Me, Ben, Jerry and the Time Traveler’s Wife

It was our first camp out of the year.

My Love was off with his best buds for their annual camping weekend. He didn’t need to take our camper this year, so the kids and I decided to make use of it.

It was about 9:15pm when my youngest finally crashed into a coma, literally minutes before an amazing hurricane like storm blew through. As I listened to the wind whipping the torrential rain around our camper parked safely in our driveway, it dawned on me I had left several windows in the house open.

Feeling a little like Dorothy rushing home to Auntie Emm, I ran into the flying rain in my pajamas and zipped through the house closing windows as fast as I could, hoping some unexpected crash of thunder didn’t awaken my soundly sleeping bundles of energy.

On my way back to the camper I zipped into the garage to grab the pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk I picked up at the store as my final indulgence before returning to the no flour, no sugar eating plan I will start on Monday.

I was half-way through my frozen decadence before the ridiculous amount of previews was over and the actual movie started. I clicked on the “closed captioning” for the film because this was the first time I figured out that there is something really wrong with the audio on my CD-ROM. I am sure the irritation of the crackling interruption to the sound altered my cinematic experience.

But, I did gain a few bits of insight that I am willing to share:

-         1200 calories goes down very easily when it is creamy, chunky, nutty chocolaty goodness.

-         Lousy sound can be overcome by a really great story.

-         The Time Traveler’s Wife enlightened me on a few topics; time travel (always wanted to try it but I see now that it would be challenging if it was random and you show up everywhere naked), true love (she chose to love the dream and the reality – even when it was hard), quality time (it can be truly relative when you never know when or how long the Love of your life will be around).

Once it was over, I thanked God again for my Love (and our relatively normal life) and snuggled down in the springs of the mattress and the lumps of the camper pillow. I slept until...

  I was awakened at 4:15am by the sounds of our neighbor hitching up his boat to go fishing. I prayed my kids would sleep longer than the summer usual of 5:30, experienced annoying regret over eating the entire pint, and contemplated the value of time in my life.

Expanding on the value of time in my life will have to wait. It is 5:41am and two of my three are conscious and about to wake up my third…