No you CANNOT have my free T-shirt.

Last weekend, we loaded up the camper and made our way to beautiful Wolcottville for a camping trip with the Friends.

The kids got along tremendously (Ganon and Sophie have formed a special bond; Shawn has already warned me that I will be paying for that wedding. But I'm not worried, Shawn, because we're just going to throw up a tent and have a hog roast in your backyard after the kids get back from the courthouse, so joke's on you.)

If you've never been to Gordon's Campground in Wolcottville, well, okay. Can't say that I blame you.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it was certainly a nice time, and I would go back. But the place has got some, uh.....personality, and might take some getting used to, depending on your expectations.

For instance, they have daily activities that they announce and advertise all over the place.

On Saturday, we headed over to the Bingo Pavilion for Craft Time. 

Not a soul was in the Bingo Pavilion. We waited. We called the front desk. We waited some more. Right then a golf cart pulls up, and a woman with a ratty Gordon's T-shirt and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth gets off the golf cart and brings over some bags of beads for the kids to make into bracelets. 

Not once did she take that cigarette out of her mouth the entire time we were crafting. Tiffany and I looked at each other, both kind of indignant about this woman smoking directly at our kids, I mean, I get it, we're at a campground, we're in Wolcottville, Indiana for pete's sake, what did I expect, but come on, this was the kids' arts and crafts director, do you really have to smoke while you're doing arts and crafts for the kids???

But, cooler heads prevailed, we simply had our kids sit at a separate table and we brought the craft stuff to them instead of having Ms. Chain-Smoking Bead Lady blowing smoke in their faces the whole time. The kids made their bracelets, and all was well.

Me helping Noah

Here's Sophie modeling the finished product for you

Then there was the playground equipment.

I mean, the kids liked it, but like I told, Ben, "It's like taking our kids to 1981 to play."

There is a newer playground at the front of the campground, with updated equipment. That's what you'll see on their website. What you won't see is the rusty tractor in the playground across from our campsite. Which, of course, all five kids were instantly drawn to.

Nothin' dangerous here, ma!

Then there was the gigantic rusty tower with teensy little chains for barriers and slippery gigantic fifteen-foot tractor tires as bridges.

Don't worry about us, kids, we're just seconds away from a heart attack here watching you guys prance around on this equipment, you kids who are so used to your twenty-first century playground equipment with all those silly government playground safety rules, you have no idea it is even possible to get hurt at a playground, nevermind the image we have right now of you falling fifteen feet from that ridiculous tractor tire and breaking your neck, which means we'll miss the pie-eating contest later, and heaven knows we don't want to do that.

Look, I'm by no means a super-over-protective mom, and I'm okay if my kids do things that they might get hurt on, you know, it's a good learning tool for them.

But this stuff was terrifying. We let them play on it for ten minutes, then shook our heads, called the kids down, and steered them towards the merry-go-round for a while just to save us from collapsing from panic attacks on the spot.

Speaking of the pie-eating contest, here's some pictures. It wasn't actually pie. Just bowls of pudding.

Shawn and Ben. 

As Ben said, "My whole life has been one giant training session for this moment right here."

And of course, he was the victor.

It's possible Shawn was a bit of a sore loser.

Other pictures:

This kid's got it figured out.

Walking to the Bingo Pavilion. Ganon and Sophie had to hold hands everywhere.

On the hay ride

All five kids turned into certifiable monkeys on the jungle gym right next to our campsite. Thankfully, this thing was old, but not death-trap material. Climb away, kiddos.

(Travis, Ganon, Noah, Tanner)

And now Sophie.

Tanner really gave it his all. Sorry, dad, I think you're gonna have to pull it this time.

We got to keep the pudding tub following the contest. Sophie was pleased.

All in all, we had a great time with great company. Even if we had to steal Ben's winning T-shirt back away from Shawn at the end of the weekend.

Keep practicing, Shawn.  Maybe next time.

The one where I think I am being stalked

Last Wednesday evening, Erin and I took a run around the neighborhood. We do this fairly regularly, usually every Wednesday evening, and usually with Melissa as well, but due to a whole lot of random circumstances, it was just Erin and I.

We came to a spot on Firefox Drive where someone had written in sidewalk chalk on the sidewalk.

It wasn't your run-of-the-mill hopscotch board, or pretty, harmless little pictures like sunshine and rainbows.

No, it was a threatening message from a homeowner to whoever had let their dog leave his "marks" on the sidewalk and the yard in front of his house.

The message was something along the lines of "I'm looking for you and by golly I will find you and then I will give you a chocolate sundae. Just come knock on my door."

For clarification, "chocolate sundae" is a euphemism for what was actually written, which I would like to avoid putting in my blog in case there are impressionable young readers here.

At any rate, Erin and I kind of chuckled about it, boy that guy takes dog poop seriously, then went along our merry way.

Fast forward to tonight. We got home from a super-fun camping weekend (pictures to follow, including, if we can recover an accidentally deleted video from the FlipCam, Ben's smashing victory in the "pie" eating contest. You will not be disappointed.) and I decided to take Canada out for a run.

There was a slight, misting rain; but it was a nice night for a run.

As I turned the corner on Foxfire Drive, I noticed that Mr. Sidewalk Chalk had been busy. Anywhere a stray piece of dog poop had landed -- and there was a lot, apparently the dog in question had been busy too -- Mr. Chalk had circled each piece and written NO in giant letters next to each circle.

There were also a couple other messages like "STOP IT, bring a bag with you" and "You WILL get caught" and my personal favorite, "It's against the law to not pick it up! The fine is $75, If I catch u, you will pay a higher price"

The messages spanned about a quarter mile along the sidewalk.

Clearly, this guy meant business.

It was impossible not to notice it, but I didn't do much else other than read it and think, boy that guy is on a mission.

Fast forward to a few minutes later. I was running down one of the dead ends in our neighborhood, had come to the end, and was turning around. I noticed a sullen little boy that looked about nine years old, who seemed to be in a really bad mood, I thought perhaps it was because his parents had asked him to run some errand outside in the misting rain.

I noticed a guy on a bicycle riding really slow. I thought that was weird, most people don't ride bikes really slow, particularly if they are older than twelve. If you're riding for exercise, you obviously want to ride fast enough to get your heart rate up, and if you're riding for some other reason, especially in the rain, you probably have some kind of an end-goal, meaning you'd still probably ride with some marked purpose. This guy just seemed to be coasting.

Weird, but whatever. I kept on.

Fast forward again, to ten minutes later and the other side of the neighborhood. I had reached another dead end and was turning around again.

I spotted the same guy on the same bike riding at the same ridiculously slow speed.

I came to a realization.

This guy was following me.

My first thought was mild panic. This can't be good.

Then I thought it through and calmed down a bit. I mean, it was still broad daylight, I live in a busy subdivision, and I have a dog with me that I'm fairly certain would try to protect me in at least some mild fashion if I was in danger.

Then I thought maybe this guy was just some creep that liked to watch girls run.

I was rounding into the last loop that would lead me back home, when it dawned on me.

This was Mr. Sidewalk Chalk.

He must have seen me running by his house with my dog, and decided to follow me to see if I was the poop culprit.

That realization was at least a better alternative than Mr. Creepy Exercise Stalker and Mr. Creepy Abduction Stalker, so I'll admit I was relieved.

I finished my loop, and made my way back home. I relayed the story to Ben.

He was not pleased.

I'm gonna go find that guy and give him a chocolate sundae.


Ben, I don't think that's a very good idea. I mean, he was just following me to see if I was the one who let my dog poop all over his sidewalk. I don't think he meant to DO anything to me.


No, I think he already assumes you are that person and he was just following you to find out where you lived. Which he found out. 


Hmmm. Interesting point.


And this guy is clearly on the edge of sanity, what with all the threatening sidewalk messages, just imagine all the retaliation he might be planning. I don't want to wake up in the morning with dog poop smeared all over the front porch or anything.


After some thought, I admittedly agreed that I was a little concerned that now this guy had it in for me, seeing as how I was running past his house with a dog and without a poop-scooping bag.

To be clear, I just don't let Canada poop while we're running. If he looks like he's going to, I just yank him along. He holds it 'til we get home. Maybe that's mean, but I already hate having to strap things to my body like my iPod for music and the Droid for the MyTracks app, and I draw the line at strapping pooper-scooper bags to my person.

Anyway, back to the story. After stewing over the situation for a few minutes, I started to share Ben's fear that this guy totally had our address and was probably at that very minute working on a shrine in his basement with my picture and Canada's picture and all sorts of gruesome plans of how he was going to get back at us for allegedly defiling his yard.

Ben comes up with a plan.

I'm just gonna go talk to him.


Are you sure that's a good idea?


Well, I'm going to tell him that I don't like him following my wife around. And I'd rather face this situation head-on than wait until this guy completely loses his marbles and starts pipe-bombing our mailbox or something.


Well....okay. But I don't want you to get into trouble. Or get hurt.


To which Ben rolls his eyes at me and walks out the door.

He walked to the guy's house, which was pretty easy to identify what with all the chalk messages, particularly the one inviting the offender to come knock on the guy's door, and basically pointing to Mr. Sidewalk Chalk's front porch.

On the way, he snapped photos of the sidewalk messages. See Exhibit A, above.

He knocked on the door, and the guy answered. And said, "I'm the guy that was following your wife on my bike."

Ben said, "Yes."

Then the guy goes into this explanation that he just wanted to find out who was leaving the poop on his sidewalk and he wasn't trying to do anything threatening, and he just reacted when he saw someone with a dog run by his house. And he basically apologized and then Ben started talking to him about how to set up security cameras if he really wanted to catch this person, and they talked about the cost of cameras and where he should put them. Ben says he was really a passive guy, despite the seething anger he displayed in his sidewalk messages.

They chatted for about three minutes, and then Ben was on his way.

Disaster averted.

Good Clean Fun

This past weekend, me and eleven of my bestest co-workers participated in the 7th annual Marine Mud Run here in South Bend.

It was a 3.1 mile course full of obstacles and, of course, mud. And more mud. And did I mention the mud?

My team before the race. Look how nice and clean we all are.

That's me, on the ground. This was the last obstacle before the finish. That guy in the red "Staff" shirt was there for two purposes: a) to yell at people to get off his course and b) to rub mud on any mud-free area of clothing of the racers.

 After finishing. I told you it was muddy.

 Here we are after getting hosed off by the fire hose. Ahhh, refreshing.

 Me 'n' mah work peeps. 

We had a great time, my knee held out, and we supported the Marines' Toys for Tots program in the process.

Gettin' dirty in the name of the kids. Can you beat it?

I'm a Taker, Not a Giver

I signed up for a blood drive at my gym.

Whenever my work has had a blood drive, I've donated. It seems only right.

Here's the thing.  My blood type is AB+.

Which means? I'm a universal recipient. Yep, that's right folks, I'm one of 3% of the population that can take blood from every single one of you people out there, should I ever be in such a situation as to need it.

But that means I can only donate my blood to fellow AB+ers.

Every time I donate, I envision the lab technician running the stats on my blood, marking it as an AB+, then rolling their eyes and storing it in the rarely-used blood-storage-locker labeled "This Stuff is Practically Useless".

I suppose it's still a good thing, them having my practically-useless blood, because when one of my fellow 3% is in need of a blood transfusion, they can use mine instead of the universal donor, O-, thus saving the coveted O for the other 97% of the population.

But I still feel kind of guilty.

The Deed is Done

Sophie's hair has been trimmed.

Let the madness begin.

A Goodbye Letter

Dear Fountain Soda,

I'm sorry that it has to end this way, but it's time to go our separate ways.

It's not that I don't love you. In fact, quite the opposite. That's what makes this goodbye so heartbreaking. It's just....well, you're just not good for me anymore.

I'll always cherish the times we had together. Trust me, I will never forget how you got me through those three rough pregnancies, when there wasn't a solid food on the planet that I could keep down. I could always count on you. The Whopper Jr craving came and went, the boiled hot dogs were but a passing fancy. But you, fountain soda, were the one thing I could rely on to give me at least some mild satisfaction in an otherwise miserable existence.

I remember the time my father-in-law thought he could replace you with a plain old canned soda, that I wouldn't know the difference if he poured it in a cup with ice. Oh, how he misunderstood our connection to one another.

I remember when I cut you out a few years ago; the intense caffeine withdrawal headaches that seemed to gnaw at my conscience....how could this be the right thing to do when it feels so wrong? I don't remember exactly when I fell off that wagon, but you welcomed me back with open arms. McDonald's even started to sell giant ones of you for a dollar, making our rekindled relationship that much sweeter.

But alas, fountain soda, it is time for our affair to end. I have to admit, it's mostly because of the new fitness app I've downloaded to the iPod. I just cannot stomach telling MyFitnessPal about you. Watching my calorie deficit shrink to nothing just because I've let you infiltrate my life again -- it's just too painful to endure.

So that's why we haven't seen each other since last week. Yes, it's a bittersweet farewell. But I know in my heart it is the right thing to do.

I hope you can find someone else, and forget about me. It's really the best thing for all of us.

Fondly,

DD