OK, it has been awhile since my last post, but nothing bad happened to me. (See last post). Unless you count camping. Truth be told, I only go camping because of peer pressure and because it's an opportunity to take naps. Lots of naps. But the rest of it is bad. It's sort of like being locked outside.

This particular campground has a sign in the entrance that says, "Please don't feed the raccoons." What it didn't say was that raccoons are capable of feeding themselves, opening coolers and digging around for apple danishes.

Every night, there were several raccoons circling our campsite, creeping in closer and closer. They weren't afraid of us at all, and you could tell that they were thinking about apple danishes and wondering if we had any.

This campground was on the ocean, so I was excited about that. I hoped I could spend a nice day on the beach. But here's the problem I always have with camping on the Oregon coast: The beach is not nice. It's windy and cold, and if you're lucky, it's foggy by about 3 pm.

So I walked down to the beach with some friends, and watched their kids throw sand in each other's eyes while I shivered. I wrapped up in my blanket, which I had been hoping to use as a beach blanket. At least it served a purpose.

Then we walked back to the campground and spent the rest of the day in a very cold, shady campsite. At a certain point I could not stand the cold any longer so I took a nap, just so I could warm up in the sleeping bag.

By the end of evening, Ginger and I were pretty restless. Then she had a popcorn craving, and before I knew it, she was in her van, starting the engine. The campground was just outside civilization and she just knew there was a Jiffy Pop in town with her name on it.

I wanted to go with her but with the way she started the engine, I wasn't sure if she was going to wait for me. Her husband was hurriedly getting some of his possessions out of the back of the van, the exhaust blowing out on him.

And then we were out on the open road. As we were leaving the campground, Ginger said, "Well, we just proved to everyone in the campsite that we have ADD."

When we came back, her 4-yr old son was sitting by the fire with a sad look on his face. "Momma, the coons took the van away. With our beds and everything!"