My Summer Camp

What happened to August?

Seriously. Where did it go? It’s already half over.  

I spent a few days with cousins at their lake cabin, then did a book signing at a lovely little bookstore in Dorset, MN during the Taste of Dorset festival. But because I was inside the bookstore, I hardly got to taste anything! Poor me.

Then I jumped right into teaching a weeklong writing camp for kids. The morning class was 3-5th graders. The afternoon class was 6-10th graders. At the end of the first day I stumbled home, sure I’d never make it through the week. Somehow I scraped myself off the living room sofa and moved the sheep and the big steers to new pasture. Then I managed to do 3 hours of prep for the next day. Cleaning the kitchen? Making supper? Nope.

Every day was like that. How do farmers with two fulltime jobs manage? Holy smokes. I suppose if I taught kids writing every day, it’d become easier, so that might make a difference. But this week? Not so much. And every night, did I clean the kitchen or make supper? Nothing left for those tasks.

At the end of every afternoon I felt as if aliens had attached tubes to my brain and sucked everything  out. Poor me again.

Good news is I survived. Even better news, the kids survived as well, even though by mid-week there were a few rowdies I was considering hanging by their thumbs from the ceiling fan. Luckily I’ve been chased by geese and knocked over by sheep and nudged by really large steers, so keeping kids in line doesn’t frighten me.

At camp we did some fun stuff, some hard stuff, and I packed their brains as full as I could. Hopefully some of it’ll stick. But when it comes to writing, much of what you learn leaks out, and you have to learn it again. Just too much to know.

Here’s proof my kids were still smiling at the end of the week:

 Here’s proof the sheep were still alive at the end of the week:

As for me? I must go clean the kitchen… if I can find it.