And What Is The Lovliest Four Letter Word In The English Language?

Camp.

C-A-M-P.

It has a lovely ring to it, no?

I have myself a reprieve from summer chaos this week.  Amen and hallelujah to that.

Back in the spring, Caroline's friend, Alayna, chose this Extreme All Girls camp out of the parks department catalog.  Alayna and her two brothers each got to pick a camp, and this is the one she chose.  Alayna's mom approached me with the idea of the girls doing it together; there is a daily swim time in the Olympic sized indoor pool and Alayna's mom felt more comfortable sending her daughter if she had a buddy to hang with, especially during swim time.

Caroline, an adventurous girl who is up for anything, immediately agreed.  So I signed her up. 

Two weeks ago, Caroline's friend Rachel expressed interest in attending the camp, too.  The girls were all fired up about the idea of the three of them going together.  However, Rachel's mom is a busy woman and hadn't had the time to register her. On Sunday, the day before camp was to start, Rachel was still gung-ho with the camp idea and all we needed was for her mom to actually register her.  In the mean time, their friend Bailey also expressed interest, so I emailed the info to her dad.  He quickly said no, because the camp is pricey at $255 for the week.  I can't say that I blame him. 

And this is where my Sunday afternoon took a turn for the dramatic....

Since Bailey couldn't go and would (naturally and understandably) feel left out if the other three girls went to camp without her, she somehow managed to convince Rachel that if she went to camp, there was no guarantee that she would be in the same group as Caroline and Alayna.  Immediately, Rachel called her mom and told her she didn't want to go to camp any more.  I then got on the phone and told Cindy that I was 100% certain that Bailey had done something to change Rachel's mind.  Come to find out, Bailey also told Rachel that if she didn't go to camp, her dad would take the two of them to Busch  Gardens some day this week!

Sigh.

I'm so not capable of dealing with all this girl stuff.

Being the narc that I am, I told Cindy all of this.  She said she'd talk to Rachel and give me a final answer that evening.  At 9 pm, the phone rang and it was Cindy telling me that Rachel would not be going to camp, not because of what Bailey had done, but because her husband also felt the $255 camp fee was a bit steep.

It was a long day of roller coaster ups and downs.

Which does nothing for my feeble attempts to become zen.

I don't know much, but I do know this:  parenting is not conducive to zen-like living.