This is what you want....

(the title's from PiL, for those of you not from the Paleolithic Era. Public Image Limited, for those still wondering what I'm on about now.)

Second Husband and I headed off to the woods for a few days. I needed some serious peace and quiet. We left on Monday, got to our destination around 2pm, hung out, ate, slept, got up, ate, he fished, ate some more, then sat around the fire until he got the Impending Doom sensation that drove us to suddenly break camp and stuff the damn huge tent that suddenly thought it was a frigging Macy's Thanksgiving parade float into the van and flee with decorous but hasty steps into the night.

I got a little over 24 hours of the peace and quiet I was after. It wasn't enough, and it's my own fault.

See, I got talked/talked myself into car camping. I fell prey to the lure of a fire ring, a nearby toilet with lights and whatnot, the van being only ten feet away and chock full o'conveniences, even if the price to pay was Other People. I told myself it was better than the Place By the Lake With Coytoes, which has no lights, no toilet, no parking near the tent, no fire ring and no Other People. It'd be better to camp less wildly this time, I told myself. Maybe next time.

Then Second Husband got the Doom and we came home early anyway. We came home to cats causing chaos (including barfing, shitting inappropriately, tossing litterboxes over, and various and other annoying behaviors, causing me to stare at the lot of them and intone, like Prachett's Death, ADULTS DON'T LIVE LIKE THIS Y'KNOW AND THERE ARE TOO MANY OF YOU SO I THINK YOUSE HAD BETTER FLY RIGHT LEST I MAKE GLOVES FOR FREYA OUT OF THE WORST OFFENDERS).

Oh, and I quit smoking. I hate it and I don't care, which is weird.

I've been tired and blah since we got back and I think it's because I didn't get what I really wanted - the coyotes singing me to sleep, the fear of the deer running through the tent in the pitch black, the half-mile hike to the site. The lack of potable water. The lack of any lights. The lack of any sanitary facilities. The lack of any human being I didn't bring with me.


Like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, I didn't emphasize the importance of the kangaroo; hence, here I am getting twitchy again because three of us in one 10 x 12 room is just a little. TOO. CLOSE. This leads to thoughts like the following:

FIRST HUSBAND: It's the full moon tonight. We should do something.
ME: Uh-huh.
F.H.: Not, maybe, the full, high-church thing. But something.
ME: (Why, yes, what a lovely idea. I think I'll find some belladonna and an unbaptized baby or nibble the neighbor's datura and then I'll be butt-naked up the front tree except for my combat boots and a metal colander on my head, screaming at the moon and calling to the owls) Uh-huh.

I'm not sure why they put up with me, or why I haven't made a burrow in the pool cabana, really.