Monday, May 26, 2008

Retreat


We leave today for our camping trip. The first of the season, we prefer to go to the campground when everyone else is leaving it. It's peaceful, relaxing and a way for our family to reconnect. Funny that a totally connected homeschooling family needs to reconnect every once in a while, but there you go.

I'm trying not to obsess about how much has to be done before we pull out of the driveway. We did a lot of lugging and loading into the car yesterday, so today it's just compressing the clothes and sleeping bags, getting the perishables in the cooler, packing the medicines and off we go. After tidying up the house - I hate coming home to a messy house - taking the bird across the street and making sure the boy next door has a key to feed the other animals.

We are also trying hard not to think about poor Diamond, one of our guinea pigs, who died yesterday. She had a cold and was breathing pretty hard. I held her for a while, looked up medical care on line and learned there wasn't much to do about it. I knit with her on my lap on the front porch for a while, she just sat in the crook of my arm, breathing. Little Missy held her for a long while too. And then we put her back and continued the frenzied pace of getting ready for a camping trip - laundry, dishes (dishwasher broken), gathering supplies, trips to the grocery. I was making biscuit and cornbread mixes when I asked my girl to check on Diamond. She came running down the stairs saying the wasn't moving. Sure enough, she died between the brick and the side of her cage, under the food bowl. Should have put her pigloo in.

A sad beginning to our trip. But it would have been worse if she had died while we were gone. Worse for the neighbor boy feeding our herd, worse for Little Missy to learn of it when we got back, worse for poor Diamond who needed some extra snuggles before she passed.

We're heading to an Internet free zone, cell phones off, life in the woods. The chance of thunderstorms diminish as the day goes on, so getting out late wont matter much.

2 comments:

Babette said...

Gee, I totally missed the doctor coming out and informing the kids of rules being busted. I did think the yarn ladies looked a little frazzled too.But I know with all of our gift cards and extras we made it worth their while.

Babette said...

Sorry about the guinea pig. Poor thing. Hope your trip is wonderful.