the best swimming hole this side of 125

I just wrote eight pages worth of analysis of Gatsby and what is often called Fitzgerald's rough draft of that novel, "Winter Dreams." My paper is about how those who try to ascend social classes, in this care from new money into the set of old money, end up failing, but in their attempt they turn the women they seek out into a commodity, thereby making the actual women irrelevant. It was fun, mostly because I love Fitzgerald's writing. How can you go wrong with this? "

"If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass." 

The other option is for the man to commoditize the woman and then for her beauty to fade, thereby destroying the value and devastating the man who never even got her in the first place.

Anyway, I still haven't started the other paper, which will be about masculinity and violence (specifically looking at the way their bodies change, per my professor's suggestion) in Deliverance. Creepy, huh? Maybe once I am done writing this? Here is what I have now:

So, going with the theme of their visit, Mom and John had us come down and eat breakfast with them at the Chipman Inn. Then we hiked to Frost's cabin, walked on the Frost Interpretive Trails, and went to the yurt for lunch, and to retrieve our pups. We then hit up the Spirit in Nature Interfaith Trails which are the nicest trails in the area in our estimation. They are soft and pine needle laden and it's cooler there and not very buggy at all compared to hell on earth, which is what I have taken to calling Silver Lake Campground. More on that later.

We enjoyed those trails and then went and swam for a delightfully long time in our swimming hole. Max wouldn't go in. Nitsa chased sticks. Klue chased her momma around and swam to her any time she screamed in joy at the cold, cold water. I swear to God, she'd save me like Lassie if I were drowning. She gets VERY nervous about my whereabouts and general wellbeing.

Then we went back to the yurt and got changed and Mom and John hit the road to visit his brother and sister-in-law. I hate goodbyes.

We then set out to do double campground host duties. We tackled our campground first, where I found garbage like usual, but some tiki torches with refillable citronella receptacles which I took to our site. Hurrah! Now we are sure there won't be a single mosquito around! Since my dad sent me a check, with a very specific purpose in mind, I am going to use it for the citronella juice which is:

 He is hilarious! Thanks, Pops!

After doing campground host duty at our place, we hit the road to Silver Lake where as soon as we exited the vehicle, we were swarmed. When I went to get back in to the car, there were hundreds of mosquitos waiting all over the car for their in. I am on pick up trash duty when it comes to cleaning the campgrounds, (thank God because the other job involves sweeping our and replacing TP in the vault toilets) and I had to run from site to site like a crazy woman (sometimes suddenly barreling into occupied sites) picking up garbage in order not to swallow the swarms. I don't know how people are actually camping there.

In other news, we only have two weeks and two days left!!! Not that I'm counting. But, seriously, I am counting.

After that we made had a well-deserved beer, I found passages for my paper, and we made dinner and watched a movie.

This morning I applied for two jobs that would be good for next year. One is part-time and is a writing job in the Forest and National Resources school. That'd be cool! The other is coordinating a program kind of like Upward Bound. Bryan is up at the ranch drying things out/doing laundry here and he met me at lunch and we hiked together. Life's good!

Back home, Bryan's dad has offered to start planing boards for our yurt's wood floors which is about the best gift we could ask for right about now when we're getting anxious to start working on that yurt life stuff!