Camping Countdown: T-Minus-51

Apparently there are 51 days until we go camping. I actually thought it was a little longer than that, but that is because I can't read a calendar or something. Less than two months. Yeesh. We better start getting our crap together.

You think I'm kidding, but sadly, I am not. I am totally "that person" when it comes to vacations. Well, those vacations that are not all-inclusive, anyway. Obviously when we go on all-inclusive vacations we don't have to worry about packing enough of anything except underpants and sunscreen. The big trick with those kinds of vacations is making sure that you tip your waiter enough on the first day that he puts you at the beginning of the route when he is making his rounds with the mai-tais and the cold bottled water. Also, getting to the buffet early enough to ensure that the plates are still warm while you laze your way through cooked-to-order omelets and that the bowls are still chilled when you fill them with fresh slices of mango and papaya.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yeah: camping. Needless to say, we don't worry about omelets and mango and flagging down the mai-tai man. Sunscreen is only a concern in passing. We are much more worried about bug spray and keeping the raccoons away from our Twinkies and trying to remember whose turn it is to get the wine coolers and bags of ice and oh my god kid how did you manage to get fish guts in your underpants?

Even though I've been alternatively terrified and horrified about this camping trip -- I mean, in theory it will be fun, but I am a spoiled brat sometimes, so in practice I am not sure quite how awesome things will be -- we have been slowly but surely getting our supplies together, or at least trying to remember whether we have them or not. As previously reported, we got a new air mattress, and we just recently picked up a new tent. I've been keeping my eye on the BJ's flyers to see what we might be able to start picking up, like 60-pack cases of mac & cheese and 5-pound bags of tortilla chips and gallon-size jars of salsa and shelf-stable organic (?!?) milk and pickles and huge wheels of cheese. I have a trip to the dollar store planned, to pick up some spices and Italian dressing and aluminum foil.

Basically, now is the time when we stop the planning and start the organizing, which is when I tend to run into trouble. My ability to organize things is limited to the strictly conceptual only -- like, I can organize a 50-person party or a book club or a fantasy football league, but once it comes time to actually execute these things, I ... freak out. Basically, I overplan, and then I can't fit all the pieces together. I arrange and rearrange and pack and repack and I drive people insane and then I melt into a brainless puddle of goo when it is actually go time. I am totally "that mom" who has a magician, a clown, AND a live pony at her kid's birthday party.*

This is why I tend to think it's a good idea to make friends with the mai-tai waiter.

Still, though, even though I still have so many things to do -- take the sleeping bags to the laundromat, find out who has a charcoal grill, figure out who is going to be responsible for the red wine, the white wine, the beer, the hard liquor, the Xanax, etc. -- I am now past the point where I am dreading this vacation (sleeping in the dirt! with spiders and wildlife! aieeeeee!) and on to the point where I can already taste the Mississippi Mud Pie at Foxy's. And that is a good thing indeed.

* That statement is full of lies: I would never, ever have a clown. They're creepy.