In which trek weathers the storm

So, what exactly do you do when a tropical storm is coming your way?

Well, one thing you can do is to decide leave Black Dog at home and to walk indoors at the local shopping mall with TazzMom. In addition to providing three miles of dry walking, this decision might have the added benefit of scoring Christmas presents for five nieces and two daughters at a department store's Going out of Business Sale. It also could have the benefit of scoring several pieces of much-needed intimate apparel at another department store's One Day Sale: Buy 2, Get 2 Free!

After lunch, you might stop at the library to pick up your books from the hold shelf. You might follow that up with purchasing some of these for the Camp Out in the Living Room which you promised to your child.

Every child should toast
marshmallows at least once

In between the errands, you might like to sit down with a good book or two. You might also decide that this is a good time to trim up the edges and count all of the Box Tops for Education that your family and all of the Box Topapalooza participants have collected. You might just discover that there are 417 Box Tops in the bag. Then you will probably raid the cereal cabinet for three more Box Tops from not quite empty boxes just so you can send a nice round number of them to school on Monday.

Yes, we counted carefully and
there really are 420 Box Tops in there

Some time after dinner is eaten and the offspring bathed would be a good time to start a fire and lay out the sleeping bags on the living room floor for the Camp Out.

Two pyromaniacs live here

This would also be a good time to play a good, old-fashioned board game while waiting for the fire to die down low enough to toast the marshmallows. Even if the offspring is so wound up over the Camp Out that there is no sitting still at all.

No, we didn't actually finish the game

At some point, you would impale marshmallows on the ends of fondue forks and quickly discover that the forks are too short and the fire too hot for toasting marshmallows - especially for sensitive child-fingers. You might then resort to Plan B: toasting marshmallows, one at a time, over the flame of an Emergency Candle.

We are nothing if not resourceful here.

A bit later, after the joys of burning toasting marshmallows has been discovered, you might all curl up on the sleeping bags adorning the living room floor.

Some time in the middle of the night, if you are anything at all like Number Guy and I, you might rouse from your restless non-sleep on the floor and claw your way upwards to the couches - where you still won't sleep as well as in your firm, king-sized bed upstairs - but your hips and back will stop aching temporarily. Or at least long enough to drift into a light doze during which you will iron a crease into your neck.

The things we do for our offspring on a rainy Saturday, eh?