Free I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression by Erma Bombeck Page B

guitar along sleeps with it.
    4. If the wind is blowing southward, sleep northward of the person who bathed in mosquito repellent.
    5. Place the kid who had three bottles of pop before bedtime nearest the door. Oil the zipper of his sleeping bag before retiring.
    6. If you are sleeping on the ground, make it as comfortable as possible by using a rollaway bed.
    7. Make sure all the cupboard doors are closed and traffic areas cleared before the light is extinguished. Statistics show that more campers are lost through carelessly placed ice coolers and clotheslines than through crocodile bites.
How to live among our furry friends
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    1. Forget Disney. Remember, not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals.
    2. Never argue with a bear over your picnic basket, even though deep in your heart you know the green onions will repeat on him.
    3. Any woman in the laundry room who tries to assure you snakes are as afraid of you as you are of them should be watched.
How to know when you are there
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    1. When you are reading the road map and your husband accuses you of moving Lake Michigan over two states.
    2. When the kids start playing touch football in the back seat with a wet diaper and the baby is in it.
    3. When not only starvation sets in, but your stomach begins to bloat and your vision becomes blurred.
    4. When Daddy screams, “Stop kicking my seat!” and the kids are all asleep.
    5. When you find a haven the size of a football field that you don’t have to back a trailer into (even if it is a football field).
What to do when togetherness becomes an obscene word
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    No one, not even a man and a woman, can endure two weeks of complete togetherness—especially when they are married. Thus, being confined with two or three children in an area no larger than a sandbox often has the appeal of being locked in a bus-station rest-room over the weekend. Planning your activities will help avoid this.
    1. Keep busy. Rotate the tires on the car. This gets you out in the fresh air and at the same time gives you a feeling of accomplishment.
    2. Play games like “Look for Daddy” or “Bury the Motorcycle” (the one that runs up and down through the campgrounds all night).
    3. Have a roster of chores. One child could be in charge of water for the radiator. Another could be in charge of killing that last mosquito in the tent at night.
    4. Have family dialogues around the campfire. Suggested topics: Who was the idiot who had to bring the ping-pong table and “Harvey, where are you getting the drinking water and what did you hope to find when you put a slideful of it under your new microscope?”
    5. Make new friends (assuming your marriage is stable).
    If it happens to be Be Kind to Campers Month (July 19–26), observe it by taking a camper to the city for a day.
    Maybe other mothers make it to the water skis, but the closest I ever get to water is a laundromat. I havespent entire vacations watching my enzymes and bleach race their way to the dirt and grime in our underwear.
    Commercials lie. They always make laundromats seem like fun places where you go around smelling each other’s wash, comparing whiteness, looking for hidden cameras, and breaking out in acne at the thought of stubborn stains.
    It’s not like that at all. There are thirty-eight washes to every washer, sixty-three dryees to each of the three dryers (one of them is out of order) five Coke machines (all of them in order), no chairs, and a small snack table to fold your clothes on.
    The “washees” are bustling, no-nonsense people. They stuff the washers, deposit the soap and coins, look at their watches, and estimate they’ll be out of there in an hour.
    The “dryees” are a bit more affable. They know with three dryers (one of them out of order), they must live as a community for an indeterminate amount of time, striking up acquaintances, laughing, talking, eating, and sometimes intermarrying.
    I was lucky. I got in line for a