Camping & Baxter

Well I'm back from camping. Actually I got back at about oneish and showered. Then I went to lunch at my favorite Gluten Free restaurant. Yum... chicken tenders and then I bought 2 cupcakes to go and some mozzarrella sticks. I'm planning on munching on the sticks in a little while and the cupcakes, already gone.

Camping - A rehash:
The kids arrived at varying times after 7 PM on Friday night. We didn't do much, had a snack of cookies and helped the other kids lug their crap across the field. We were as far from the parking lot as humanly possible. I have no idea how long it took me to trek back and forth across the field with stuff like food and our supplies. I had picked up my little Girl Scout about mid way through the afternoon and she helped, but we gave up towards the end because I was too tired. The nice thing about camping with just my kids and not as part of a big encampment is that we were on our own schedule. The kids didn't get up until 8:00 am on Sat morning. They cooked eggs and sausages for breakfast. It turned out very well. We cleaned up and went on a hike. We walked very slowly and looked at a lot of different things. I like that I know stuff... :) and can tell the girls. I imparted a variety of wilderness knowledge to them like about moss on the North side of trees (except in WA where it is too wet so moss just grows on the outside of trees.). We studied slugs and snails and trees and tree rings. We took about a half of the long trail and turned back to the cabins at the same place I stopped walking on the trail when I went on my own. That thing I thought was a waterfall, it isn't. It's a climbing wall with varying levels. One of the moms pointed it out and I felt dumb for not realizing it sooner. The girls cooked lunch too. We had tacos. The moms were impressed that we made that. :) After lunch it rained a little bit but we made our wish boats for our bridging ceremony. We played board games by the cabin. We also went out into the field and played kick ball. My feet got wet. The poor things didn't get to be dry until I went to bed after 11:00 PM. It was awful. They were itchy and pruny. Dinner was a whole other story. We were going to barbecue chicken and hamburgers and hotdogs and make potato salad. The potatos took forever to cook. We ran out of propane. The chicken took forever to cook. We started cooking at 4:00 PM... We didn't eat until after 6:40. We did manage to do our ceremony at about 7:20. Which was just in time so one of my moms who had to leave to go get her husband could go. The dads showed up at 5. We had 2 show up. They did not help. In the end they did not camp either. And one took his daughter with him when he left for the night and didn't bother to tell me. I was pissed. The ceremony went well. The girls did their poem and crossed their bridge and got their candle lit and put their wish boats into the pond by the bridge. It was all very nice. (as far as Girl Scout Ceremonies go...) We went back to where we cooked dinner and there was still fire going (not in a fire circle, in a rock bbq). We cleaned up the mess from dinner. (Did I mention it RAINED all while we were trying to cook dinner?) We had no propane to do dishes so we only used paper. I know I know but we did wash all our other dishes for each of the other meals. The kids had a bunch of marshmallows and 1 s'more each. Our whole day progressed much more like family camping than like Girl Scout camping... no real agenda we just played and did what we wanted to do. I think they liked that a lot.
We didn't get up until 9:00 this morning. (I had been up at about 7ish and was sitting outside reading my book). The dads (who left and were supposed to camp) arrived. We ate breakfast of doughnuts and fruit. We packed our lunches and we cleaned everything out. That took us until noon. And the kids left. I was so glad to see them go. I like them! Don't get me wrong... but I was so tired.

Baxter - I came back and she is much more frail than she usually is. I think this month (and maybe this week) may be her last week. I've decided I'm not going to rush her to the vet. I don't think there's anything the vet can do. She is skinnier than she was even 2 weeks ago when I took her to the vet for her monthly shot (and then she was thinner than she was when I took her last year for her condition). Bax is 7 and she's from the ferret breeder known as Marshall Farms. Their ferrets are not hardy. Age seven is usually their limit. Minka died last year at around what would've been her 7th birthday. I've known this is coming for awhile know. Unless she seems to be really suffering (which she doesn't right now), I'm going to let time do its thing. Although typing this is making me tear up, and it is entirely possible that I'm just being a drama queen. But my instincts were right on Minka and I suspect they'll be right on Bax too.