Everyone remembers a time when they were little and spent time hiding under a table hidden by a collection of blankets - otherwise known as a cubby house. Well, right now I have a grown-up sized version sitting in what was my dining room. But I need to go back a few days to explain that.
I spent the last few days camping up at Imbil with friends, and while I'm ok with camping if it *has* been raining, I'm not particuarly cool with it if it's *still* raining. But I'm not psychic so just took my chances with the weather.
My drive up on Friday was pretty crap - I spent time driving along in 1st and 2nd gear from my house to the Gateway Bridge (or rather, from the servo where I'd grabbed ice for my esky). Had I known about the traffic I would have gone through the CBD rather than around it. But that's immaterial. I got caught in traffic again from around Boondall to Cabooture and spent a large chunk of that time glaring at the buy driving the ute behind me (who apparently *had* to get as close to the back of my car as he could possibly get everytime we inched forwards). Back off buddy - that's my buffer! On the upside, the drive from the Sunshine Coast onwards was smooth and fast which was much, much better.
I haven't been camping in school holidays for a long, long time. In fact, it was probably also the last time I was camping in the rain. Not sure if there's a correlation there. So it's fair to say I wasn't expecting quite as many people to be camping at Imbil as there were. I rocked up at around 3.30pm on Friday and noticing just how many tents were around I left my car at reception, paid my camp fees and wandered around on foot to find my party (no mobile coverage - gotta do things the old-fashioned way). 10 minutes, a lot of mud and about a billion tents and tarps later I spotted Kelly's car (yay for the egg-yolk yellow VW).
Setting up the tent was easy because of the damp ground (although my volunteer assistant Kirsten and I still managed to get the front and back of the tent confused - twice). Cutting a long story short, while it spattered rain a little on Friday night and early Saturday, by Saturday evening it had started raining on and of and everything became wet and muddy. Including my tent.
So when I packed up this morning I didn't even attempt to fold up the tent an put it back in the usual bag - I put the separate parts into separate garbage bags and when I got home I moved all the furniture out of the only space I have big enough to swish my tent in and put my tent up in the dining room. And while I was sweeping some of the dirt out while dinner was cooking I decided it looked much like a cubby house and moved in with a bunch of pillows, a doona, a book and my dinner.
Woohoo - instant adult cubby house!
