Things I’ve (discovered) learned about camp and various other stuff about me lately:

• Camp food is bad.  Your stomach will hurt regularly.
• People (counselors) will be hired as role models for children, so that they may teach children how to not be clique-ish and how to be polite.  These people will be cliquish and rude.
• Those annoying guys who blare their speakers in their car while parked?  You’ll encounter them in camp too.
• It’s hard to shave your legs in a stand-up shower. 
• Mice roam free, as it is the wilderness and all.  Hide your food.  Mice will find your granola bar and chew right through the packaging.
• Your neighbors will stumble home drunk from a night off and open and close the door loudly.  You’ll hate them.
• You’ll meet a ton of different (and sometimes) cool people.  You’ll wish everyone in camp was as different and cool.
• The camp bathrooms will not always be equipped with TP.  Look for TP before unzipping your jeans.
• If you work for a camp, realize that you will have crappy hours! A 15 minute lunch?  It takes me 10 minutes just to get food from the line.
• Be wary of letting the camp do laundry for you, especially if you have nice clothes.
• Camp is pricey!  I mean over $7,000 for an 8 week session?  That doesn’t even include extra activities, camp trips, and various other things that the camp has to offer.  I’ll have to start saving to send my kids to camp someday.  Not this camp though.  Another one.
• I’ve lost weight.  I’ve officially lost 14 pounds since coming to camp!

The Boy:  “What the hell are those kids doing?  Walking…on…the…ground!”
Me (staring): “What?”

Me: “What is it with your underwear being inside out all the time?”
The Boy: “I don’t know!  I just put it on.  I don’t look!”
The Boy (deep in thought): “At least it’s not backwards, right?”

The Boy, smelling my armpit: “Wow, that’s the first time you don’t have that good Noreen smell you usually have.”

In my defense, I was sick for about two days and no one told him to smell my armpits.

• I start working on the 15th.
• I am already not looking forward to my job.
• New Jersey is weird.  I have to turn right, so that I can follow this circular like thing that will send me straight because I wanted to turn left in the first place, but you wouldn’t let me.  That’s right, you can’t turn left or u-turn anywhere in New Jersey it seems like.
• You can’t pump your own gas in New Jersey.  Should I tip them for pumping my gas?  Yes?  No?  What’s the proper etiquette here?
• I ate at Chick-Fil-A for the first time on Tuesday.  Best chicken sandwich I’ve had in a fast food joint.
• I went hiking on Monday and found a tick on my pants and on the outside of my underwear! I am now paranoid about ticks.
• The Boy had a tick on his arm, for about 6-8 hours (usually that’s how long it takes for them to get through the skin).  I had to pull it out and yep, it had broken through the skin and was sucking his blood.
• We encountered a deer on the road.  The Boy honked and two minutes later, it decided to move out of the way.
• The fog/mist here is so thick at night, I spend most of the time braking and hoping there isn’t a deer on the other side of the mist.
• Ling-Ling, our guinea pig was in heat and kept mounting Selma.  Selma headbutted her a couple of times and basically tried to stop Ling-Ling from raping her.

My Dad’s birthday is on May 31. This is the first birthday of his I will miss (since he’s in California and I’m in Pennsylvania) in my 26 years on earth. It makes me sad.

What also makes me sad is the lack of food places around where I’m at. Applebee’s was a 10 minute drive before, now it’s an hour away. The closest place is McD’s, but for some reason, the fries here don’t taste the same way they do in California. They’re not bad…but they’re not quite as good either. I want a Pot Belly sandwich from Erik’s. I want to see an In-N-Out somewhere! Or a Round Table! A Togo’s!

Not that it matters. I’m on day two of my oranges, Boost, and water diet. My appetite seems to be dying, which is a good thing. I wouldn’t mind dropping a few pounds, but it’s weird because I LOVE food. I am always hungry. I’ve dropped 10 pounds in the past month or so. Cool, huh?

Although, I think I’m just a little bit homesick. For the food and the family anyway.

I possibly have a job! 

I know I said that I don’t have to work this summer and I really don’t have to work, but I’m BORED.   I’ve been watching DVD’s throughout the day, reading, playing Burnout Paradise and organizing our stuff, but that is getting old.  Quick.  We have no cable up here…no cell phone reception…and this morning the electricity was out for some unknow reason.

So, I got dressed and headed to the city (Honesdale).  I called Mark (the director of the camp we’re at) and he said he’d put together a proposal for me to work where The Boy is working.  I’m excited.  It’s gorgeous out there and I won’t have to drive 26 miles to get to work everyday.  It does suck having to drive 10 miles out of your way to use the damn phone though.

I’ve seen deer practically everyday we’ve been here and yesterday I saw a cute, little bunny crossing the road.  It’s so different from living in a city.  It’s quiet.  Eeriliy quiet.

Everyone is nice.  I’m from California and people are NOT nice, let me tell you.  Random people wave to me.  People brake for others when they cross the street.  People say they’re sorry when they bump into me.  It’s taking a while to get used to it all.

One little boy at the supermarket stared at me as if he’d never seen an Asian woman before and he probably hadn’t.  It was cute and I wasn’t at all offended.  I thought it would bother me more, being the only person out here that’s Filipino, but it hasn’t.  In all honesty, I’m pretty white-washed anyway.

I am in Lake Como, PA.  Seriously.  The drive was long!  Nebraska takes forever to get thru; I also hate Nebraska, but for other reasons.

We have no internet access at the Lake.  None.  I’m sitting inside the Honesdale LIbrary.  It looks like an old Victorian home and I strangely feel as if I am trespassing.

We also do not have cable or cell phone reception.  The three hour time difference is kicking my ass.

But the Lake is pretty.  It’s also quiet and our lovely guinea pigs are adjusting. 

The best part? If I don’t want to, I don’t have to work the entire summer.  I can take a break.

Hee!

We’re moving.

To New York! Uh, Pennsylvania, actually. Since he received a better offer. Moving in about two weeks. Ahhhh!!

We’ll be moving around mid-June. The Boy received a job offer in upstate New York and I’m pretty fed up with California…so, yay!

This is what adulthood looks like on the weekends:

• Paid off about $100 of credit card debt. Only $1200 more to go!
• Did two loads of laundry.
• Ran over the neighbor boy
  He bolted right out in front of me. In the parking lot!
• Cleaned the bathroom.
• Made cinnamon streusel bread.
• Complained about the neighbors throwing a party.
  Their kids were running up and down the stairs. Sheesh.
• Shoe shopping.
  But not buying anything because there’s the credit card debt to take care of. That $25 you spend on the shoes should go toward the card!

I need something to keep me awake and entertained at work. I’ve found it below! Just had to pimp out these comics. They’re hilarious!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Let me start by saying my dad is cool, for a dad. He’s honest, fair, has a great sense of humor, and most of the time will let me live my own life regardless of how he feels about it.

Keep all that in mind while I relay some of my most vivid childhood memories of the man.

Memory #1
My Dad and I are playing checkers. I’m eight years old and he rules at the game. I have yet to beat him, but through some odd turn of luck, I win. He loudly declares that I did not win because my move was illegal.

It wasn’t illegal when he moved that way! To this day, he tells me that I have not beaten him at a game of checkers.

Memory #2
We’re at a local mall and getting out of our car on a hot, hot day. Since my dad is too cheap to use the air conditioning (it wastes gas, he says), I crack my window a bit before we leave so it’s not stifling.

“Close your window all the way! Someone could throw a cigarette in the car and set it on fire!”

The crack is tiny. Someone would literally have to deliberately push their cigarette through the opening! I understand his reasoning…people do some mean and weird things. It’s possible, but not likely. Apparently, it happened to a friend of a friend of the family…and you know how that goes.

I close the window.

Memory #3
I was walking to the car from the grocery store and in typical fashion, I was walking with my head down (self-esteem issues, poor posture, who knows). As soon as I get into the car, “Pay attention! Someone could just come out and kill or rape you! All because you walk with your head down!”

It’s broad daylight. The car is parked right in front of the grocery store exit. I was on the verge of saying, “You wouldn’t try to save me or anything?”

I sometimes wonder if my family is crazy or if this is how Filipino families work.