by Phyllis McCrossin

It’s Saturday. I think. Now that I’m two weeks into my second retirement the days are, once again, beginning to blend together. To be honest, I truly do know it’s Saturday because the Michigan v Rutgers game is on TV.

Now that I don’t come home from work and fall asleep once I sit down, I’m looking at the trailer interior, with a critical eye. “I think we need more color and less brown,” I suggested to King. He didn’t even look up from the scratch-off lottery ticket he was working on. “No.”

I pressed on. “But it’s so, ummm, 1980s brown. And the ‘earth tone’ plaid on the valances is really yucky.”

“No.”

Since he didn’t say, “absolutely not,” I ordered new bedding, pillows, paint (for accent colors), and some wood to make some new cornice boards. I’ll start on it one day while he is golfing. There are six golfing weekends before we leave. That should be plenty of time.

I’ll be honest, I understand his reluctance. It’s not as if we have a spare bedroom we can move everything into while we paint. And I have a propensity to lose interest in something and move on to another project, or I’ll buy supplies and never get around to actually starting said project. It’s the way one lives when they live in the “fast lane.”

Speaking of the “fast lane” the campground has been a beehive of activity since Thursday.

The campground has been rented out for the weekend by a group from somewhere in the area. I’m guessing it’s some type of class/school reunion thing. King and I are the only non-reunion campers in the campground. There is a lot of music, lawn games, families visiting back and forth and kids running around playing, and it’s been fun to watch. My only complaint with the gathering is the number of people who let their dogs roam free because “they are really friendly dogs.” That may be but my dog finds “really friendly dogs” to be “very tasty.”

Loose dogs aside, it’s been a joy to observe. There seems to be an abundance of children here for the gathering. I enjoy watching them as they ride their bikes around the campground after dark. Apparently the new, got-to-have thing is bright reflective bicycle spokes. In the dark they look like vertical flying saucers. It reminds me of the red, white and blue crepe paper we used to decorate our bikes with for Memorial Day parades – except these glow in the dark and are pretty cool.

A campground neighbor created a plastic barrel train that he pulls around with his garden tractor. The kids come running when they see him coming through the field. He drives load after load of children around the trails. Seems everyone is enjoying the weekend.

This morning King was outside puttering when a member of the camping group stopped by to ask if the music was too loud and apologized for the noise. He told King to let him know if it was too loud and he’d have them tone it down.

The realization hit that we’ve become that “little-old-couple” everyone is afraid of offending.