We did not camp this past weekend.

We had every intention of camping.  We had our entire truck packed within an inch of its life filled to the brim with camping equipment and coolers and food and bedding and … everything.

And it all stayed safely packed for over 48 hours while we spent an enormous amount of time driving in a tropical storm and hanging out in a hotel room.

That’s life, right?  That’s just how it goes sometimes.

For us and camping, it happens more often than not and John, in utter frustration, vowed to never commit to tent camping in Mansfield ever again.  (I don’t think that will be the case … I think we will tent camp again.  But probably not for a long, long time).

Friday was a test in patience that we both, at various moments, failed.  Why drive four hours (theoretically — in good weather with no accidents or traffic) to a campsite you know you aren’t going to use?   Because … family.

Why spend five times as much money to book a hotel (with a broken hot tub and swarming with children for some unknown reason)?  Because … family.

So on Friday, as we spent the entire day driving and back-tracking and changing directions and being exhausted physically and mentally with the unending rain, we both intermittently lost our patience.

Luckily, not our senses of humor.  At some points during the ride I laughed so hard I couldn’t breath.  I wiped tears of mirth from the corners of my eyes.  But at 8.45p, after arriving and unpacking only to have to repack everything and move rooms due to a broken bathroom door — I definitely wasn’t laughing.  I was just so … achingly … tired.

We push through.  That’s what we do as humans.  We assign an end goal — we will get to HERE by THIS TIME and we will accomplish THIS along the way.  It’s all arbitrary and then, it isn’t because social norms and standards of society dictate that we do the things to get to the places to satiate  … the thing.

Anyway.  I said to check back and I couldn’t leave any possible reader hanging in the balance, not knowing how our doomed camping trip turned out.  It didn’t.  And that’s just how life happens sometimes.

xox, g