Nick and I are having our 3rd Annual camping weekend at my parents’ cabin on Dead Lake. We arrived at 3:30am on Wed night/Thurs morning. My mom was there so we tried to let ourselves in quietly. The front screen door was locked. Crap. We went to the back door but the deadbolt was locked. No key for the deadbolt. Crap. My mom’s window was open so I whispered “mom” a few times, not wanting to startle her awake. Nick wondered why I was whispering, so I started saying it a bit louder. Each time I did she would just drown me out with louder snoring. Finally I yelled “MOM” and she woke up and said “WHAT?” and I said “let us in” and she said “WHO?” … Who the heck did she think was there calling her mom? She let us in and we went straight to bed.

On Thursday we got up and headed to Perham to buy groceries for the weekend. We ended up eating lunch at a tasty Chinese restaurant. When we got back I had the joy of working from the cabin. Pangie (Panda and Angie) showed up in the early evening and Jake and Sarah showed up at 12:30am, right about the time I was having my third [very] strong Bloody Mary. The six of us sat by the fire for a few hours, discussing whether or not turkeys will drown in the rain*, will donkeys will starve themselves to death?† and that shooting stars are in fact not stars but meteors. After finishing my drink and giving Angie my alcohol infused pickle, Jake started taunting me that I couldn’t handle drinking one of his warm Natty Ice beers. Of course I took him up on the offer. Truth be told, I should have stopped drinking after the second Bloody. Shortly after finishing the Natty Ice I expelled most of the contents of my belly. Twice. Although it was nice to be by a lake since I could wash my face off and such. At some point I also fell over in the camping chair on top of the Natty Ice. I went to bed while having room spinnies, which I suppose was a bad idea.

Friday morning I woke up feeling fantastic considering the events of the night before. I got out of bed and started to perk some coffee. While waiting for it to start perking I started feeling not so well. I laid down on the nearest air mattress so that I could still her the percolator. After writhing around for a bit the vomiting started. Since I had no liquid in my belly it was just bile. Gross. I started hitting the water hard so that there would be something for me to throw up. So from 10am to about 5pm it was a constant rotation of vomit, hot sweats, cold sweats, nap, repeat. Everyone kept telling me to eat so I ate 3 grapes courtesy of Deebz (Smitty and Deebz showed up somewhere in the above mentioned time frame). They didn’t stay down long, and I had absolutely no appetite. Each time I would wake up from a mini nap I felt fine, but once I sat up it would all go downhill. I could see everyone outside having fun, it was one of those perfect days. And I’m real glad that they all left their cell phones inside, one of which seemed to ring every 30 minutes or so. When everyone came in for a snack I realized how hungry I was. I could hear them talking about how delicious the strawberry rhubarb bars and smoked gouda cheese were. When everyone left for a pontoon ride I ventured out into the kitchen. I still felt sick, but I didn’t feel like I would be sick again so I binged on Cheez-Its, chewing them well so it wouldn’t be uncomfortable if they came back up. I had a bit of a headache for the remainder of the evening and felt a little woozy, but other than that I was almost fully functional.

Nick slow cooked BBQ chicken legs and made tin foil taters for dinner. So delicious. After dinner Sarah and I went to the Wagon Wheel to get some shiners for Travis since he wouldn’t be here til midnight. They were sold out for the day so we ventured into Perham to get some. When we got back to the cabin Nick, Pangie, Jake and Smitty went fishing and we found poor Deebz by her lonesome wondering where we had gone. We got a little bit of reading time in on the porch before the bugs came out and started viciously attacking. The temp cooled down outside and it was quite comfortable, but inside it was still stifling hot. The fishing crew got back right after dark when the bugs were real bad. Poor Angie had her hands full of stuff and couldn’t fight them off as she ran up to the cabin.

We could see lightening across the lake and knew the weather was going to take a bit of a turn for the evening. It started getting windy and the rain started. Travis, Marshall and Olson showed up and set up tents in the dark. Adam and Laura showed up around 1am, just as everyone was going to bed.

To be continued…

*Panda claimed that turkeys drown in the rain because they look up to see what’s going on and aren’t smart enough to put their heads back down. His basis for this reasoning is that one of his turkeys died and it had just rained.

†Angie said if you put two buckets of food on either side of a donkey, they will not know which one to eat out of and stand in the middle until they die.