Camper Barbie Strikes Again

I get in trouble with my blog from time to time. The latest - with my mom. Apparently, people aren't fond of you using their emails to entertain your readers without permission. Especially when they are making comments about other people. I ran into a little problem this weekend when she wanted me to remove the entry - but I couldn't because I was camping again. Yep, you heard me, camping...two weekends in a row. Camper Barbie strikes again.

This camping trip was to the same place in The Keys - sans the seven children and Sheila, replaced with Marc. For those of you who have never met Marc, it's REALLY hard to picture him, of all people, camping. I had a sneaky suspicion he would surprise me and enjoy it, and I have to say I was right on the money. He left the Hugo Boss at home, and totally adapted to the roughing it pretty easily.

We didn't pull into the campsite until almost 10 pm. As we approached 'PT06', Marc laughed and said, 'here? we are going to pitch this tent here, in this SANDBOX?' I don't know why, but that line kept me giggling throughout the weekend. So, I proceeded to show off my new found camping skills, and started the tent pitching process. Only there was a problem, I borrowed the wrong tent. Sheila has two tents, and I THOUGHT I'd grabbed the big one. Nope, I grabbed what can only be thought of as a 'pup tent' - aka WAAAAAYYYY too small for a 6'5" person. Of course I did. Miraculously, I did get the tent up in record time, and it STAYED up the whole weekend. Go me.

Saturday morning, we were awakened by what Marc called - 'that racket'. 'That racket' - was in fact, nature. Granted, nature took the form of what had to be 10 woodpeckers, but still - you know you are city folk when you think birds are more annoying than blaring taxi cab horns at 6 am.

Marc and I spend a lot of time cooking, and eating. It's our 'thing'. Well, we managed to take the cooking and eating to a whole new level, thanks to my new fishing pole. I've really never fished before and I must say - it's a lot of fun. Well, a lot of fun where we were anyway...drop your line in the clear water, where you can see 1000 fish swimming around, and two seconds later you pull up your next meal - now that's fishing.

The fishing started out with me, being extra girly. No f'ing way was I going to put that live bait on the pole. Well, by the second day, I was putting the bait on my pole, his pole, and the poles of the group of stranger kids who were fishing next to us. I even got to the point of pulling the hooks out of the fish mouths. Clearly I'm proud of myself. I did have to draw the line at cleaning the fish - super disgusting and totally a man's job.

Saturday afternoon, we hopped in the car and drove 70 miles to Key West. Key West...hmm... a lot of fond college memories. Sloppy Joes - can you say ALL you can drink for $10? I don't know if they are still running that special, but we did pop in for a quick beer.

We made it to the famous Key West sunset - and I think I'm now old enough to appreciate just how beautful it really is. I also got a tarot card reading from a Polish dude sporting some serious eyeliner. The last time I got my cards read I was also in Key West circa 1992 - the long and short of that reading was that she told me I was going to marry Joey...at the time that was a totally OUTRAGEOUS thought so I assumed she was full of crap. Needless to say, that, along with the other outrageous predictions she made that day...came very true and made me a tarot believer for life. Time will tell if the eyelined Pole was good at his job. He too had some pretty crazy shit in store for my future. Like I'm in need of any more crazy shit.

So, there you have the tale of camping - part deux. I'm totally hooked until I can find yet another new hobby...any ideas?