Camp
The kids are at camp today (the girl-child, Camp Runamok, the boy-child, soccer camp) and the wife is taking this time to go through their rooms and clean up a bit. So far she has hauled six bags of garbage out of the girl-child’s room, and I can still hear her in there, muttering obscenities, gathering more. Since trash, like beauty and cataracts, is in the eye of the beholder, I expect it to be pretty exciting around here when the girl-child gets home. The boy-child and I may go out for a bit after golf camp and come home after bed time.
I was not a camp kid. When I was young, the only camps I went to were a one week half-day soccer camp and a weeklong class camping trip with my sixth grade class. Instead of camp, I was shipped off to Southern California to spend a month or three with my grandparents. I spent the time reading, gorging on coffee and maple nut ice cream, watching television (I was not permitted to do so at home, so I had to get in a year’s worth of viewing by the end of the summer), exploring the mesa at the top of Hillside Drive in Topanga and tromping along various creek beds. Oh, and going to amusement parks: Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Sea World. I have no idea what I missed by not going to camp. Mostly socialization, I am sure. I can live without the socialization; as a telecommuter, what need have I for social skills? My kids, or at least the girl-child, will hopefully benefit greatly from it. Either that or she will continue to hone her queen-bee skills and become even more unbearable towards those around her. Bless her manipulative little heart . . .
And so the cleaning continues. My hope is that the chaos that is my children’s rooms will suffice to burn out the wife before she notices what a pig-sty my office is. She does not seem to understand the nature of life, the wife: All things tend towards chaos. We work to get in shape, but as soon as we stop to rest, our bellies go to pot and our hair falls out in clumps. We clean and clean, and still the dogs track mud across the newly-waxed floors. We throw out all of our garbage and the mailman delivers a whole new batch, or we buy something at the store. Dust floats everywhere, just waiting for a clean surface to open up so that it can settle and breed. Food? It spoils, or turns to feces and stains the toilet. We pull weeds in the yard and a jungle of them sprouts in the garden while our backs are turned. We are tubes of meat, programmed to procreate and create new tubes of meat, all built to turn foodstuffs into feces. Why fight it?- Build a new wall out of bundled newspapers. Give up on the floors and just use the endless credit card offers and catalogs as a replaceable carpet. Don’t sweep or mop or dust or spray or scrub or wash; embrace the filth and accept that you will die and one day be part of it! If I cannot get her to embrace the filth, I should at least get the kids into longer camp sessions so that she has time to fully muck out their rooms and dispose of the evidence.
Most folks in Humboldt tried to avoid CAMP.
Sitting here in this cube away from home as I usually do all day, I envy your option to be at home … I plan to start working from home next month!
This time I plan to shower and get out of my bath robe before noon which will make Deb much much happier.
Tomato, Tomahto. Shouldn't that be "Most NORML people tried to avoid CAMP? Actually, I am wondering if my option to be at home is soon drawing to a close — other than half a week in Virginia, I've been ignored by work for the past month or so (this despite my asking for work), which makes me think I may soon be obsolete.