Lessons on the Green

You’re all going to be very disappointed in me, because I went on that rafting trip I was freaking out about last month and…

I didn’t take a single picture.

Not one.

That’s the bad news out of the way. Phew!

The good news is that I learned an awful lot on this trip. Allow me to share some of those lessons (and, if you’re very curious about the scenery on the Green River, you could always check out Google images and search for things like Gates of Lodore, Hells Half Mile on Green River, Split Mountain, that sort of thing).

– If you are going to spend five days outside, and have to share the sunscreen with another person, TAKE EXTRA. Clint and I bought one can of the spray-on sunscreen, and it was gone on the third day. We borrowed sunscreen once, but that didn’t keep either of us from being cooked on Saturday and Sunday. In fact, my face is blistering and falling off as we speak. There’s that song by Baz Lurhmann, in which he strongly advises wearing sunscreen.

Do it.

– I have a little boat all my own, a ducky, which is pretty much an inflatable kayak of sorts. This trip was only the second time I’ve gotten to use it, and the first time was on a calm lake. This means I had basically no idea what I was doing when we set out…not that it was terribly difficult to figure out, once I was in it and paddling along, but in a ducky, you sit awfully low on the water compared to other boats. And when you sit low on the water, every little ripple looks bigger than it is.

I went through one named rapid in it. I did great, according to on-lookers, and all of those on-lookers have been running their boats far longer than me, so it was a pretty major compliment. However, it was a pretty…tame…rapid. On the third day, I went through a rapid that wasn’t even an actual stinking rapid and got turned sideways (not a good idea in a ducky, as they are apt to fill with water and flip over) and scared the daylights out of myself.

Lesson here? It’s actually pretty easy to find a passenger from one of the boats to take over the running of a ducky. I rode on Clint’s boat for most of the last two days. I didn’t have to do anything but hold on and try to keep my burning arms out of the sun.

– I. Hate. Sand. Sand in my shoes, sand in my clothes, sand in the tent, sand on my pillow, sand in my sleeping bag, sand in my mouth and eyes and food and in my chair. I HATE SAND. I hate trudging uphill in the sand to carry gear, I hate trudging downhill in sand to carry gear, I hate trudging through sand to get to the groover (toilet), I hate trudging through sand to get to the coffee, I hate SAND. HATE IT!

I guess I’ll never be a beach babe…or bum…whatever. #@*! SAND!

– Bumble bees are attracted to white baseball caps. I don’t know if they think maybe it’s a flower, or if I just smelled so lovely they couldn’t help themselves, or what. When I put on my hat (to hide my bad hair, of course) the giant bumble bees flocked to my head. Every stinking time. And do you know what I’m most afraid of?

Bees.

I’m sure the rest of the group got a kick out of watching me flail around every time a bee got within ten feet of me.

– Strawberry moonshine…keep it away from me.

– Dry bags only remain DRY bags if you close them properly. Also, dry bags develop a ‘camping funk’ inside no matter how well you separate dirty clothes from clean ones.

– Big horn sheep are super cool to see, but not when they are walking directly at you. Well, no, it’s still pretty cool, but not knowing if they are considering ramming you or if they are just trying to cross the beach…that’s a little unnerving.

…even if their horns are pretty small. I mean, horns are horns are horns, right?

– An up-river wind is the devil.

– There is such a thing as an unknown animal making such a horrible noise for hours on end that every person in camp is plotting how to hunt it down and put it out of commission. Permanently. After the first hour or two, talk of camouflage and sharp knives and guns begins…or maybe that was just the beer and moonshine and whiskey talking.

– Secret smokers pop out of the woodwork on long trips like this. More specifically, Clint and I thought we were the only smokers on the trip, so we brought just enough cigarettes for ourselves, assuming nobody would be running out of their own and bumming off of us. The last night, however, someone ran out of their chew. Amazing how smoking was suddenly less revolting to him.

– Five days was too long to be away from my kiddo. Maybe when he’s older and mouthier I wouldn’t mind going so much, but it was pretty hard not seeing his smiling baby face every day.

– If you make your husband really, really mad right as you get off the river for the last time, he’s likely to leave you to ride home with strange people all by yourself. And those strange people might be an elderly couple who blast the air conditioning until you’re shivering (thanks to the sunburn), and if you’re really lucky, you won’t be able to find ANYTHING to talk to them about for the entire two or so hour drive.

Don’t make your husband really, really mad.

– If your mother-in-law won’t:

Baby-sit for five days

House-sit for five days

Water the yard and garden for five days

Clean your house

Clean up the yard (sticks and weeds and leaves and junk)

…then you should trade her in. For MY mother-in-law. Except, I’m keeping her, so you’re out of luck.

And now my kiddo is up from his morning nap, so I’ve got to make up for five days of no baby smiles.

Pointless Anxiety, Anyone?

Next month, I am supposed to be going on a white water rafting/camping trip for something like four nights, five days, or thereabouts. It will be with Clint and a handful of other people, and I’ve been really looking forward to it the last couple of months. I love rafting, and I love camping, and I even love being with Clint, so what’s not to look forward to?

I’m having a minor melt-down about it right now. My brain is going into over-drive, and my heart starts racing and I break into a cold sweat and I keep on tapping my fingernails on the nearest noisy surface and chewing on my lip.

One of the issues, I think, is that I’ve never been a real big fan of my body. My arms, no matter how skinny or fat I’ve been, have always felt awkward and huge and ugly. My legs, which were nice and tanned once upon a time before I was oh, twelve or so, are painfully, blindingly white and they terrify even ME to look at.

I haven’t got any decent, comfortable, appropriate rafting or camping type clothing. Shorts and tank tops would be fabulous to wear, but…well, we’ve been over the reasons I won’t wear those already. I would be fine, I think, with some light-weight capris and somewhat baggy T-shirts but…I haven’t got any of those.

I have exactly half of a bathing suit.

The bottom half.

I do own clothes, of course. Like, one pair of nice jeans, several pairs of cotton lounge pants, a ton of pajama bottoms, and a single pair of silky pajama shorts. None of which would be real great rafting apparel. Well, the silky shorts would be okay, except that I would look and feel like Petunia Pig or the equivalent in them.

What’s the equivalent of Petunia Pig?

Not the point (What’s pigs got to do, got to do with it…or is that ‘love’? Hmm…).

Another issue is one that only girls will really understand, and so for the sake of the variety of readers that pass through here, we’ll skip on to my issue with sunshine.

The whiteness that puts people’s eyes out, remember. I. Can’t. Get. Tan.

Just on my legs, mind you. My face, neck, arms, and feet absorb sunlight and turn a nice brown color all summer long, but my legs do this obnoxious light-reflecting trick and remain pasty-pale all year. I’ve tried pretty much everything to get them to match my feet and arms, only to discover that no matter how “realistic” a fake tan CAN look….wow, they totally never look realistic.

Last summer, I wasted hours and hours and hours trying to get even the hint of a tan on my legs.

My legs reject color. End of story.

There’s also the problem of what to do with my stupid, stupid hair (as you’ve recently heard about). It’s not that I care so much if it looks exactly like I’ve been camping for a few days, but more that it gets in the way and in my eyes and up my nose and I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!

I do own a hat, though. Which is a zillion times better than the last big trip I went on with NO hat and only a black bandana to cover my bad hair with. When we got the pictures back from that trip, I heard several comments about how I resembled a cancer patient.

Why would somebody take a picture of me like that?!

Possibly the biggest worry I’ve got, and probably the only even semi-legitimate one, is that it will be the first time I’m away from my kiddo for longer than a couple of hours. He’ll be with his grandma, and I know he’ll be fine, but what about ME? What the heck am I going to do, not having to change a single diaper for four whole days? How am I going to survive without E’s happy little babbling noises he makes while he devours a remote control or dismantles my kitchen?

I think that I probably ought to take a deep breath, relax, purchase some good outdoor-type clothing (and tanning lotion…and maybe get liposuction), and try to enjoy the trip.

I can handle that, right?

Coming Soon: A post where I take a look at how sick it is that I feel so terrified of relaxing now that I have a kid (okay, probably not, but I’m not ruling it out).