We bought a tent on sale from Big 5 a few months ago, I have no idea why — I think I had malaria and was suffering from a fever of 108 and had this vision of a family outing in the mountains, sitting around a campfire and roasting marshmallows, pointing out constellations in the night sky to Zoe, cooking a hearty breakfast in the morning over an open fire… Camping, in other words. But I forgot that Beth doesn’t do camping. To Beth, camping is staying in a hotel that doesn’t feature round-the-clock room service. To Beth, the Great Outdoors is just that: Great. Outdoors.

So we have this tent we’re not using. Well, for Zoe, this is just WRONG. We have to go camping! Now! And if all the campsites in the area are completely booked through November, well we just have to go camping now anyway!

So tonight Zoe and I are going camping. In the back yard. We’ll be eating donuts in the tent later, and then I’ll tell her a ghost story (“…but not too scary of a ghost story, okay, Daddy?”) and then we’ll bed down for the night under the stars of suburbia. She’s so excited she can hardly stand it. I’m… Well, resigned is a good word for it.

Somehow it just doesn’t feel like camping when you have to make sure the sprinklers are turned off before you set up the tent.