Grounds for Camping

Once Jack Frost has finally scurried back to his summer home at the North Pole, it’s time to maximize your enjoyment of the summer. One great tradition in many families is the summer camping trip.

Unfortunately, most of us still resent our parents for dragging us along, so there may be a stigma attached to the idea. But if you can manage to repress those memories, getting back to nature can be a great way to bring your family closer together (so long as you remember pack your deodorant). Of course, not everyone was, er, privileged enough to grow up with this tradition. So if you’re new to the idea of family camping, or if your psychiatrist just recommends that you don’t think too much about that particular chapter from your youth, here is a simple guide to preparing for the trip.

The first step is to decide when you want to go. Holiday weekends are often the easiest to plan, since you may have an extra day off of work, but they come at the cost of dealing with packed campgrounds. And outhouses are bad enough without having to actually wait in line for the experience. Therefore, I recommend taking your camping trip the weekend before a major holiday, because most people who would have gone that weekend will put it off one more week (this also works for Disneyland trips). If you’re lucky, your boss will even let you switch your day off. It’s amazing how much work you can get done on a holiday without all your coworkers around the office.

Next, you need to figure out where you want to go. There are state websites with recreation information, of course, or you can just pack the car and drive up into the mountains, stopping whenever you get lost or run out of gas. If you’re not quite that adventurous, though, there are some important considerations in choosing a campsite. As you consider where you will camp, remember the acronym WASTE.

Water is essential, and bringing your own will take a lot of space in your vehicle. So it’s best to make sure your designated campground has a source of drinkable water (unless you want to camp out in the latrine instead).

Animals in the area can be fascinating to watch, but they also carry disease, so you don’t want them rummaging through your food or sharing your sleeping bag. So be sure to look for reports of animals in the area; otherwise you might find a skunk in your tent one evening like my dad once did (seriously).

Shade is very important for a summer campsite. When you park the car and climb out for a look, it may seem like a pretty clearing, but once you get your tent set up in the summer heat, without shade it will become an oven that will only magnify the fact that you haven’t bathed in days. Trees also give the advantage of breaking up the wind, while only marginally increasing the risk of a squirrel dropping acorns on your head as you come out in the morning.

Toilets are one of mankind’s most important inventions, and as such should not be overlooked in the search for the perfect campsite. While flushing toilets are relatively rare in campgrounds, an outhouse with a door is still better than digging a hole behind some bushes which may or may not be poison oak.

Ease of access is also important to consider, especially with gas prices today. You might be surprised at how many campgrounds can be found an hour away or less from civilization, which is also handy when one of your children eats a stinkbug on a dare and you need to go call the doctor.

Once you have the time and the place selected, you can sit down and create a packing list. Obviously you need to make sure you pack enough food for the family, but don’t forget that you also need a way to cook it. This includes pots and pans, a camp stove, and also dishes and utensils (scooping hot chili from a pan with your hand can leave scars—just ask my cousin Chet).

As far as clothing goes, just remember that the higher up you are, the colder it will get at night. You might want to pack a few extra sweatshirts and blankets if you have teenagers who are too cool to bring anything but shorts and T-shirts. Being able to say “I told you so” is just as satisfying on vacation.

Don’t forget to pack adequate entertainment, especially for the kids. Just because you can sit and listen to the chirping of birds all day doesn’t mean a ten-year-old can. Try to bring books and games, even if you have to conveniently “forget” the extra batteries for the electronics the kids will inevitably bring (which reminds me: when selecting a camping site, try to find a place without cell phone reception, so the kids don’t spend the entire trip sending text messages to friends).

Well, there you have it. Just follow these simple steps to ensure that you will have a camping experience that’s just as memorable as the ones you had when you were young, but without the post-traumatic stress disorder. And remember: the more you rough it on vacation, the more luxurious your whole life seems when you return.

Grooms: I Do's and Don'ts

The wedding season is once again upon us, so congratulations to those of you who are about to get married! Marriage is the key that will unlock the door of happiness, just so long as you don’t accidentally open the one marked “misery.” Now, because men aren’t always known for being observant and thoughtful, I’m here to share some of the tips and tricks that have made my marriage to what’s-her-name Mrs. Wonderful the beacon of stability and happiness that it is.

The first key to succeeding in your marriage is to really get to know your intended. This gives you two advantages: first, you’ll always know what presents to give for special occasions (even though she inevitably wants expensive jewelry—I mean, come on! Who can really tell the difference between a diamond and cubic zirconium, anyway?). The second advantage is that you’ll know what behaviors to avoid (in some cultures, burping is a compliment to the chef; at least, that’s what the TV said). Now, it can get annoying for your fiancée if you ask her a bunch of questions about what she likes. So it’s better to just sit and watch everything she does and write it down. (This will also help you detect any personality problems she develops, such as intense paranoia.) After all, women love attention.

Now, many women have spent countless hours from their childhood on up planning their wedding day. She will probably have the dress, colors, flowers, and food all picked out long before you even met. Many men therefore feel tempted to just sit back and let the bride (or her mother) do all the work. But you don’t want to make your bride do all that work, do you? You should jump on in and offer opinions on everything from the wedding cake to the bridesmaid dresses. And you can also help by working to resolve any disagreements between the bride and her mother. They’re sure to appreciate the help.

Chances are your soon-to-be-wife will want to serve dessert at the reception, with cakes and “nut cups” and possibly temple-shaped mints. But let’s face it: won’t you get a better turnout if you advertise a full buffet? Think about all those college buddies who would be sure to show up if you offer burgers and ribs. In fact, having the event catered by a local steakhouse would take an awful lot of pressure off of everyone, and the increased attendance will translate to more gifts to help the new couple start their life together. It can also help to stimulate the local economy.

Some brides may claim that they want their wedding dress to be a surprise, but what woman doesn’t dream of a man who enjoys shopping? Insist that you accompany her when she goes dress shopping. You probably know where to get a better deal anyway. And finding a dress at Savers makes great financial sense, since she’s only going to wear it once anyway. Plus it will enable you to divert much-needed funds to the food.

Planning the honeymoon takes a lot of work. You’ll want to make sure you take care of it in advance, since tickets to your favorite sporting events usually sell fast. You don’t want to have to pay a scalper $400 to get into NASCAR or a baseball game. If you time it right, you could get tickets to every home playoff game of your favorite team, which is sure to make for a memorable experience.

As the big day approaches, you may notice your fiancée getting a little short-tempered from the stress. If that happens, it’s a sure sign that you need to do more to help her with the plans. You could surprise her by baking the wedding cake yourself, or by making your own invitations (if it’s shaped like a T-bone, that will get people’s attention). There’s no need to stress her further by bothering her with the details.

Finally the big day will arrive. Your bride is sure to look absolutely stunning in the dress you helped her choose, so you’ll want to look your best too. Be sure to take a shower, and comb your hair, too, since baseball caps are generally frowned upon at weddings, especially at the temple. You’ll also want some nice clothes for the reception, because if there’s one thing women like, it’s a man who dresses for the occasion. Since the catering lends a Western flavor to the evening, get yourself a red bandana, a nice pair of boots, wranglers, and a shiny belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. Add a fancy Stetson, and you’re as classy (yet masculine) as you can get.

By using these simple tips, you’ll be sure to make your wedding day the most memorable experience of your life. But remember, it doesn’t stop there. Much of what you learn while preparinge for your wedding can be used after the wedding to help your marriage remain strong, but we’ll discuss that later. Good luck, and be sure to send me an invitation to the reception, especially if there’s beef involved.

Valentine's Day: Something for Everyone

As Valentine’s Day approaches, the stress of wanting to be in a relationship can cause single people to misinterpret the actions of the opposite sex. The cashier at the grocery store may have brushed your hand when she gave you your change, but you shouldn’t have asked her to marry you without at least going on a date first. The bus driver told you to get behind the yellow line because he wanted you to get behind the yellow line, and not because he wanted to elope with you.

Even people in a committed relationship can feel the stress on Valentine’s Day. Forgetful men have to rush out of the house at 4 a.m. to scour the stores for an unopened box of chocolates, wives feel obligated to spend a romantic evening with their husband even though he ate the equivalent of 16 cloves of garlic with his dinner, and college students have to outspend the boyfriends of their girlfriends’ roommates so they don’t look bad by comparison.

For men in particular, Valentine’s Day can be a baffling ordeal. All the pink and red hearts everywhere, candy and flowers, and a potentially demanding wife or girlfriend. Well, the time for worrying is over. Here are some tips on having a successful Valentine’s Day, whether the highlight of your evening will be a candlelit dinner or a bucket of popcorn and inane reality shows.

First let’s deal with those of you who are, how shall I put this delicately, adrift in a black hole of crushing loneliness and despair. Cheer up! There’s no better time of year to find that special someone. Remember that however desperate you may be, there’s someone else out there at least as hopeless as you are. Valentine’s Day is the time of year when people lower their standards the most in the hope of attracting any romantic attention.

Start by looking in the places you frequent the most. Not only are you likely to find someone with similar interests that way, but it requires the least amount of effort. For example, if you grocery shop at a store that only sells organic food, you automatically share something in common with anyone you meet there. Plus, instead of buying her flowers (“Don’t kill any plants for me!”) you can just recycle some of the poetry you wrote as a 14-year-old, with such unforgettable lines as “You make me want to fly/And soar across the sky.” If all else fails, you can hang out at the bus stop hoping to meet people, but this method usually entails more humiliation than most of us are comfortable with, since a lot of women who use public transportation carry pepper spray.

If this method works, you are in for a treat, because the low expectations by which you snagged your sweetie also keep her from getting her hopes up too high regarding Valentine’s Day activities. Usually a heart-shaped pizza and a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie are sufficient.

Now for those who are in a relationship. Buckle up, because your commitment is about to be tested as never before, particularly if you’re a man. If this is your first Valentine’s Day spent together, you have a particularly difficult dilemma to resolve. On the one hand you don’t want to look cheap or insufficiently thoughtful (conversation hearts are only appropriate Valentine’s gifts in elementary school). On the other hand, if you do too much, each ensuing year will find you struggling to top the previous year, until you’re selling organs on the black market to pay for ten thousand roses and a private jet ride to Paris for dinner in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The key here, particularly in a marriage, is consistency. By establishing Valentine’s Day traditions, you appear thoughtful enough by remembering to do something every year without ending up in a competition with yourself (“If only I could travel in time back to last year and stop myself from hiring Michael Bolton to compose and sing a song just for her!”). You get bonus points for using the word “tradition,” as it automatically imbues the event with a sense of nostalgia and deep meaning. I suggest dinner out at a decent-but-not-too-expensive restaurant and a nice card. That’s a standard you can maintain every year without requiring illegal activities to procure funding.

As you can see, Valentine’s Day can be a testament to the love you share with your sweetheart, or it can mark the beginning of an irreversible downward spiral in your relationship. The choice is yours.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go invent a time machine. Michael Bolton? What was I thinking?!

Manageable New Year’s Resolutions

As the new year approaches, many of us set aside a little time for introspection and contemplation. As we consider what the past year was and what the new year might hold, many of us find a renewed desire to improve ourselves, whether by losing weight, eating a more healthy diet, or finally sitting down to write that novel about the time-traveling monkey detective. Too often, however, three weeks into January we look back on our progress and consider how foolish we were to think we could really get ourselves into marathon-running shape within a few days. This can leave us feeling more depressed than we were in the first place. So, in the interest or preserving our collective self-esteem, I recommend that you consider some new year’s resolutions that most of us would find more manageable.
Sometimes it’s as important to resolve to stop doing something as it is to resolve to start doing something. Maybe you chew with your mouth open and it disgusts your spouse. You could resolve to close your mouth when eating, or at least eat in a different room. Maybe you feel like you do all the housework. You could resolve to allow your spouse to share in the joy of helping you cook and wash the dishes. It’s amazing how much of a difference it could make in your marriage if you just resolve to pick up your socks off the floor every once in a while.
Or, if you’re already not doing something wrong, it’s important to make sure you don’t start. If you’ve never kicked a puppy, good for you! It’s that much easier to resolve not to get in the habit. If you’ve never let the air out of your neighbor’s tires, that’s a great way to build friendship. Just make sure you resolve to continue resisting the temptation, even when he accidentally backs into your mailbox. After all, refraining from doing bad things is half of what is required for self-improvement.
Once you’ve resolved to stop doing the bad things, you can make some resolutions to start doing good things. First, given the state of world affairs, sometimes just getting out of bed requires superhuman effort. Watching the news these days makes you want to go hide under the blankets with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book. Nevertheless, most of us manage to push onward, not only getting out of bed but also going on with our day-to-day lives in spite of a never-ending torrent of depressing information assailing our senses. So go ahead and resolve to just get up every morning (except on days when you’re sick, and the occasional Saturday), and feel good about yourself for keeping that resolution.
With the majority of American adults overweight, it’s no surprise that losing weight and improving diet are common resolutions. Resolving to eat right is a good goal, but it’s a vague description. Not only that, but it takes time to develop a balanced diet. Otherwise, it’s a terrible shock to the system. Resolving to eat multiple servings of fruits and vegetables a day when you’re used to jelly donuts and candy corn is not only a change for your body, it’s also pretty expensive. There are, however, ways to ease into it. Switch from s’mores-flavored Pop-Tarts to strawberry. Put some extra pickles on your burger. Double the order of peppers on your pizza. It’s surprising how many different ways there are to get the fruits and vegetables your body needs.
Finally, the most important resolution we can make is simply to make some resolutions. That way, even after the dusty treadmill is relegated to the corner where it becomes a $400 rack for drying socks, we can feel good about ourselves, knowing that we at least set some goals, even if the execution didn’t pan out. After all, there’s always next year. This thought will cheer us up as we head to the pantry for some more Girl Scout cookies.
It’s important to remember that the purpose of creating new year’s resolutions is not just to make yourself a better person, it’s also to feel better about yourself. We shouldn’t get down on ourselves just because we aren’t perfect. None of us will achieve perfection in this life, so we might as well find joy in the everyday things we do. So don’t feel afraid to pad your list of resolutions just a bit to make sure you feel like you at least accomplish something throughout the coming year.

A Man’s Guide to Inexpensive Holiday Decorating

As the Christmas season approached this year, I found myself conflicted between a desire to decorate my home and a desire to avoid, as much as possible, the commercial aspect of the season. Add to that the cost of decorations ($15 for a box of ornaments?) and I decided to decorate using items I found around the house. Throughout the process, I learned several valuable lessons, which I will now share for the benefit of others who may be considering a little economical decorating.

I began by preparing to hang lights on the outside of my house. Now, my neighborhood has traditionally been pretty competitive when it comes to getting decorations up early, which culminated in one guy down the street hanging his lights during the Fourth of July weekend (a stray bottle rocket and the ensuing electrical fire soon put an end to that competition). As I pulled the knotted string of lights out of the basement, I found that the plastic hooks used to hang them were all missing but one. Reflecting on my desire to save cost, I used a truly innovative method of hanging the lights, which I call “Ball-O-Lights Hanging over the Porch.” The neighbors apparently realized that there’s no way to compete with that, so they wisely decided to stick with the “traditional” methods of hanging lights, no doubt jealous of my resourcefulness.

With the outdoor decorating done, I now focused my efforts on making the interior of my home as festive as possible. I had always purchased real trees before, but I had no desire to spend $50 on something that would be thrown out in 3 weeks. Then I considered that an artificial tree would be a money-saving investment in the end. So I took a trip to the store to find a good one.

When I got there, the trees were pretty picked over. All they had left was a 12-foot, flocked monstrosity with a price tag that surely had an extra zero. So, after poking around the store for a while, I suddenly realized that the Savior wasn’t born in a sub-arctic climate anyway. So I bought a plastic palm tree for $6.95 and brought it home, rejoicing that I wouldn’t have to spend three hours setting it up every year.

The first thing I needed for the tree was tinsel. I remembered that my tinsel had been torn up the previous year by the cat, so I needed to find a substitute. Thinking about what purpose tinsel serves, I decided that it’s just supposed to sit there and look shiny. So I found some aluminum foil in the kitchen drawer and wove it festively through the leaves of my plastic tree. Then, standing back to take a look at my handiwork, I could see that the tree needed some more color. Thinking that red would complement the green of the leaves and produce a true Christmas feel, I grabbed a red permanent marker and drew some ornaments of various shapes on the foil. The effect was truly breathtaking.

Next I needed some stockings to hang over the fireplace, but those used in previous years were, thanks again to the cat, so full of holes as to be useless. Well, I had a couple pairs of red-striped socks that I had used for playing soccer, so they were covered with grass stains. I hung them from the mantel, and the room was beginning to truly feel like it belonged at the North Pole.

Next I decided to construct a Christmas village on the coffee table, like so many I had seen at neighbors’ houses over the years. Where fake snow and porcelain houses worked for them, cotton balls and action figures would surely work just as well for me. Add a few houses made from building bocks, and it was truly marvelous.

I looked around the living room and felt that it still needed a little something. Aha! I needed a nice Christmas wreath to hang on the wall. I had noticed my neighbor bringing in a real tree earlier, so I went over to his driveway and gathered up all the little branches that had fallen off their tree as they brought it in the house. These I wove in a lovely ring using clear tape. I then found a red push pin with which to hang it over the fireplace.

I looked around the room one more time as I heard a car door open and close. “Just in time,” I thought to myself as my wife and son came in from an afternoon of Christmas shopping.

I could tell she was pleased with my efforts as she stood there speechless, a tear of wonder in her eye.