Graduation

This cute red shack lives at the intersection of some major roads leading to the county beaches. Or maybe this is a major intersection of some cute red roads leading to the county beaches. How about a cute red intersection leading to a major county beach and on the way there's a shack?

Either way, no matter how you slice and dice it, today Chesapeake Bay Woman is so worn out and spread so thin that she can't correctly situate her adjectives or construct a proper sentence can't see straight and wonders why she refers to herself in the third person, as if to distance herself from herself.

After reflecting upon that opening paragraph, she understands and no longer wonders about the need for distance.

This week Chesapeake Bay Son graduates from 8th grade, and aside from the fact that I never knew one graduated from 8th grade, this entails an awards ceremony today; an 8th grade dinner tomorrow night, and a graduation ceremony on Friday morning followed by lunch and then a pool party down Ware Neck. Then he takes off for a week at the beach with a friend.

I went from 8th grade to 9th grade without anyone's acknowledgement any ado; graduated from high school with a class party down Port Haywood where I slept in the back of a Volkswagen Vanagon with six other people; then graduated from a major university. I don't remember pool parties or ceremonies or free beach vacations being involved.

Yet I'm very proud of him and will try not to make comparisons happily cheer him on at each event.

Do you remember any major graduation festivities other than college or high school? What is your most vivid memory of any graduation event?

Camping

Above is a shot of the Chesapeake Bay from Aaron's Beach in Mathews County. On the other side of the bay on the Eastern Shore, the Chesapeake Bay Family camped this past weekend.

I survived!

There's been no time to download and upload and load and unpack and pack and all that stuff, so I don't have photos yet (or a functioning lower back).

I do have a mathematical equation to kick off the week.

See if you can solve this addition and subtraction problem.

Ready? Begin.

Butterscotch pudding for breakfast
Because really, why not?
2 showers, 4 days
1 broken bicycle chain
1 community bathhouse
Minus any toilet paper by Day 3
No natural disasters!
No trips to the E.R.!
1 delightful sunset viewed from rafts while floating on the bay with son and daughter
1 putt putt golf game which daughter didn't win, so subtract any possibility of fun for the remainder of life the afternoon
1 uninvited raccoon eyeballing the smores at the campfire
0 ants!
18,692 people from another planet New Jersey and Pennsylvania stuffed into two small tear drops swimming pools
1 dead fiddler crab at the camp site
0 TV + 0 internet + 0 video games + forced family interaction
4 days of listening to Teenager Music
0 vegetables in 4 days, unless you count french fries and I do
0 fruit in 4 days, unless you count wine, and I do

When added up, this represents a priceless weekend with my two favorite kids--and an ardent desire for a shower which doesn't require flip flops.

Bonus Question: What are the odds that with 18,692 campers spread out over 600 or so acres I'd be a mere two campsites down from three people I work with? Anyone?

The math portion of this post is now over.

How was your weekend?