July 23rd – Brain Hamster Managed
Weather:90s/50s
Loving the weather. And I think I’ve even accepted “it’s a dry heat,” though it isn’t exactly dry tonight. Woke up feeling a little hung over, not that I know exactly what that feeling is since I’ve chosen not to drink, but the feeling after the hamster gets too in control must be something like that.
Benny was putting the garbage in the bag for me after breakfast when he spotted the can from the water I had to drink last night.
“Aunt Gus?” I turned and he was holding it and looking worried. “Do you have a … a … sick headache?”
Uh oh. Penny used to use that phrase too often. “Absolutely not. At least not the way you’re thinking Little Bear.”
“But you only drink this stuff when …” He scrunched up his face unable to find the words that covered all the emotions he was feeling.
“The brain hamster tried to go rodeo on me last night.” My joke didn’t distract him, in fact it made him more uncomfortable since he knew I was trying to distract him. I sighed. I took the can from him and tossed it back into the garbage bag and then sat him down in my lap and tried to fix what I had unintentionally caused. “Benny, you … you know that I’m different.”
“Like me.”
“Yes. Sorta. At the same time … look, you can have problems when you eat stuff you shouldn’t.”
“Gluten and red dye.”
“That’s correct. But sometimes my … thinking … just …”
“You call it the brain hamster because of that silly hamster dance toy Stella used to have on her desk.”
I forced myself to chuckle. “Yeah. Pretty much. I used to be a lot worse than you and likely worse than you’ve ever thought about me being. But I’ve learned how to get through my days in a different way. I’m healthier. I do things more constructively. I have rules and so long as I can follow those rules, I keep the brain hamster under control. But sometimes … I let it get away from me and occasionally …”
“Is that why you went outside when it was dark and was exercising again last night?”
“Did that bother you?” I asked in concern, not realizing he hadn’t been completely asleep when I would occasionally need to do it.
“No. ‘Cause when you come back in you are all better. I thought you were all better last night. Was I bad? Is that why the exercising didn’t help?”
“Absolutely not. Don’t even think that. Please Benny. Just don’t. The way I am is my responsibility, not yours.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Not even a little bit. I just started thinking and … it got away from me.”
“Sometimes when I think about stuff … it makes my head go in circles. Like … like …”
“Like what?”
“Sometimes … I mean I know you said it wasn’t like that … but sometimes … I mean … if I hadn’t gotten sick or been different … if Momma … if she …”
I hugged him. “As often as you need me to, I’ll explain it Little Bear. Your mother had problems before you came along. She had problems before she and your dad met. Lawrence was only able to help her a little bit but even … even if he had come home … your mother …” This was always a difficult subject. I never knew where it was safe to draw the line. I didn’t want to criticize Penny and hurt Benny, but there were some things that Benny just needed to know for his own sake. “Your mother was fragile. That’s the best word I’ve been able to find that explains it. She was that way before she met your dad, and she was that way when he wasn’t able to come home. Not all of that was her fault but … but she could have helped herself, allowed other people to help her, a lot more than she did. Lawrence wouldn’t have been able to stop her. You could never stop her. Groucho couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t either. We all tried to help her but … but she just refused to be helped enough. I’m not like that Benny. I won’t ever make the choice to leave you. You come first.”
“But you still drank your funny water.”
“I did. Because I looked at my thinking and I knew I needed to fix it. The first thing I always do is try and stop the hamster dance. If giving myself a talking to doesn’t put my brain back in the right gear I do chores or exercise, something constructive that works off some of the excess energy. As a last resort I take a medicinal. Last night the caffeine water helped me chill out enough to get my brain to rest. Rarely that doesn’t help, and when it doesn’t, I try chamomile tea or something along those lines but that doesn’t happen very often at all these days. When I first came to live with Lawrence the doctors put me on a medication that I could take as a last resort, but I haven’t had to do that since before you were born. The doctors think that I started growing up, and my brain was growing up too. And I was learning to create the structure I needed to not need medicine and stuff like that.”
“Will I need medicine? Uncle Groucho used to say Momma should have taken medicine.”
“We tried the medicine route with your mom, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I’m not too sure it would have helped anyway. I had a counselor tell me once that medicine could give me a door to walk through but if I didn’t open that door and walk through on my own, no one could make me, so the medicine would never have helped. As for you? I don’t think that is going to be your problem. You’re going to be like Lawrence, you just need to find a passion to expend your energy on. For now, our Adventure is our passion. You think?”
“Yeah! And we’re together.”
“Exactly.”
“But then why did the hamster get you last night?”
Sigh. Full circle. “I’ll be honest Little Bear. Sometimes being an adult, being the one in charge, can be a little … overwhelming. That doesn’t make being an adult bad. It is a good thing to grow up when it is time. Sometimes I just worry about not doing the job of being the adult right and I just can’t stand that thought. You’re everything I have Benny, every
one I have. I want to do this right so that you can grow up and be better than me. Lawrence was my brother and I know he’d want you to have all of that too.”
“You got scared?”
Geez, he is so empathetic. “Yeah. I guess. A little bit. The future is out there and … and I just want to do it right.”
“I love you Aunt Gus. Forever an’ ever.”
I’m not an emotional person, at least not in the drama momma kind of way that some people are. As a matter of fact, I detest drama. There’s too much noise in it, physical and metaphysical. But I suppose I can admit there are some emotional things about me. I love my nephew and being loved in return is the absolute best “medicine” for me. Ever.
Fortunately, Benny isn’t one of those kids that needs to talk things to death. Even at five he seemed to grasp the concept that sometimes you simply need to stop talking and move forward. Moving forward this morning meant heading out on some new trails.
We warmed up with a stop that barely qualified as a trail. It was an easy, tenth of a mile. We drove to the Afterbay Campground and past the sign that said “No Camping Beyond this Point,” to the pit toilet at the end of the road. Not your prettiest trail head marker. From there it was a short hike down a gravel path to a quiet area near what remains of the Bighorn Head Gate. The Bighorn Head Gate was part of the original irrigation system used in the upper Bighorn Valley in the early 1900’s before the dam was built in 1965. The best time of year to view the head gate is during the winter since most of the head gate is underwater during the summer months, but oh well, sometimes you can only go when you can go. It was a great place for bird watching and Benny “collected” a few for one of his Junior Ranger activities. He was a little behind and we needed to turn it in before the ranger station closed for the day.
Our next trail was called Beaver Pond Nature Trail, just like the one at Yellowstone but I must say the two trails looked nothing alike. It was a moderate, 2.6-mile trail that began at the west end of the sidewalk at the
Afterbay Contact Station. This trail was across yucca flats to the ridge above Lime Kiln Creek. Below, the creek is covered with gnawed on trees and other building materials. Beavers. Seriously. In this dry-ish canyon area. Hard to believe but it is true. To get a closer look at the beavers’ construction site the trail began to wind down the steep hillside to the bottom. There was a fallen tree, and after checking for snakes and other irritable bitey things, we sat for a few minutes to talk about how this beaver pond and the one in Yellowstone were different and maybe why. For example, the trees the beavers had to work with are different.
After eating a midmorning snack and making sure we didn’t leave any trash it was back to the van and on to our last hike of the day. For whatever reason it was called Three Mile Access Trail, but it was only two miles round trip. Go figure. At the west end of the trail’s parking area, near another pit toilet, we followed the gravel path along the Bighorn River. The trail ended in a grove of cottonwoods with giant downed logs perfect for sitting on … after checking for snakes. We watched the fly fisherman that were there. Not much was biting but usually you can catch something if you are patient. The Bighorn River is a world class fish hatchery.
Benny didn’t mind that I wanted to sit and soak up the quiet. My tank of quiet was running low after last night but I didn’t allow the hamster to trick me into thinking about it and wear ruts in my psyche. I didn’t let it spoil my better mood. The spot was a tranquil setting to watch the ducks floating by or just listen to the sounds of nature. Benny seemed to enjoy it as well and drew a picture of what he was seeing in a sketch pad I haul around in my backpack to give Benny’s hands something to do just in case. He doesn’t have a hamster but like any kid he can get the fidgets and discovery toys and a drawing pad are what helps him with his.
When we got tired of slapping mosquitoes we headed back to the van and rather than doing chores – we weren’t that behind on them – I offered to take out the kayak one last time. Benny was thrilled so that’s what we did. We even ran into one of those free kayak tours, this one full of a Scout troop on their way to summer camp, and I followed behind to help out a couple of younger scouts get a hang at working together when you are in a tandem kayak.
When the adult leaders found out I had been a Sea Scout things got interesting. Some of them wanted to know what the different between the various scouting groups were, why I hadn’t been a venture scout instead of a sea scout, what was it like being a Naval Cadette, what it was like living in Florida, etc. etc. my ears were getting tired. Then one of the adults pulled along beside me and asked quietly, “Aunt Gus and Little Bear?”
“Depend on if I am in some kind of trouble.”
The man chuckled. “Not at all. Your blog was mentioned at our Order of the Arrow meeting. And I noticed you were very careful about not letting your nephew be in any pictures.”
“Sorry about that. I just have rules.”
“No, completely understandable. The only reason any of the Scouts have photography equipment at the moment is so they can send messages to their parents tonight. Tomorrow the phones get taken away until we hit the airport two weeks from now.”
I grinned. “I remember those days. I understand the rules are much stricter since that … er … incident two years ago.”
He nodded. “That was unfortunate. You screen the adults the best you can but it is difficult to do the same level of screening with the Scouts. You can mandate training but …”
“But sometimes you can’t catch someone that refuses to follow the rules until it is too late.”
He nodded as we both remembered the criminal case against a scout that was blackmailing fellow scouts with inappropriate pictures that had been taken, ostensibly as a joke but in reality it went much further than that. And that is just one of the many reasons I am so careful with Benny.
We left the Scouts at the marina but continued for an hour longer until I spotted thunderclouds coming up fast on the horizon. I told Benny to get his paddle out of the water and let me get us back to shore. I was putting the kayak up on the van when I heard the first roll of thunder and was glad I’d turned around when I had.
The rain and wind hit when we pulled into our campsite and grilling out was no longer possible so there went the kabobs I had meant to cook. This evening was one of those times that the camp meals proved their value even if they could get expensive. I plugged in my new tea kettle to heat the water and turned to find Benny scratching at a mosquito bite.
“Whoa, where did that sunburn come from? It wasn’t there earlier. I sprayed you down several times today, including before we got on the water.”
“It itches.”
“Hop in the shower and rinse off and I’ll put some aloe on your arms, neck, and ears after you clean up and before dinner. That way you can eat in peace.”
I looked at my own arms and they were just brown. I always get just brown. It is why I prefer the tan-through t-shirts so I get brown without having it look like a bad spray-on tan. I did note my nose and lips were a little pink. Sigh. Grandma Barry always called me her Butternut Baby because even when I was little I could look like a baked spud but rarely burned. I refused to give into any self-flagellation over Benny getting more than pink. It happens. Better to make sure it didn’t happen anymore than necessary in the future.
Dinner was Pad Thai (Backpacker’s Pantry brand), fruit cocktail for dessert, and for second dessert (ha ha) we had popcorn left over from yesterday’s snack bag. I would have added hot cocoa to that but it was too warm for it. Instead I fixed Honeyed Milk for Benny and then when he said it was okay if I needed another “funny water” I fixed a short glass for me as well.
Being stuck in the van wasn’t grand, I’d been hoping to get a good work out in, but it did give me time to go over plans for the next few days. I also went over the budget. I’m kinda done trying to keep up with the mileage. I know what we started with, and I’ll know what we’ll end with. That should be good enough. The price of fuel is what it is, and I don’t have any choice but to pay it since that’s what makes the wheels go round and round. I will keep up with the accommodation expense amount since I’m running stricter on that with a thinner margin. I’m not pushed quite as hard since the blog income is staying up there. Not making much more each month but we aren’t dropping either, it has leveled off to a point I can count on it to be there.
So, let’s see. Accommodations reached $2371 when we left Yellowstone, then it was $23 at the KOA thanks to our discount, then add another $24 for the three nights of camping here. That’s a total of $2418. We’ve been on the road nearly four months. If you break it down into four equal amounts as if we were paying rent, that would be just over $600/month. Even an efficiency would be a heck of a lot more than that. Even adding fuel we’re still doing better. If we hadn’t stayed in any hotels or only boondocked we’d be even better off.
We have some added expenses coming up but we are due. And if we don’t take a break now, it will be weeks before we have the opportunity again. We don’t have a long way to drive tomorrow but I think Benny and I should just hit the hay early anyway. Ran is still coming down, just lightly, and hopefully the sound will be calming for both of us.
Resources:
https://www.nps.gov/bica/learn/kidsyouth/upload/Jrranger booklet for web.pdf
https://www.nps.gov/bica/planyourvisit/upload/Bighorn-Canyon-NRA-Hiking-Guide.pdf
https://home.nps.gov/bica/planyourvisit/upload/Bighorn-Canyon-NRA-Hiking-Guide.pdf