The new dog park was christened this past holiday weekend. It has come to my attention that signage is needed. Rules, I will need rules. This is not a doggie day care where you simply drop off your dog, then leave to go about your business. Nor is it a doggie bathroom where they do their business and leave it for others to stumble upon.
There is one seating area for those inclined to use the park as intended. I have anther seating area in the making. Also found a fire hydrant to install for those dogs wishing for something to hike their leg on.
In the meantime, I will need to print out some rules. I don't mind picking up my dogs' poop. They are, after all, my dogs. I do mind scooping up the leavings of other dogs. I do it out of necessity. I admit resenting having to do so.
A nice gentleman came into the store yesterday and asked how my weekend was going. I thought for a second, then told him that people were here, so not so great. He agreed that a certain percent of the population made life difficult for the rest ...... I wondered why they all showed up here!
I watched, with relief, as my holiday weekend guests exited. I was looking forward to a decent meal to be eaten while sitting at a table, followed by some mind- numbing TV and a long peaceful sleep. I put a slab of marinated ribs in the oven, shucked the fresh corn and prepared the fresh strawberries from my garden. To my utmost delight, the sky grew dark and it started raining gently!
Thinking life could not get any better, I looked at the clock to calculate just how many more hours I would have to be on display behind the counter. I saw a taxi cab in front of my building. Being located in the middle of nowhere (the closest city has just a 4-way stop), a taxi is not a common site. A woman gets out and comes in looking for a tent site. She asks if I remember her, because she has been here one other time. I told her that I saw so many people, and was about to explain that I only remember the people who cause me angst.
She tells me that they came last year and left early because it rained. I look at her and say, " Are you sure you want a site ...... it is raining right now." All the while thinking to myself that she has now caught my attention and will be remembered. She then asks me if I think it will continue to rain. I say yes, I think so; having no idea if this is true. She decides to stay and I rent out the site. I am curious about the taxi and watch to see if the woman and her children are simply dropped off, but the taxi stays.
As the afternoon drags on, I decide to take a nap and leave He Who had a nice nap the day before in charge. I had a very relaxing nap. Over an hour. It was still raining when I took over the registration desk. I learned that the people in the taxi had decided to leave because it was still raining and when offered a refund, she said they would just come back another day for free ...... I would have insisted on the refund, who knows what rainy day will bring her back?
If this Memorial Day weekend is any indication, I will have lots to document in the months to come.
....... I put He Who is not at all good at manning the registration desk in charge at 6 last night and crawled away with my canine companions. Did not want to eat, did not want to face the mess in the kitchen. We went to bed. I turned on the TV and tried to convince the dogs that it was time to go night-night.
We are all creatures of habit and they did not buy it. Toni Louise kept looking out the window and growling at anything that moved. By 7:00, He Who is not an office person had discovered (invented) a reason to close early. I stayed in my bedroom and lolled in bed until I could no longer endure my wiggling canines. I wanted to go outside and troll through my gardens, but didn't dare, lest a child hungering for a snow cone should spot me.
He Who was hungry drove to the golden arches and obtained food. I had indigestion, in addition to coughing and wheezing. Smoke still lingers in the air from my pop-tart adventure.
So, here I sit in a semi dark store with 30 minutes before I have to open the door and sell last minute bags of ice and snow cones and candy. I will be watching the mass exodus from a long weekend of camping from the safety of my office lair. I slept, but am still tired. My throat is raw from the smoke and coughing and I have a slight headache.
The fire scene was still there when I awoke this fine morning. No little elves came in the night to make it all go away. I got most of the baking soda and chunks of burned up pop-tart into the garbage and strolled out to the dumpster. Six lids adorn the top of the giant receptacle. Yesterday I closed the two lids on the front and opened the two middle ones. There was plenty of room to put bags of garbage. But, someone decided to reopen the front lids and just keep piling trash until it overflowed onto the ground. I picked up all the overflow and did my thing with the lids again. I am always hopeful that they will see the front is full and use the open ones ........ In doing my due diligence to keep the garbage inside the receptacle I made an amazing discovery.
There is an artificial Christmas tree in my dumpster. Really. 'Hey, long as we're goin' campin', let's clean out the garage and take the big stuff with us and use that big dumpster...... that way, we ain't gotta pay extra to get rid of this crap.' Also lots of big boxes that have not been broken down. Fan boxes, grill boxes, patio furniture boxes and even a memory foam mattress box. I was dis-inclined to fish them out and break them down after the ant incident.
No strange bathroom tales this weekend, but two up-chuck incidents near the pool. Both were taken care of by the doers or the parents of the doers. The chairs are a different story.
When we bought this place, I wondered why there was no pool furniture. Figured the previous owners had taken it. I immediately put my patio set on the pool surround and started looking into some loungers. Patrons of the pool were amazed at this, telling me you had to bring your own in the past.
After 10 years you would think I had learned the ways of the world. I had given up on finding chairs inexpensive enough to fill the surround. I did have two loungers out there at one time, but, people in these parts are strange. It seemed to be a challenge to see just how fast the lounger could be destroyed. A few years back, a friend insisted on gifting me 24 Adirondack chairs for the pool. The heavy duty plastic ones. Bright red, easy to spot if someone decided to take one home. They stack and are easy to store in the winter.
Out of the 24, 15 remain in service. One very large woman broke two. She took one chair into the pool and was sitting in the shallow end when He Who is mostly easy going discovered the broken chair on the pool surround. He asked the woman to please bring the chair out of the water. She was stuck in it and told him that one chair had already broken when she sat in it and that we needed to buy better chairs. Mostly easy going, He Who lacks diplomacy told the woman she was too damn fat for the chair and that she had now broken two. He suggested that she not try to squeeze her abundance into another chair. His words were, shall we say, not tactful. But, if you have to purchase two airline seats, perhaps you should bring your own pool chair. The woman was very large, swimming in shorts and a t-shirt. Very large shorts and shirt.
So, imagine my annoyance yesterday when one of my spies informed me that some young teen boys were putting my chairs on their bodies and jumping in the pool with them. About a half dozen of them were out there, lolling in the water, my chairs attached to their butts. I approached the fence and asked them just what made them think it would be okay to try to break my chairs. One of them was very big boy (reminded me of Fat Albert ..... hey, hey , hey). "We weren't trying to break them." Of course not. I told them all to get out of the pool and go ask their parents if they wanted to pay for the chairs.
Two of the youngsters came in and apologized. They told me the ring leader had told them that he worked here and it was okay to do this. No name for this supposed employee, only a description. Being the only one manning the counter, I was prevented from a full investigation into the matter. I have no employees. If I did have employees that age, I can assure you, they would not think it okay to defy me.
And now I must open the door and attend to my business .......
The weekend continues ..........
Sleep came as soon as I hit the pillow, but the jangling phone at 24 minutes after midnight roused me. I had a complaint of excessive noise from the night before and had encouraged a phone call should it happen again. I stumbled into the office in time to hear the message wondering if I had any sites available. I went back to bed. The dogs were still sleeping and I crawled back under the covers and went back to sleep.
It felt like I had just recovered my optimum slumber when I heard the phone again. It was 2:25. I was not at all happy. I trudged back out to the office with 3 dogs trailing behind me. I did not make it to the phone. I went back and retrieved the old dog, Oscar and took them all out. Since I had to wait, I called the number back. "This is Kan-Do Kampground returning your call." "Oh, we were wondering what it would cost to tent camp at your park."
So, you are sitting around at 2 in the morning thinking about camping? And you say to yourself, "Let's just call around."? Cause, after all, that will certainly endear you to the person stumbling out of blessed slumber ..... "Do you know what time it is?" I ask. "It is a holiday weekend and I am booked up." I would have slammed the phone down, but that is not a possibility these days. No matter how hard you press that button, it makes no satisfying noise!
Had a hard time reclaiming my sleep after that and overslept this morning. Had only 15 minutes to dress and wash my face and brush my teeth, then brew the coffee. I raced out to check my bathrooms, restocked paper product and noted that I needed to empty the trash. No more time. Line forming at the door. I sold lots of ice to tent campers, took orders for firewood and finally had a few minutes to indulge myself with coffee and gossip among friendly faces.
The phone rings and I look at the number displayed on caller id ...... looks familiar. It is my middle of the night would be tent camper. For real! She asks about availability and I have some folks leaving and have sites available. She tells she will be here shortly. One of my seasonals was about to make his exit, but upon learning the identity of the caller decides to stay and "watch".
I know he is longing to see a full blown cat fight. The woman comes in and as she is filling out the registration I ask if she is the one who awakened me in the wee hours of the morning. She acts surprised and says, "Oh, I woke you just now?" I tell her, no, that she woke me at 2:30. "That wasn't me, I called you just now, only one time."
"That's funny, because it was the same phone number that showed up on caller id and I recognize your voice." She keeps her gaze down and we finish the transaction. Nothing like a little public humiliation for breakfast.
Still longing for some quality consecutive hours of sleep, I take advantage of the mid morning lull and swallow my pills, toss a pop-tart in the toaster and head out with trash can liners in my pocket to empty the bathroom cans. As I am heading back in, I get a request to re-boot the modem on the Wi-Fi and am intent on that as I open the door to the store.
I smell a burned pop-tart and think how great the day is going to be with this start. Annoyed that I will have to either toss my pop-tart and eat something else (they are fortified with essential vitamins and minerals!!), I head into my domicile to take care of the Wi-Fi problem. The pop-tart is beyond saving, it is on fire, along with the toaster and a cabinet!
I grabbed the baking soda and doused the flames, took the phone out of my bra and called He Who rescues damsels in distress. I yelled "Kitchen on fire!" and tossed the phone on the counter and grabbed the toaster as the flames were reappearing and tossed it out the back door. My hero enters and starts fanning at the dense smoke and grabs a fan to try to pull the smoke out of the house. I was busy trying to cough out all the smoke I inhaled and make sure the bottom of the cabinet was completely out.
A memorable Memorial Day weekend. Four more hours to go here. My hands are stained with snow cone syrup and my throat is burning. My back itches .....
My back itches because, in my mad rush to get all the trash in the dumpster before the Friday pick-up, I grabbed a bucket of debris and heaved it up to tip it into the dumpster, unaware of the millions of ants on the bottom of the bucket. The ants were running down my neck and into my sports bra. He Who mows found me indecent beside said dumpster as I beat them off the front side of me. The back is now covered in ant bites.
To be continued .........
Here I sit, sleep deprived, with only 20 minutes left until I can lock up for the night ......
I am not pleasant when I am this tired, but I need to wait for one last rig to pull in. It has been a trying day here at the kampground. Oscar, the old dachshund is barking incessantly, impatient for bedtime. Snowcone syrup cover my left hand and arm. Cotton candy, the blue dye is soaking into my skin, like an absurd tattoo. Children assault me with the same questions they asked last year on this same holiday. "What time does the pool close?" Dark. "When is dark?" Dark is when the sun no longer lightens the sky and you need artificial lights to see.
Every season I strive to be more organized, more steam-lined with check-ins. I carefully gather information when reservation are made in order to place every camper in the site most ideal to suit their needs. I ask all the pertinent questions, answer all the inane questions and am always full of hope when the day arrives, that this year all will run smoothly.
And every year I am disappointed. People come for a few seasons and then move on for whatever reasons. They like to try new places, go on longer trips, or just become disinterested in camping as the children grow and develop more activities. My seasonals are steadfast and I always look forward to seeing them. I also have groups and families that come every year on holidays. I have watched babies turn into toddlers and school-agers go off to college. It is almost like an extended family. I look forward to them, also.
But, like with everything in life, you have to take the good with the bad. It is only Saturday and I still have a long day and a half to go before I start to see the caravan of campers exiting the park.
It all began Friday, only yesterday, but it seems like so long ago. Check-in is "any time after noon". A litany I repeat with every reservation I take. They started to arrive at 9:00. No matter, I took it in stride. Kept me running back and forth as I finished my morning chores. By noon I am stuck in the store, with no view of the sites. They stream in and I carefully assign sites, confident that everyone is following my instructions. I have two large groups. One group comes every year. No deposit is required and they always fill the sites in order, so that if one of their group is a no-show, I can easily rent the left-over sites to over-nighters. Their kids are respectful and I am free to call them down should they misbehave. Love these people.
The other group is a new group. They came early in the spring and took 7 sites. Liked it and decided to come back for the Memorial Day weekend. One among them just wanted to put up a tent on one of the sites they were on. Unlike other campgrounds, I allow this and only charge the extra $2 per person per night that I would charge extra people in the camper. I am nice like that. For now. I am re-thinking this as I write this.
The first time they came the park was not reserved to capacity. When they made the reservations for this weekend, I made it clear that we would be full. They wanted 10 sites, 8 for sure, maybe 10. Not hearing from them last week, I could only assume they needed only 8, so I booked the remaining 2 sites. Glad I did, since only 5 showed up. The tenter came along again and the same understanding as before and paid accordingly. The woman told me how great it was that I would allow this. I basked in her approval for only a short time.
I assigned them their sites as they arrived, only to discover they had spread out, even putting the extra tent on a full hook-up site that was assigned to someone else. When that camper arrived and tried to pull into their site, they called and I relocated them rather than take the time to make the tenters move. I had some travelers come in off the road and as I tried to put them in the unused sites from that group I realized that no-one had pulled into their assigned sites, but had just taken ones they wanted, thinking to use the entire area.
I was annoyed when I went to bed. This morning I sent He Who was not allowed to abandon me to tow out to eyeball all the sites and tell me what I had open. I knew I would have some last minute campers calling, hoping to find an opening.
I did get several calls and campers started to arrive. I began filling the empty sites according to the size and electrical needs of the campers. Had a big rig coming that would need 50 amp service and a long site, so I once again call upon He Who un-clogs shower drains to actually go and look to make sure the site I have in mind is still open.
Good thing I did. The tenters who had occupied a full hook up site the night before, preventing me from incurring revenue had taken it upon them selves to move. Yes, they moved to the site I now needed to put this traveler on. Keep in mind, that I had decided to just let them be and work around them, avoiding a confrontation. He Who is normally quite easy going was having none of that. He requested they move. The same woman who had extolled my virtues upon arrival became incensed and told him she was not moving again, that she had moved twice already because "you put people in the sites next to us". They decided to leave and came to the office to get a refund. No, I am not kidding. She told me they had "had to move twice already", giving me the impression that one of us (not me) had requested the move. I gave her a refund and explained to her that when she was here before that she had not occupied a site and that the revenue from sites is how a campground survives. I was nice. The store was full of people and she ended up looking like an ass.
It has been a long day, surely Even Steven and Murphy's Law owes me a better tomorrow and a good night's sleep ..........
I have wanted to expand this garden in my side yard for some time. The curve I had created a few years ago is not easy to mow, so I decided to make a friendlier curve and set bricks in the ground so that I can put two wheels of the mower on the brick and eliminate the need to weed eat. Seemed simple enough. The ground was wet and easy to dig. I used the sod I dug up in other locations in the park. I never, ever waste.
I got a little carried away and kept going with the brick ...... Since I have no shortage of free mulch, I put down a very heavy layer. 125 five gallon buckets to be exact. The bucket load equates to a bag at the garden center. I hauled 6 buckets at a time. I just scored another bucket and can haul 7 now. This is cedar and when the breeze wafts into my bedroom at night it smells wonderful. Actually, it smells a lot like Christmas!
Turned out better than I had envisioned. I am still hauling mulch to various gardens in the park with my 7 buckets and the golf cart. My limbs are aching and I have quite the tan.
The week before a holiday weekend is always filled with last minute projects ..... and reservations. Just took a call from a woman requesting an electric tent site. Oh, and make it a secluded one ........ Secluded? On a holiday weekend, she will be lucky to find a spot at all. She was a little miffed when I tried to explain that I was pretty much booked solid and the only tent sites left would definitely not be secluded. She says she will call back after she talks to "her man". Really, she said "her man".
Next call was a woman requesting a tent site pool side. When I explained that all those were reserved she said, "Well, just put us on the beach then." Beach? I don't have a beach. "You know, the beach by the lake." Um, I don't have a lake. I have a pool and a pond. No lake. " Isn't this Cuivre River State Park?"
And that is how the day was going. Between fielding calls and running buckets of mulch to the dog park I was keeping an eye on the office. Saw a Missouri Propane Commission vehicle drive up. I went up to see what the man needed. He was still sitting in the government vehicle, windows up, engine running and air on. He finally looked up and exited the vehicle. Just a safety inspection. Didn't need me. I went back to my task and set two stepping stones, covered the ground, and laid my load of mulch. He was still there, at the dispense station doing his inspection. Why am I noting this? Because, the vehicle was running the entire time. Waste. My tax dollars at work!!
Site #14. Rich and Jackie. They do a nice job, always neat and clean. But, Jackie has a self proclaimed brown thumb. It is true. I have seen the results. She planted some hostas last year. They have peeked up through the ground, but look sad and little. She swears a camper must have urinated on them one weekend while she was gone. I don't know about that, but I do know you have to water them occasionally.
I took pity on her and built a garden. I gave He Who mans all matter of digging equipment instructions to dump a load of dirt in this area amidst the trees. He proclaimed this load of dirt to be "good dirt". I am not sure what he considers to be good dirt, but, it took some doing to remove the limbs and big roots and such. The mound you see was not smooth and rounded.
I fought with this "good dirt" and finally had an approximate shape I could work with. I dug up some of my perennials that were due for a good thinning and got to work. Cone flowers will be the anchor in the middle of the mound and day lilies will grace the edge on the yard side, while big tiger lilies will be on the road side. I worked as long as I could. It was still cold in the evenings. I was only half way there and had a plan in my head when I stupidly mentioned to He Who knows good dirt when he sees it that another bucket of dirt would have been better, but that I could make do with what I had.
I know better, really I do. When next I set out to complete Jackie's garden, I encountered a mountain of dirt he had decided to dump there. No, he did not hit the part I had already planted (lucky for him), but the mound was now lopsided. I literally had to climb to the top and start digging it down to make a reasonable looking shape. Not perfect, mulch will hide a multitude of sins. More lilies, cone flowers and hosta went into the garden. It is really coming to life now and looking nice.
There are ballots available in the office for voting for the site you think looks nicest. Nobody ever votes anymore. So, I decided to honor my hard work. I am, after all, the one who counts the votes.
Is this just the cutest puppy ever? Wears his heart on his little hind end. Love this!
But the next one is the dog for me! Just imagine having this little sweetheart. Walking him (could be a girl, I don't know for sure) down the street. One would never lack for a conversation starter!
Just think of all the attention you would get with this one at the end of the leash!
I would definitely buy this dog! How much is that doggie in the window ...... the one with the ... um, markings on his tail. I do hope this doggie's for sale.
