Dear Diary,

Today I stayed awake for several days in a row.  I got to my favorite place in Pennsylvania, set up my temporary tent, avoided the unwashed masses, and wandered around like an eeejit until I found Bodwin and Keegan, snuck down to an empty field very early in the morning, wandered around some lovely wooded hills, rounded up some uppity tables and, um, moved them to areas they would find more comfortable, encouraged them to feel secure and remain faithful, and then found Dog and Bannon wandering around laughing about their own version of the same dance.  Then we sat around laughing at other folks with no night-vision at all looking for tables and cursing at the ones they found, which were strangely difficult to move.  Then we walked back to the soon-to-be-baking-plain, and I gave the boys a very big bottle of vodka, which may or may not have kicked their narrow behinds.  And I retired to my tent for some lounging, but no sleep.  Never sleep.  And then Adon and Llyr showed up and made lots of noise.  And then we woke up the neighbors who were silly enough to try to camp next to us, what with our guffawing and our shouting and our general tendency to hog all of the fun.  HAR HAR HAR.

And then some really dumb people slowed down my day by thinking there was any use in arguing about how much land my friends and I planned to use.  And then I got my way, like I do, and all was well.  And then I drove down to Mid-High-Boggia and started unpacking.  And then I was covered in bees. 

Seriously.  I. was. covered. in. bees.  Well, yellowjackets.  I don’t recommend it.  They had decided to move into the sacred "Crazy Lanea and Skutai’s Ancestral perfect 10×10 leveled spot with the spirally edged paths and the kitchen area all marked out and the green sky and general wasp-less loveliness" without checking with the park rangers.  Anyway, I chucked the tent poles off the roof of my truck and that got them riled right up.  Whoops.  So. Covered in bees.  The first sting was kind of funny, and I made with the witty "Ooooh, you want  a piece of me, Mr. Yellowjacket?  Ok, sure, I upset your Queen.  Go ahead and make with the bravery and the stinging." banter.  The second sting was annoying.  I started sauntering down the hill towards the guys saying things like "I’m covered in bees."  They thought I was joking.  They know Eddie Izzard.  A few of the little buggers were stinging my shoes so fervently that it looked like they were trying to breed little Yellow Jacket/Expensive Israeli sandal love-children.  So I sat down and Bannon reminded me to take off my kicky toe ring and lovely, Ottuell-made wedding ring before it was too late.  There were still lots of bees around.  A couple of the fellahs circled me smashing yellow jackets, and I threw those expensive Israeli kicks very far away from me so the stingy, shoe-fetish-having lust-muffins could have the alone time with my shoes they so clearly craved.  And then I took a lot of Benadryl and declared to all who could hear that I refused to go into shock of any kind, because it would be downright tacky to ruin anyone’s vacation that way.  And then I was Benadryl dumb for a long time.  But still no sleep.  Exclamations like "don’t go over there unless you want to be covered in bees like Lanea was!" abounded.  No one with allergies was stung.  In fact, I was the only one they got for days.  It’s good to be the Queen.

And then we lit some nests on fire.  We found six around our camp.  Please know, dear readers, that I am still the tree-hugging dirt-worshipper you know and love.  But those bitches had to die.  It was me and mine against them and tharn.  So first wasp bombs.  And then the burnination.  And then more wasp bombs.  And more burnination.  And a little target practice, to get our point across.  The boys were all very helpful.  They are my heroes.  I finally struggled against the Benadryl haze just enough to get really weepy and embarrass Dog and Bannon into telling me not to cry.  To which I responded "I’m a girl!  I’m supposed to cry now, boys!  Frankly, they may take back my uterus, I was so tough when the actual stinging was happening."  Which soothed them appropriately.  And then I prepared temporary accommodations, because I knew we really needed to set more yellowjackets on fire before I could put my canvas tent up, and that I didn’t really want to set my tent on fire again (one million choruses of "Tent’s on fire" were enough last time around, thankyouverymuch.)  And I had to explain to many people what had happened, and all of them agreed that burnination was the only option.

And after the temporary accommodations were built (read "earth-pimple of dome tent nastiness") I started thinking long and hard about just how dangerous it would be to drive to a hotel with that much Benadryl in my system.   And then, thankfully, I turned around and saw Richard coming down the hill a whole day early.  He killed some more bees for me, and he loved his hat (another story for another day), and assured me that all of the evil evil vespids would be gone and that it would be deadly stupid to drive.  And then those crow-heads made something lovely for me to eat and patted me on the head and tucked me in, and I think I slept for two years or so.

It was the best day ever.

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