Organizational skills, or the lack thereof

For some bizarre reason, people who don't know me well always end up telling me what great organizational skills I have. They assume that because I tend to be a little compulsive about a few things, like shelving CDs in alphabetical order by artist, that I'm well-organized in general. Pshaw. It is pure illusion.

The S.O. and I just returned from spending 3 nights at the Younger Daughter's place. We swapped days off with the other campground hosts because they need specific days off at the end of the month. End result was that we wound up with four days off in a row. That made the 100 mile drive to Farmington worth it.  So we decided we'd pack up our laundry and go bother Tammi for a few days.

Okay. Three nights away from the Guppy. How much time could it take to pack and how many bags could we possibly have when part of what we were taking was a week's worth of laundry? Common sense says it should have taken us about 30 seconds to get ready to depart: throw some toiletries in a ditty bag, toss it in a suitcase with one change of clothes per person, load suitcase and the laundry basket in the car along with Cleo and her food and insulin, and hit the road. Didn't even have to worry about bringing a litter box or cat litter because Tammi had both on hand. If only life were so simple. . .

Hitting the road turned out to require a lot more than just a simple change of clothes and our toothbrushes. We were going to be gone for 4 days so that meant rounding up all the chargers (cell phones, camera batteries, tablet) and making sure they came with us. After all, it would suck to get to Tammi's, be in the middle of playing Angry Birds on the tablet, and not be able to recharge the device when it went dead. Had to have my knitting, so that bag had to go into the car. Had to have the manuscript I'm editing -- I'm getting paid to do that and a deadline is imminent. Couldn't forget the empty 20-lb propane tank that we needed to swap for a full one. And so it went. Several hours later the car was finally packed and came close to bulging at the seams with the various odds and ends that we couldn't live without for a few days.

Coming back was worse, of course. Suitcase, basket, cat and her accessories, propane tank, miscellaneous tote bags with my knitting, editing job, chargers, whatever plus the goodies I'd picked up at the Container Store in St. Louis -- because, you know, if I just buy enough totes and baskets and miscellaneous racks by god I will actually end up being organized -- along with our other retail therapy and flea market finds, like a major score on an Atlas canning jar with a zinc lid -- it's full of spools of thread, some of which are totally unused. I'm sure whoever sold it filled the jar with the thread to turn it into an objet d'art, but I looked at it and saw at least $12 worth of thread stuffed into a jar selling for only $7. What a deal -- nifty canning jar that I'll wash and use as a canister and all that perfectly good thread. And, on top of all that, we had to find space for groceries we knew we needed because we'd pretty much left the refrigerator empty except for condiments. . . and my days of mixing ketchup with hot water and pretending it's tomato soup are long past. By the time we got out of Farmington, the trunk was stuffed full and the back seat was piled high. And about half that stuff sat in the car overnight because we ran out of ambition after unpacking the most important stuff.

Small digression. I love the Container Store. I really do buy into the illusion. If a person just has the right combination of totes and baskets and shelving units, all the clutter in her life will magically disappear. I love walking through that store fondling the merchandise. I look at the almost infinite variety of storage boxes and other goodies and keep thinking "I could find a use for that." And I did find a really nifty basket/tray thingie that's going to be useful here in the Guppy. Sometime later today, probably while the S.O. is off fishing, I'll do a major reshuffling in the way I've got our groceries organized. Then tomorrow I'll get to listen to the S.O. curse when he can't find his cereal. Good times.

The canning jars filled with odds and ends seemed to be a thing at the antiques mall where I got the Atlas jar. Very strange. I probably spotted at least a dozen in various vendors' booths. There was another jar filled with sewing notions (old zippers, packages of zig zag tape, etc.), one filled with colorful scraps of cardboard, and a few others. All struck me as very strange. I'm guessing someone got the idea from Pinterest or some decorating magazine. I know there are several publications that specialize in telling people how to decorate with flea market finds. Thus, I'm reasonably sure that whoever sold the jar I bought never considered the possibility that a potential buyer would ever be more interested in the jar's contents than in the jar itself.

Heartbreak at REI

Stairway down to viewing platform at the Devil's Well. It's a humongous
sinkhole with an underground lake. Water from the lake flows through karst
formations to Cave Spring and into the Current River. 

The S.O. and I had a few days off from campground hosting this week -- more than usual because we swapped days with the other hosts -- so have been relaxing at the Younger Daughter's place since Monday. We've done some touristy stuff like visit the Devil's Well and Alley Mill at Ozark National Scenic Riverways, hit a few antique stores and flea markets, and gone up to St. Louis to do some serious shopping. And that's when I experienced heartbreak at REI.

REI no longer carries the Teva sandals I love. These are the sandals I live in for about half the year, depending on where we are. In the U.P. it's more like only a third of the year because even I have to admit that once there's snow on the ground it's no longer sandals weather. I'm not kidding when I say I love these sandals. They're super comfortable and last almost forever. They have, however, gotten to the point where forever is almost here. They're still wearable, but the end is in sight. They're coming up on their six-year anniversary, and pretty soon I'll have to bid them a fond farewell as they hit the trash.

The Alley Mill. Along with the Portland Head Light in Maine and the Mabry
Mill along the Blue Ridge Parkway, this has to be one of The Most
Photographed Buildings in the country. Your tax dollars at work: NPS
put a lot of work into it recently; it's looking really good. 

On the other hand, we did find a Lodge cast iron frying pan at REI for sale at the lowest price I've seen on them anywhere so we've added that to the Guppy's gear. Seeing various campers cooking over campfires at Montauk has inspired us to acquire a few items so we can get into doing that, too. Up until now, when camping and cooking combined in my mind, it was more like backpacking cooking: small, lightweight pans used with a buddy burner or a backpacking stove. But if we're going to be where there are actual fire rings and there's plenty of firewood, it makes sense to take advantage of them. One of our flea market finds on Tuesday was a cast iron dutch oven with minimal rust -- the S.O. is going to work on cleaning it up and seasoning it. Tammi tells me one of her friends is the Master of the Dutch Oven: he can cook or bake almost anything in one. I'll have to invest in a camping cookbook and see what we can manage to achieve with ours besides the obvious stews or chili. I can cook on a woodstove -- how much harder can cooking over a campfire be?

The S.O. admiring the Alley Spring. The turbine pit for the mill is behind him;
the mill was powered by a vertically shafted reaction turbine.

And, in one of those it really is a small world incidents, I had the experience of running into someone at REI who had been at Montauk the previous weekend. He and several friends had camped in the basic section for a night before heading out on a canoe trip on the Current. They had made the mistake of asking me for directions to the Baptist Camp put-in. Never having been there, all I knew was that after leaving the campground you turn right on YY and eventually you have to turn right again. I could not remember if there was any signage that would help them. I told them to consult the large map on the front of the shower house. He said they did consult the map and managed to get lost. They had to return to the park and ask at the office for directions. The question did inspire me to put a few Ozark NSR brochures into the shoe box on the campround host's golf cart so that next time (if there ever is one), I can just hand the camper one of them. (I also now know how to give actual directions, having just driven that same way on Monday and seeing for myself just what the road is like and where the turn to Baptist is.)

The mill as seen from the other side of the spring. Over 80
million gallons of water pour out of the Alley Spring daily. 

I really wasn't expecting to run into anyone who had been at Montauk at REI in St. Louis. Most of the campers at the park are more the Orvis store or Bass Pro Shop type of personalities. I have been half expecting to encounter someone here in Farmington, maybe at the local Country Mart or Aldi, because the bonfire crowd had mentioned being from Farmington when we got into the discussion about that trailer load of firewood. So far it hasn't happened, but it won't surprise me if it does.

As for the sandals, I did look in a few other stores hoping to find something similar. No luck. I may have to resort to an online order, something I really hate to do when it comes to footwear.

A first

A Chicken Outlet store in Westfield, Wisconsin.  I'd never seen this particular variety of outlet store before, and I'm fairly sure I have no desire to see one again.  Considering some of the strange stuff I've seen in the meat cases in supermarkets, I really don't want to think about what discounted chicken parts might consist of.  In short, I may have stopped to snap a photo, but I did not venture into the building. 

Doing our part for economic recovery

And we were actually sensible instead of going for the Nissan Xterra of my dreams.

Retail therapy

Well, it wasn't gear shopping in the DaveO sense, but the trip to REI was worth it even if I didn't emerge toting a kayak or a tent.

I must say, however, that a quick trip to REI on one's lunch break can make it really, really hard to go back to the cubicle for the afternoon.