Boy Does My Ass Hurt From That Karma Bite!

Today's lesson is not to tempt the fates! Last week I got a bit cocky and felt the need to brag about what an easy job I had this summer. If you recall I went into great detail about the 'easiness' of being a facilitator at camp. Well a lady by the name of Karma must also subscribe to my blog along with all of you wonderful people. This week tells a different story! Although it wasn't all bad and we had some good times it was not as cushy as week one.

First with the good. Wednesday was carnival day for the campers, and it was a lot of fun. We put on an event for all the kids with games, face painting, popcorn, slushies, etc. The staff dress up in the most ridiculous costumes and help out for the evening. I made enough popcorn for 200+ people in old fashioned popcorn machines and then helped out with the Slurpee serving. It was a lot of fun! Thursday was Grand Council, which is a very ceremonial tradition at this camp, and it was great to be a part of. Also on Thursday we got a bag of marshmallows for our cabin and got off early for the evening. That was a lot of fun. At Moose cabin we hosted a social campfire in the pit in front of our cabin. This was the first (of many to come) opportunity we had as staff to get together and relax and joke around. We roasted marshmallows and had a few good laughs. We decided to make our Thursday night campfire a weekly thing for resource and operations staff from the other cabins. We also started a little friendly competition. It was decided that among the three cabins we are going to have a cabin decorating competition. You may have seen the picture of the cabin I posted on facebook, and the other cabins look the same. The rules for said competition are that we decorate the outside of our cabin in which ever way we want. Our budget to complete the whole thing is $10 per cabin, and we can also bring stuff from home. The losers of this are required to bring the treats for Thursday night campfire as well as they get pied in the face by the winners. So I am putting out a call to all my followers on here. Give me some ideas! If you have an idea to help the Moose girls win this thing (our stiffest competition is the newfie boys in Deer cabin) please inbox me your ideas on facebook, and I will gladly post pictures of me whipping a pie into Steve's face!

Now, onto the title of this entry. I suppose the first issue was the four teenage campers that decided to go crazy. Without going into too much detail I will say that on Thursday shit hit the fan and the managers we otherwise occupied babysitting. So the resource staff had to fill in for the Grand Council ceremony, which was fun but it also meant the managers we stressed from the situation at hand. So after that got squared away we were relaxing in front of Moose Cabin with some other staff. The campers were all getting ready for bed around 9:30pm and we were just chatting at the picnic table. Then we hear two 13yr old girls arguing beside the bathroom. One was going all Maury Povich on the other and the manager who was with us had to go and intervene. Everyone went to bed a little tired from the days events. I went to bed fine, but then around 3:00am I was woken up by what I can only describe as the Apocalypse going on outside. The windows of the cabin we rattling, the rain was slapping against the side, the walls were shaking and the whole cabin was rocking. I thought the cabin was going to be ripped from the ground, or at least the roof ripped off. My first thought was thank god I am not in a tipi right now, and then I thought perhaps the 4 girls causing all the trouble were indeed the four horsemen! Somehow I was able to fall back asleep during that and had a broken sleep until Friday morning.

Friday morning is when all the week long campers leave and in the evening is when the Family campers come. When we woke up the bad weather was gone a side from a bit of wind and the air was a bit cooler then it had been. The week long campers went home with their parents and the counsellors prepared to go home. I had a fabulous daygroup for most of the day and then got ready for family camp. As the day progressed the wind got stronger and stronger. By the time the family campers got there the wind was whipping through the valley with gusts up to 75kmph. As you all know the camp accommodations consist of about 30 tipis. Wind and tipis don't really hang out that well. So just as the families started to arrive the tipis started to come unpegged and the canvas started to fly up. We registered all the families and directed them to their tipis. After everyone was registered Diesel and I had to spend almost two hours with hammers banging the rebar tipi pegs back into the rocky ground. This was exhausting and difficult. Most of the land there is rock, so it isn't the easiest to pound rebar into. The vibrations of the metal hammer on the metal rebar against the rock made for a painful hand by the end. All the families were on edge, and wanted their tipis fixed first. We had to pull down the canvas and try to hold it down while we hammered away in some cases. The family in bobcat tipi had to be moved because the back of the tipi caved in. We moved them to Bluejay, which then was blown sideways by the wind, so we had to move them again. There was a little boy and his mom in Bat tipi, and the boy was a nervous wreck. He was scared to death that he was going to die inside that tipi. We put his poles in, pegged the tipi down the best we could and finally got him assured that everything was going to be okay. We started to walk away from their tipi and from behind us we heard a big crack and looked to see a huge tree topple over across the road ripping the roots from the ground not far from Bat tipi. The little boy came running out of his tipi yelling "The tree! The tree!" and pointing at the fallen tree. It was a long exhausting night and I fell into bed around midnight and passed out. The next day the wind had subsided a bit, but we still blowing pretty steady. We had to cancel the pontoon rides for the morning due to the wind, but there were other activities for them to do. The day with the families wasn't too bad, the mood got better with the weather and by the evening the wind had settled and most of the families were in a better mood. I, however, had started to break out in a rash all over my back. From what, I have no idea. I do know that by Sunday morning it had spread over my arms, legs, back and stomach. So far Benedryl seems to be holding it at bay.

Aside from locusts I think we were plagued with everything else, and needless to say that by noon on Sunday I was more then ready to be off!