A Road Less Travelled

Sunday evening we had a church cookout and campout, which naturally involved lots of good food, ultimate frisbee, and staying up way too late talking. I determined that, yes, I am still spoiled, as doors opened every time I walked toward them with my hands full, inconveniently place clotheslines raised several feet as I ducked under them, and a roasted hot dog near magically appeared on my plate without my having to do anything about it.

Gabrielle and I were the only ones from our respective families who stayed for the camp out, though Gabrielle’s token presence as a Ben-Ezra was enough to ensure that it rained on our campsite before morning.

To my surprise, I was even talked into playing volleyball after studiously avoiding it for many years of my life. It turns out that painfully awkward memories of volleyball just not being fun eventually become less significant when it’s ten o’ clock at night, and you realize that the people playing are actually your friends, and aren’t going to hate you no matter how badly you play. And yes, I really did play that badly. But I did manage to hit the ball once, and instead of anyone yelling at me for hitting it in the wrong direction entirely and knocking it out of bounds, I got a ‘good job’ for actually hitting it.

The next morning after too little sleep, waking up to a soggy world, and a really good breakfast (over which I was sleep deprived enough to actually bring up zombie attacks as often as they crossed my mind, which is really surprisingly often) I joined a game of ultimate frisbee. In this game I managed to fall on my face once, not actually catching the frisbee I dove for, but making me feel like I must have really played because I got my pants muddy. I also, mostly by accident, block a pass with my elbow, which was quite painful, and again, made me feel like I must have really played. I feel slightly gypped that it didn’t bruise…

After packing up from our camping experience, Gabrielle and I headed home briefly before both households went over to Ralph and Ruth’s house for the rest of the day. Obviously, this involved a lot more good food and some playing of games. Rather less obviously, I actually won the game we played. Though I was too tired to properly gloat at the time… I borrowed James’ winning strategy from last time we played and took it to the next step, fully expecting this to result in the usual ‘well, I played my strategy fine, but everyone else still beat me’. And now we must play again to see how the Borg-like assimilation and adaption of the other players changes the flow of game play.

So once again, it feels like Monday when it’s really Tuesday but with Wednesday Night Dinner because we moved it to Tuesday. On top of this I’m still reacting to eating more sugar than usual the last two days and probably still short on sleep besides being sore from getting better at sports. Is it bad that I think it was all totally worth it?