487 miles
The more I put off writing about this, the more the details become fuddled and I can just say, “yeah, we had fun.”
Most of it was, indeed, fun. The rest was just miserable.
80 miles
The night before, I had to take E up to my mom’s house, he was spending the night because especially after that boat trip last month, we were not taking him on the float trip! Mom didn’t want E until it was dark because they were putting new siding on the house, so I didn’t arrive home until after 11pm. Steve had gone to the county fair with his buddy and got home about 20 minutes after I did.
He walks in and says, “I’m hungry. I think I’m going to make a Run for the Border.”
Now this is quite strange for him to do this. Usually he’d get something stupid in the fridge like hotdogs or cheese to put on crackers, snack a bit, then go to bed. But, no, he made a one hour round trip to get Taco Bell. He didn’t get home until a quarter to one.
It was some good food but oh did I regret it! Just too late at night and too close to bed. I was so sick to my stomach!
200 miles
Then the next morning we had to be ready to leave by 7. I didn’t realize how much having a kid can slow me down until I got ready that morning without having to also get him ready. No diaper bag to pack, no extra juice and milk to bring, etc.
I was highly aggravated to have started my period the day before, so I wasn’t a happy camper to begin with. Then Steve and I were arguing about stupid little things. Then his family made us run late. But that part ended up okay because the two of us still got there before anyone else.
It took forever, but finally we got in the water. We took an 8-man raft with the two of us, Steve’s parents, Sarah, our friends K & A and their little girl, and way too much junk. I packed quite small and so Steve and I had few things, but everyone else seemed to think they needed to bring everything and the kitchen sink. So there wasn’t much room on the boat at all.
The waterproof bag for my camera held up quite well, my camera didn’t get wet at all. However, the pictures weren’t necessarily all that great. There were some that other people took and someone got the blue part in front of the lense because there are several pictures that are… blue! And there was one point where the flash accidentally got turned on - you couldn’t tell until it flashed. So those are kind of foggy looking as well. But, oh well, still not half bad. And I suppose I’ll get better at using it.
The trip is 10 miles, but it seems like less than that. We stopped a couple of times to swim around and all of us stopped together for lunch. Well, most of us anyway, one boat who will remain nameless felt the need to speed up away from everyone and get back at least two hours before anyone else, and then leave! How rude.
There were a few incidents during the day, however, that weren’t so fine. The first I already just mentioned, the second concerned our floating cooler. It’s round, it floats, has cup holders. Before lunch, a friend ran up to our boat and swiped it, playing around. That was all fine and dandy but when it was returned, right before lunch, we found out that they had also swiped half of our sodas and also left us some of their trash in there. Okay, I found that entirely rude. You all know how I am about people who take things without asking. These are our friends, had they asked, we would have gladly shared with them. But as far as they knew, those few sodas could have been all we had for our whole boat. But, I mean, these are supposed to be our friends, they’re supposed to be adults with three children. Grow up. Sheesh.
Then, the guy who is the husband of the woman who organizes the float each year comes up to our boat while it’s fairly shallow. He’s acting like he’s going to throw Sarah in the water, he likes to throw people in the water. Supposedly, my brother-in-law refused to go this year because he was ticked off he got thrown in the water last year by this guy. I said to him, “you’d better not! She will be maaaaaaaad if you do that to her. She can’t swim.” And besides that, even though she has a life jacket on, she prefers to be the one in charge and won’t let anyone push her into anything. Next thing you know, he throws her in. The water doesn’t cover her head, but it gets close to her face. Had she not had the life jacket, she would have gone under. She freaks out, of course. We get her back in the boat. He throws my father-in-law out. It’s getting deeper now. He grabbed my arm, which was on an oar. I fought him, though, I so wasn’t ready at that second to get wet again, I’d just lathered some more sunscreen on. But I knew I would never win so I handed my glasses to Sarah and let him pull me in. He thinks he’s so hilarious.
There was also a little dog, a female Jack Russel Terrier. She followed us to the water and when we got in the boats, she started swimming behind us. She got tired though and one of our guys got out and took her to shore. She then started following, mostly our particular boat, along the shore. She didn’t have a collar on and she followed us probably about halfway down, something like 5 miles. I said that if she was with us at the end, I was taking her home. She got distracted by something at one point, an animal or something, and she didn’t end up at the end with us. :(
Afterward, we changed - and oh it felt so good to have warm clothes on again! - and left. Steve and I got supper at Sonic when we got back to civillization and then headed home. He left almost immediately and went down to the demo derby at the fair. This was because my parents had taken Elijah to some lake with my dad’s cousins and they weren’t going to be home for a while.
80 miles
At 9pm, SO tired, I left again, by myself, to get Elijah. I filled a big cup with Mountain Dew, and I think it helped me stay awake. I was completely fine on the way up with my MD and loud 107.7 music.
My mom had said E could stay the night again with them, but we wanted to see him and he didn’t have any church clothes anyway. So… However, in the end, he was asleep in bed before Steve got home, he was just as tired as I was after his long day.
60 miles
The next morning was church and I arrived at the tv room only to find out we had three people, THREE! who want to become cameramen. That is SO cool, we need camera people so bad right now. So we explained things to them and then they observed me and B during directing time. They didn’t stay for editing though.
One thing that’s funny is that one of these guys is actually a distant cousin of Steve’s. His last name is the same as Steve’s grandma’s maiden name. I know that sounds very strange, but this actually happens all the time, because of all the people I’ve met. Week before, Steve went with his parents to a visitation of a local man who died and they ended up meeting a woman that I’ve talked to for the last couple of years online. She lives rather close and I knew she’d be related to this man, but wasn’t sure how, and she is related to Steve in at least one way, turns out she’s this guy’s niece. So that was funny.
60 miles
Anyway, after all of that, I had to go back to church in the evening. I don’t usually, but there’s, quite honestly, some crap going on, that causes me to have to fill in for someone else on Sunday evenings for now. I hope this doesn’t require me to do Wednesdays, too. It’s not that I dislike going or doing this stuff, of course, it’s just that everything adds up. Of course, now that I’m not taking Fall classes, I guess I could go on Wednesdays… Anyway, I’m sure I will talk about this crap eventually, but this entry is quite long enough as it is. Let’s just say that the whole situation is quite rediculous.
So I went up and we had one kid running camera. One kid who it was his first time. We don’t normally run more than one camera on Sunday nights, but they were doing something special, so I decided to. Luckily, Camera 2 was already set up for me on a wide shot, so all I had to do was turn it on. I went down and adjusted 3 on a decent shot. This all actually worked quite well, because if the kid was messing up, I’d just switch off. We also taped, which we usually don’t (just usually run for the screens) and the music guy was quite happy because there was all sorts of special stuff going on.
So that was my weekend, last weekend that I’ve finally gotten around to writing about.
