Yesterday Jim, Jeremy, and Jesse went to the men and boys camp out sponsored by our church at a lake about an hour’s drive away. They have these every other year or so. They even took Suzie-the-dog, though she’s not male. 🙂 She loves any type of outing with her people, though. I’m not sure why Jim enjoys camping so much — seems like an awful lot of work in preparation to me!! But his family camped out a lot when he was younger, , or at least spent a lot more time outdoors. Jeremy says about once or twice a year is enough to get it out of his system. 🙂

And me, well, I was gleefully anticipating a whole almost 24 hours of quietness and solitude. Oh, I dearly love my family, and after just a few hours I am ready for them to come back. But I’ve always craved a certain amount of quietness and solitude to keep my sanity. And a little bit of absence does make us appreciate each other more, I think.

So last night I splurged and got a take-out meal from a restaurant (with the rest of it tucked away for lunch!) I had planned to spend some time reading others’ blog entries and then write a letter or two or even work on an article I’ve been thinking about. But I got caught in the YouTube vortex and spent way too much time there! I had seen a couple of links on other blogs and message boards to a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent who wowed the judges and the audience with his rendition of “Nessun Dorma,” Paul Potts. I would venture to guess that that’s a crowd not usually inclined to listen to opera (on the American version, at least, not much of anything anywhere near classical gets through). Of course — that is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and if you think of the human voice as an instrument, you can admire the power, the emotion, and the beauty whether or not you know what it is about or what the words are. And Paul, a mobile phone salesman, aced it! Beautiful voice! So, I was looking around last night for Andrea Bocelli singing the same song, then his singing of “Time to Say Good-Bye” with Sarah Brightman. Then the “related videos” links led me to “The Phantom of the Opera” by Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas (I hadn’t known he could sing!), to a couple by Michael Ball (Marius in the 10th anniversary video of Les Miserables — just loved him there), even to Hugh Laurie. Then I looked up the lyrics to “Nessun Dorma” and “Time to Say Good-Bye,” then went back and found Paul Potts singing the latter and the the video of him winning Britain’s Got Talent as well as the little girl who was one of his competitors. So — it was enjoyable though not the way I had planned to spend so much time.

Then I listened to the second message in a series on the Deity of Christ (if you click there, scroll down for the links to these messages) that I mentioned earlier, dealing with questions like what the Bible means when it speaks of Him being only begotten or the first begotten since He is eternal. I did the same thing as before with a Word document open to take notes and the BibleGateway program open to look at and then copy and paste the Scriptures in. I am almost wishing I had a laptop to take to church, that’s such a great way to take notes. My husband and oldest son do that with their PDAs at church.

After spending probably a great deal too much time on the computer, I went to bed. So this night alone was pretty enjoyable and relatively calm. But the funny story I mentioned in this post’s title happened the very first time the guys went on a men and boys camp out a few years ago. I was also at that time joyfully anticipating some extended time with the house all to myself when I suddenly realized that it would be the first time I was completely  alone overnight at home since before I’d had children. Being alone in the late evening and overnight gave me pause. But I once again got dinner out, then checked out some chick flicks from the library (Little Women starring Winona Ryder was one — just loved it!) and did some ironing while watching. I was doing all this upstairs in my bedroom when I heard the sounds indicating something was caught in the window. I took a flashlight and looked, and there was an enormous beetle stuck between the window frame and the screen. It was making a lot of noise, but I didn’t want to open the window to try and get it free and take a chance on it getting out into the room. So I just left it there, and eventually it quieted down. A few hours later when I was getting ready for bed — it started up again flapping around! I took the flashlight and looked again — and it was no longer stuck where it had been! I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. I thought — of all the nights and all the windows in this house, it has to go flapping around in this one on this night when I’m by myself! I couldn’t do anything else with it — once again I didn’t want to open the window even to spray bug spray and take a chance on it getting into the room. So I went on to bed with all the flapping going on in the window. Once again it quieted down after a while. But all through the night, whenever a strand of hair fell across my face I flailed around slapping it away thinking it was the beetle. 🙄 It wasn’t funny then, but when I think now how that must’ve looked, it would have been pretty amusing to see, I think. The next morning I couldn’t hear or see a sign of it anywhere, so it either got out or died somewhere!

Finally, the contest I mentioned is from 5 Minutes For Mom in honor of Independence Day. Like they did for Mother’s Day, they will be giving away several prizes on July 4. You’ll need to enter for each prize you are interested in individually. All the instructions can be found here.

Have a great rest of the weekend! I’m off to do laundry and dusting. The guys got back a little while ago, so I’ll wait for them to take showers and unpack their stuff. I am told the lake was pretty muddy and the things they had on that were white will probably never be white again….