We don't play well with others.

We had an early "celebration" for our Memorial Day. For the first time ever we swallowed hard (ok, not the first time, but....) and went camping with people other than our families. We knew we would hate it. And we did.

About a week before we were to leave, I e-mailed my friends and asked what their al fresco dining preferences were and offered (because I'm a former chef and because I'm a control freak) to do all of the cooking for the trip. No dice. One of them, who most definitely is a great cook, said that she had already planned the menu in her head and loved to cook outside also. Fine. Technically, they invited us, so I thought it would be rude to quabble.

However, she was planning on doing the most unexotic of all campfood (besides beans, I suppose): hobo packets. You know, potatoes, onions, bell peppers, etc. wrapped in aluminum foil and thrown in the fire. Well, I hate that shit. So, I just said we'd fend for ourselves and do it sort of potluck style.

We left early on Friday (or, we intended to leave early, but ended up getting out of town at about 5). They weren't coming until Saturday, so we thought we'd at least have one night of al fresco dining to our own tastes - with our prefered dessert. We drove east listening to hardcore eighties punk, and were just tickled to get the heck out of dodge.

When we reached the camp site, however, things got a little ugly. Of course, it was MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND and all, so what, really, did we expect? PEOPLE, PEOPLE, PEOPLE. Of the Red variety. There was so much smoke over the river from all of the campfires that it looked like fog, or a forest fire.

And then it started lightening. Big time. So, with no room in the "inn" and an approaching maelstrom, we decided to just drive on in to town for the night.

TWO HOURS LATER we ended up in Polaski, TN with the very last room for miles and miles. It was a beautiful, if a bit frightening, drive through the hills of south central Tennessee. The lightening was like a club strobe, freeze framing white clapboard houses and oak trees as we zoomed down highway 69.


I'll have to write about the rest of the weekend later. Sweet K is spending his Memorial Day ill and working, but horizontally. He's downstairs in bed hacking and snorting while trying to speak spanish to some "guest worker" on his radio while holding a phone in his other hand trying to speak "east memphis" to some prim lady out in her yard for the holiday with a yardstick checking on the length of her grass...bless his heart.