The Longest Night

Saturday JE and I camped out overnight with the Boy Scouts at a local park in the foothills. Apparently the park is fenced in so you're safe from bears and other predatory nasties.

The camp's activities were supposed to commence at 3pm with a 2pm "check-in" time when you'd set up your tent, etc., but with people turning up late the activities started late and the campfire ceremony started late, so it naturally finished late which meant JE and I crawled in to our tent a little before 10:00pm. Not too bad for a Saturday night, except our Saturday nights don't normally find us camping out under the stars (protected by a layer of canvas or nylon) surrounded by young boys playing Uno and adults chatting away. I figured I'd let people play and chat until 10:30 before calling out a reminder that there were other people trying to get to sleep, but I didn't need to. The kids playing Uno were playing in the tent belonging to the talking adults, and the adults called it a night and kicked the kids out and back to their own tents before I needed to enforce my authority (assuming I had any).

Finally quiet reigned and I was able to relax and try to get comfortable enough to fall asleep on half an inch of high-density foam, which is rather hard to do in normal times (is it ever normal to try to sleep on 1/2" of high-density foam) but I've also come down with a nasty sinus cold which only compounded matters. Fortunately I'd come prepared (like all good Boy Scouts and Scout Leaders) with a supply of Sudafed and I'd taken one when we'd first crawled into our sleeping bags so I think that helped me sleep for the first few hours.

Around 2am I awoke and looked at my watch and almost shuddered at the thought of how long it still was until morning. It's not unusual for me to wake several times during the night, but I don't usually wake up with a pain in my right hip from sleeping (practically) on the hard ground. The cold was not an issue, I didn't feel cold at all, but 1/2" of foam does not provide much padding at all. I rolled over on to my left side and tried to find even a small depression to get my left hip in to. I succeeded, somewhat, and drifted off to sleep, for maybe 45 minutes. Woke up to a pain in my left hip, rolled over on to my right side and remembered that hip hurt, too. Lay on my back but it was both comfortable, and uncomfortable. It was some comfort for my hips, but not comfortable enough to sleep, just yet.

Sleep that night was nothing but a series of 30 mins naps until 5:30am when dawn broke and even though the sun didn't penetrate the layer of cloud, the sun's light still did, and light nylon is no protection against sunlight, not even the ambient variety. First came the footsteps, then the voices, and I looked at my watch to see what ungodly hour it was, then looked at JE and noticed he was awake. For the next 20 minutes I attempted to convince him to go back to sleep to no avail. I knew what he had in store for the rest of the day, but so did he; two birthday parties, and a piano recital awards ceremony and there was no way he was going back to sleep, even though he could have used the rest.

Reluctantly I let him get up and we got dressed and joined the other early morning risers. I honestly don't know how we made it through the rest of the day without a nap, but here we are, finally, at the end of a very busy weekend. Thank God I've got work tomorrow!