This week we had the famed Camp Anna, which got its start due to the pandemic and has continued and expanded every summer since then. Our phenomenal sitter Anna runs the camp at our house, blending all sorts of activities so the days are somehow relaxed and packed with fun at the same time. Two of Amy’s friends joined the camp, and a good time was had by all. They played games, created watercolor art based on Exquisite Corpse drawings, where one person starts a drawing and passes it to the next person who continues it based on only being able to see the connector lines. They wrote collaborative stories and songs with each person setting the tone and theme for one of the pieces. They created animations by scanning drawings into a computer. They created cat puppets by using sewing machines, fabric scraps, buttons, string, and sticks. Amy made a strawberry cat puppet, and Sarah made a musical note cat puppet. For the last day they had a cat cafe, lemonade stand, and bake sale that was delicious even if it didn’t yield quite as many customers as they might have hoped for.
The one thing that I’m sure Anna didn’t plan on was arriving one morning to my saying, “Can I borrow your nose?” and leading them to smell my basement. While I knew something was off, and I knew it wasn’t just humidity or a sewer smell due to the hard rain we were getting, I honestly couldn’t place what I was detecting. I thought I hadn’t cleaned up properly after cooking with one clove of garlic the night before. I have nothing to say for myself except that my brain did not want to accept what I was smelling, which Anna rightfully identified as skunk. Oh no!! Why did Carl have to be away for this moment?! Our basement most definitely smelled like a skunk, and not just a little bit. I looked everywhere, not without some trepidation. I did not actually climb into the one crawl space that can be accessed from the outside, but I looked as far as my eyeballs could stretch. An internet search recommended putting out shallow bowls of vinegar to dispel the smell. I did that, but it didn’t help much. By the end of the day, I decided to spray vinegar in many places on the cement floor of the basement. After two such treatments, the basement smelled like its normal self again.
Yesterday, the girls and I did the Run Around the Square. It is a 1.5K run/walk in our neighborhood. Or, if you are Amy, it is a cartwheel-around-the-square. My new goal in life is to be unhurried when going anywhere with Sarah, so she and I left the house to walk to the start of the event at the same time that Amy was waking up for the day. We didn’t see Amy until the end, but there she was cheering for Sarah to cross the finish line and waiting to share her cookies, because by the time Sarah and I finish they are always out of cookies. Sarah jogged for almost the entire course. It was her best year yet! She held pictures of Granddad and Pop-Pop the whole time so they could run with her in spirit.
Cheering you on and saving cookies for you in spirit!
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