Of crouching in the cold and buffalo carp

We've spent most of the summer at home this year; the price of gas and other family situations haven't allowed us the opportunity to do much traveling. We had planned a long stay at the lake over Labor Day weekend, but the wind kept us in the RV most of Saturday.

We did have the opportunity to get out in the boat for about an hour and I managed to dump my son off the tube, the only unfortunate thing about was the fact that I couldn't see the look on his face when he went airborne on eight separate occasions. I also took a turn on the tube, fortunately Jer was a lot gentler with me than I was with him and I was able to walk following the little adventure.

The first night we spent in our newly purchased RV wasn't the easiest night I've ever had. Temperatures dropped down to around 50 and in our hurry to pack we had forgotten the blankets. We laid down about midnight and covered ourselves with a sheet. Jeremy had no covers.

I was still awake at 1 o'clock, so I got up and sat in the living quarters for a while. I went back to bed at about 2 a.m. I lay in bed shivering.

I got up about 3 a.m. and decided to check the poles; I re-baited them and went back to the living quarters. Jeremy was lying in bed curled in a ball, obviously as cold as I was. I found some towels and tried cover him. I sat shivering in the chair. I tried turning on the heater to no avail. Jeremy had said all I had to do was turn up the thermometer -- I tried … it didn't work.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. "Jer," I whispered after hearing him cough, "are you awake." It was like a chant for the next half hour. He'd cough and I'd check on the condition of his consciousness. Finally he gave up, rolled over and looked at me through the haze of sleep. "What do you want?" he asked, none to tenderly.

"Heat," I told him. "I have to have heat."

He got up, went outside to turn on the propane, came back in and turned up the thermometer. The heat kicked on and I could feel the ice melting from my feet. Jeremy went back to sleep.

At 4:30, I couldn't take it any more. I didn't want to wake Brad up by crawling back into bed, and Jeremy was using the couch bed. The only other option I could see was the floor.

I slid to the floor like a maiden swooning from the heat and slept for the next two hours in the same place that I'd fallen -- with an anchor digging into one side and a bottle of lighter fluid digging into the other. I woke up at 6:30 when Brad got up to go to work. Getting off the floor was a 15-minute ordeal.

We tried fishing. We caught the only four fish -- buffalo carp -- in the cove where we were camping, using four dozen worms, half-pound of shrimp, and a pound of liver; obviously they were hungry little guys.

After Saturday's winds and more of the same predicted for Sunday, we packed up early and headed for home.

Monday night, out of the blue, Brad informed me that I shouldn't make any plans for the following weekend because "we" are going to be putting storm gutter up and putting in the glass blocks we bought four months ago.

I haven't made weekend plans for 10 years. I decide to do something and when Brad gets home, we go do it. That's my way of planning for the weekend.

I find it hard to plan the next hour in my day -- usually because I've lost one of my three planners I carry with me at all times.

So in the end, Brad can go ahead and plan to put up rain gutters and windows, I plan on going to bed in half an hour.