"Cabin"

Back when I was in college, some cute boys proudly announced they'd gotten a cabin for the weekend in Southern Ohio.  They wanted my friend and I to go with them.  "You've got to be nuts.  It's winter!", I said.  The boys wheedled and cajoled.  "It'll be warm in the cabin!", they responded.  I wasn't a complete fool.  There are cabins, and then there are cabins.  Some wouldn't be much better than sleeping in a tent staked onto frozen ground.  "No, no", they said, "It has a TV and everything!"  I didn't care about watching TV in the woods, but if there was electricity it had to be reasonably civilized.  I agreed to go.

The days are short in January, and drive to Southern Ohio from Central Ohio was longer than anyone expected, so it was full dark by the time we got there.  We had to hike in the blackness up a steep hill without a flashlight since college boys apparently don't think of useful things like flashlights.  We stayed in the dark once we found the cabin because nothing happened when the light switch was flipped.  I couldn't see anything except sparks while the boys tried to start a fire in the fireplace.  I asked about restroom facilities and was told to just go off the back deck.  Oh yay.  Camping with boys in winter.  There wasn't even a moon that night.  No stars.  Just blackness.  I clutched the deck rail and hoped I didn't fall into oblivion.

There was a fire by the time I got back inside, but for some reason it didn't give off any heat.  We gathered dusty mattresses from the cots and made a barrier around ourselves to trap some warmth.  One of the boys proudly showed me the TV.  "See!  I told you it was here!!"  A tiny portable TV with the screen kicked out and no electricity, but sure, the TV existed.  Should I still call him honest if his honesty was to purposely mislead?

One boy was good with a guitar and I happily sang with everyone else while we drank heavily as college kids often do.  I slept soundly and didn't even hear it when the beer froze on the mantle and exploded in the night.

I woke up the next morning and went outside.  I got my first look at my surroundings.  The large deck had a giant hole in the center that gave an excellent view of the stream 200 feet or so straight below.  Any of us could've fallen to our deaths in our drunken bathroom visits the night before. 

When I got past the shock of that truth, I silently absorbed the beauty of the place: tall trees, a frozen waterfall, all wrapped in deep, deep virgin snow.  My silence was broken by a fellow reveler coming out and taking a leak over the deck rail, happily chattering about everything.  Soon, everyone was awake and making a racket.  There were snowball fights, treks up the frozen river, and boyish efforts to bust up the pretty, frozen waterfall.  A good time was had by all but I've maintained my suspicions about boys' promises and winter camping.  I'll give them this though, they did give me an experience to remember.

Oops!  I forgot to post this on Illustration Friday.  Since IF hasn't given a new word yet (Saturday) I'll post this on the site and see if we eventually get a new word. 

For those of  you who alread read this and came back looking for a new post, here's a pickle photo.  This is 2 pecks of cukes -- which is a lot.  It's what I did with my Saturday since I didn't have an IF word to keep me occupied :)

"Camping"

I moved the train and finished my latest painting.  I was feeling pretty darned pleased with myself when I got out the bottle of Liquitex acrylic medium to finish it.  I put on 2 coats of gloss varnish, and went to the store for a new bottle of matte.  When I got home that night I used the dregs of the old bottle of matte on my painting. 

Just so you know, matte finish isn't as durable as gloss which is why I applied the gloss first.  It's helpful too because you can tell if you've missed a spot with the gloss.  Don't fuss with acrylic finishes.  Put them on and leave them alone -- but I noticed some specks.  I fussed it a bit to get things right before setting it aside to dry and going to bed.

Next morning, it the harsh light of day, ohh noo!!  I didn't get all the specks out.  A couple areas looked misty because I'd overworked the finish.  I tried to scrub a couple of the specks and went from misty to cloudy.  This turned into continuing and deepening disaster.  I read online help.  I called a retired chemical engineer.  Nobody offered hope.  I scrubbed, dabbed chemicals, hosed it down in the kitchen sink.  Eventually, I ruthlessly scrubbed the thing with an old toothbrush.

After a while, everything looked fine when the painting was wet.  It looked horrible when dry.  With nothing to lose, I applied the gloss finish over the damp painting.  Success!!!

So, should you ever be faced with the same miserable situation you can try this when all else fails.  You may also be pleased to know that I didn't slap the chemical engineer when he told me to just repaint the whole thing.

After all of this high drama, I was next to a busy road weeding the city's flower pots when a good looking guy waved at me and yelled, "Woohoo!  Beautiful!!!"  It's been a long time since a good looking guy has woohooed me and this lifted my spirits.  At a certain age this doesn't feel like harassment.  Of course it's entirely possible he was praising my flower pots, but whatever.  I'll take it.

And yes, my painting does address camping.  The name tag tucked behind the wash cloth is from my days as a teenaged camp counselor for "slow" kids.  The kids were sweethearts and they weren't slow in any of our activities.  Teaching them to draw and study salamanders was fun.  I applauded at their somersaults off the diving board.  We skipped down the trail and sang.

My duties got expanded to include lifeguarding institutionalized developmentally disabled ("retarded") adults.  This was more challenging because they don't remember instructions.  Rule #1: do not go in the pool before the lifeguard gets there.  I can't tell you how many times I found an obese person on the bottom of the pool, and I still wonder about the other counselors who would leave them by a pool unattended.

I don't know why the skinny people didn't drown themselves, but it was always a 300-400 pounder at the bottom of the pool.  To make things worse, the rest of the class had a hard time understanding I needed help getting that person out of the pool.  They all agreed it was really, really funny when the drowned person puked on me after I gave them mouth-to-mouth and got them living again.  I was puked on too many times to count.  Character building, right?  I loved that job, and I loved all my kids and my kids in adult bodies.

I'm especially proud of my apple!

"Wild"

Every year my family went camping.  Dad wanted to go as deep into the wild as possible and led us into multi-hour sing-a-longs in the car.  We made words out of the letters on license plates and waved to truckers.

Oh, okay, maybe things got loud when one of my sisters punched me.  I’d holler I didn’t touch her, so her punching was unfair.  “If I have to stop this car somebody’s going to get hurt!”  We believed it too, so we’d behave for a while… until I went back to my favorite pastime looking at Sis #2 in various ways until she exploded and punched me again.  After a while she could sense when I was prepping for another round of looking.  The real beauty of this game is that when my sister screamed “She’s looking at me!!!” my parents had a complete lack of sympathy.  Mom told Sis to ignore me, but Sis was incapable of ignoring me.  This might get us as far as Ontario.

Once in Canada, things settled down into a cement blur of boredom.  Sis #1 studied something useful, Sis #2 would chatter about people in the other cars, and I’d play car games with my parents.  When Bro #1 got old enough, I looked at him too.  I guess I was mastering my future boss persona, and eventually learned that if I look too much at people I’m liable to get punched.

So, after many, many, many hours in the car of family togetherness, we’d pile out and erect a tent on the sharpest rocks in the forest.  Once, we pitched the tent on a patch of poison ivy.  Most of my relatives woke up scratching and complaining, but I was pleased that sensitivity to poison ivy is a weakness of lesser humans.  (I’m afraid to test that theory in more recent times.)

One morning I woke up on the Canadian side of Lake Superior before anyone else.  I remembered the blueberries we’d found the day before and decided to pick some for a blueberry pancake breakfast.  More blueberries were getting shoved in my mouth than going into the colander until I started slowing down enough to notice that I wasn’t the only one shoving down berries.  A black bear was just as interested in them as I was, and he was so close that I could actually see his hair bending under the weight of a black fly walking on his fur.

Oooooooo…. Back away slowly… then… RUN!!!!!

I doubt Mom understood that I could’ve died by bear when she complained I didn’t bring back enough blueberries, but Dad seemed to think maybe we shouldn’t continue camping at this most beautiful place if there were bears around.  I hated to pack up the tent.  The water of Lake Superior was a gorgeous deep blue, we jumped off sandstone cliffs into the pure water, and Sis #2 almost sent herself to America on the raft we built.  Good memories J  Well, maybe Sis didn’t think so because she really did almost get lost on that raft.  Dad had to swim far and fast to get her back while I waved bye from the shore.

I guess it’s a good thing Dad caught her.  It would’ve been very boring to stare at my oldest sister into violence on the drive back.  Besides, Sis #1 punched harder.

This has been a crazy weekend in a crazy week, so sorry, no masterpieces this time.  Besides, it seems to me that I’ve covered “wild” many times in the past.  I asked my brother to be guest artist because I was too tired to draw and this is what he came up with.  I think I should’ve given him a fresh piece of paper instead of having him draw on the backside of a work report.