The Great Escape

Our camping weekend was wonderful! Here's our home away from home, our little pop-up camper. We went to French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania and enjoyed the spring weather. We hiked, relaxed, and the boys did a little fishing (as opposed to catching, as my husband Ken said).


I felt really good most of the weekend. Even my allergies quieted down. It's no big mystery, really, just more evidence that stress affects CFIDS more than anything else. When we're camping, we're so relaxed. There's nothing to worry about. We have just a tiny little space to take care of, our meals are pre-planned and simple, and there are no competing distractions. No phone, TV, computer. No schedules or errands to run or to-do list to worry about. The four of us just exist in a peaceful, easy world when we're camping. And what could be more relaxing than sitting around a campfire at night?

We also had fun going on a geocache hike on Saturday. Some of our cousins got us hooked on geocaching last year, and the boys got a GPS from their grandparents for Christmas. Now, wherever we go, we enter coordinates into our GPS and go hiking to look for the "treasure" that's hidden nearby. Of course, we have to be careful to choose short hikes (we had to pass up on some great multi-caches this weekend), but it's still great fun.

Back to the real world today. Ken left yesterday for a week-long business trip - always a challenge for me. I've stocked up on easy meals and am hoping my good health holds out for the week. The toughest part is mornings. I have to get both boys out the door to different schools at roughly the same time. Ken handles a lot of the morning routine, since I'm usually a slow starter. The boys and I were like a finely tuned military operation this morning - up at 6:45 (felt like 5:45 because of Daylight Savings Time - yikes!), out the door at 7:25, drop Jamie off at middle school, back home in time for Craig's bus to pick him up at 7:50. Whew. We did OK this morning, but wish me luck for the rest of the week! Have to try to recall that peaceful feeling sitting around the campfire eating s'mores...