleeping in our bunk beds.

Hey Amy, how's that bottom bunk?

Ironically, since we moved north, we've never lived anywhere without a set of bunk beds.  Either people around here cultivate and harvest children with terrifying frequency and therefore need compact, vertical lodging space, or they just have an affinity for the top bunk.  Either way, Amy's always had a place to stay, even now.  She drew us a picture to hang on our fridge.

Sweet, right? I think know I'm going to frame it.

To sum it up, we live in a house on wheels on the most breathtaking 7,000 acres east of the Mississippi.  And whether I'm wiping down tables in the Dining Hall or scooping way too much ice cream in our coffee shop, I still have to pinch myself every now and again, because something this good just can't last... or can it?  

You mean I could really have free ice cream for life?