One Crazy Summer

You may have noticed I’ve been AWOL lately.  It’s been one crazy summer, but not like the John Cusack movie.  June started off kinda slow, but then July has gone into overdrive.  Here’s what I’m in the middle of right now, and I’ll keep it somewhat short because I’m going in a thousand directions all at once.  But I wanted to briefly check in so that you all didn’t think the Girl Scout mafia finally caught up to me.

Last week my youngest daughter and I had the opportunity to go to summer camp for a week at WaBak.  It was two childhood dreams all wrapped into one – I got to go to summer camp AND be a counselor.  It was about thirty-five years after the fact, but that’s okay!  Growing up, I vicariously lived through summer camp movies from the 80s since my family couldn’t afford it, and I never sold enough cookies to get a free week of camp.  I was so jealous of Caroline and Jenny who did!  And those carefree counselors looked so cool!  I wanted to be a cool counselor too!  Well I got my chance!   Here are some takeaways from last week: 

• It was really hot and humid at camp.
• I’m not sure how the girls viewed me, but I felt like I slipped into troop leader mode moreso than I did as a counselor.  Of course, I have no idea what a counselor is supposed to be like.  A lot younger, for sure.
• Even though we all went by camp names, some girls were still very polite and formal to their two elder counselors and called me Mrs. Squirrel and my leader friend Mrs. Alfalpha (aka Becky, who I’ve written about before) versus the younger counselors who were just called by their camp name.
• I was surprised how popular I was with some campers.   Especially the younger ones.  I think they viewed me and Becky as makeshift mothers because we listened to a lot of stories about boo-boos (and patched up a few) and comforted the ones who were homesick.
• It was really hot and humid at camp.
• It would have helped to have known how to sleep in a hammock before I actually did it.  We put them up when it was pitch black, so I got in blindly.  I realized at 6:30am when the sun came up that it didn’t hurt my back so much if I slept sideways.  Oh wait, that’s how you’re supposed to sleep in one anyway.   Yeah.
• A total of eight hours of sleep over three nights doesn’t seem to affect you when you’re at camp.   Or maybe it did and I just didn’t know it.  Coffee.
• I never thought sleeping in a tent would give me the most rest, but it did.  Especially when you’ve slept in a hammock the night before and you’re just glad that your back is straight and not bent like a banana.
• Bring twice as many clothes as necessary to camp if you are neither sleeping nor holding any activities indoors.  Our dining hall doesn’t have air conditioning either.  Even my pajamas got so gross from sweat that I just started wearing the next day’s clothes to bed.  Two or three extra t-shirts doesn’t suffice.  I apologize to anyone that was around me within sniffing distance.
• I learned that I can fall and twist my knee, but I’m talented enough when this happens to keep a mug upright so that no coffee spills.
• It was really hot and humid at camp.
• I will not hold it against Becky that she got to sleep in air conditioning.
• I have some very sweet friends who sent me letters from “Mom” and a care package.
• Camp began at 2pm on Sunday and ended the same time on Friday.  Around Tuesday, I went into survival mode and didn’t care what I looked like.  Wash my hair?  It was so hot and humid that my thick hair just stayed damp from sweat the entire time.  So did my dirty clothes.  Did I brush my teeth?  I don’t really remember.
• I found I am capable of starting a fire even when it’s really wet from all of the rain and humidity.  It took me an hour to get it going and the girls helping me lost interest, but that’s okay.  It was one of the best fires for cooking I’ve ever made, and I was sad to put it out.  Well, actually the rain put it out.
• Heat exhaustion is no fun.  I had even prepped for the hot and humid weather two weeks prior by doing a lot of walking and hiking outside but it didn’t seem to help.  Yes, I hydrated all day and all week as much as possible under the circumstances.
• I had no idea how popular the song Old Town Road was until I found myself in a room full of girls singing it at the top of their lungs.
• I also realized that it didn’t matter what I looked or felt like because I had a very good time working with the girls in my session.  I was paired up with Cadettes.  I don’t know if I had the true “counselor” experience due to my age, but it didn’t matter.  I will remember that group of girls fondly.  I cared for them as if they were troop members, even if it was just for a week.
• My youngest daughter was very apprehensive about going to camp for a full week but reluctantly agreed since I was going to be there even though I wasn’t her counselor.  When we pulled away to go home, she said she had a great time with me at camp.  She fell asleep not even a mile down the road.
• Did I mention it was really hot and humid at camp?

I am attempting to recover this week as much as possible.  My knee is still stiff.  City Slickers is our service unit’s summer camp that I’ve written about before, and it starts next Wednesday and runs through Saturday morning.  It includes overnights. But we will be sleeping and working the majority of the time indoors with air conditioning.   Oh glory be!

We finish up City Slickers Saturday morning, and on the following day, I will be getting up very early and flying out to Yellowstone National Park with our Cadettes for a full week!  We’ve been saving up for three years for this!  My oldest daughter and another Cadette in our troop are also participating in City Slickers, so I anticipate the three of us will be sleeping on the plane.  Yeah, right.  I never sleep on a plane.

And how about all of those new badges and Journeys from GSUSA?  I won’t have time to really read through them until August.  In fact, I’ll be scrambling to try to familiarize myself with the Senior programming so that I’m set for our Cadettes who are moving up to Seniors this year.  And we’ve got to get them bridged at some point.  And I’m running a Girl Scout Jeopardy session at our council’s Volunteer Kickoff the second weekend in August.  And there’s more stuff I have to do for recruiting before school starts back on August 20th.  Ack!!

It’ll all be a blast, but: