Devil’s in the Details

Sometimes the devil is in the details.  This past weekend, the details snuck up on me.

Like I mentioned last week, the past two weeks have been busy at work.  Two major events — a big public speech and a gala — all happened within four days of each other.  There were seating arrangements to make, guests and volunteers to keep track of, photographers to coordinate, speeches to write, etcetera.

In the midst of all of this, we decided to tack on camping and hunting trips to these events.  What I was thinking, I’m not quite sure…but one thing I am sure of is that I had to pack everything but the kitchen sink.  A week later and I’m still unpacking.

On Saturday of last week, Brandon and I met up with his older brother Brian, Brian’s wife Stephanie, and their daughter Grace at Texas’ oldest state park, the very first one in our state park system, Mother Neff.  The park is named after Ms. Isabella Eleanor Neff, who donated her family land in 1916.

But like I said, the devil is in the details.  We were borrowing a tent from Brian and Stephanie, so all I had to bring was sheets and my air mattress.  No problems there, right?

Except yeeaah, finding out how big the tent is before bringing an air mattress might be a good idea. Pro tip.

Luckily after folding it into a taco, we were indeed able to get the mattress in the tent and have a good night sleep that night.

But that was about all we could fit in there.

Once we sorted this out, I was ready to build a fire and get this camping party started.  Except funny thing, in order to start a fire, you need dry kindling (small twigs and such) and dry firewood.

It had just rained a couple inches at the park, so almost everything around–even at the hardware store–was wet. I collected kindling from under large trees, and that tended to be drier. After a while we were able to get it going with the help of our two boy scouts husbands.

Speaking of the weather, and details, I also failed to look at the weather report before leaving the house. And as it turns out, the temperature dropped twenty degrees and all I had was this camo cotton jacket. Thank goodness for the fire.

In the morning, Stephanie had big plans to make breakfast over her Coleman gas grill but a tiny little metal circular doohickey that the entire system depends on broke.

It was time to give up.

We piled in the car and headed to town, and found one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever been to in McGregor, with a full breakfast buffet that included warm gooey cinnamon rolls.  And they were just what the doctor ordered.

All of this got me to thinking about how I’m going to manage details when Ihave kids on top of full time jobs that scatter our brains hither and yon.  No telling what else we will forget.

But I take comfort in thinking that no good camping, hunting, or hiking story is about everything working out just as you planned it.