Mad ramblings from camp

Only three weeks left! Really less than that, since this is Day Two.

And next week, the camp numbers are "so low," I understand they will tell some of the staff members not to show up. I won't be so lucky, of course, but the thing is, they *could* do this the right way and it appears they won't.

They are some people who are ready to quit and walk out. Based on previous decisions, it's likely those people will be told to stay and the group, and most people live 4+ hours away, which wants to stay will have to depart home and then return.

We'll see what happens. There's one person here, who intends to stick it out, who says if she is sent home for next week she will not return the following one. I don't blame her. You sign up to work a summer camp and count on it for housing (which many did), you need it.

The mosquitoes are back en masse and flies are all over. However, having grown accustomed to Moroccan flies (meaning having things like food, drink, surfaces and body parts including eyes) covered in flies, I can't get too upset about 3-4 flying around the kitchen.

The kitchen. Sigh. The novelty is gone, not that there ever was one. I'm getting tired of having a verbal list of stuff to do being barked at me at 6:49 and then, at 2:47 p.m., being told "we forgot" to do some minor thing, like put out ketchup at lunch for pizza.

I'm not so much an audio person. I hear a list like this: "Slice carrots, pull peaches, pan pancakes and sausages, pull up the rugs, bleach out the sink, empty the cereal container, make tea, pull hash browns and get a count on chicken nuggets" and it goes right by. It comes out as more like, "Slice blah, blah, blah, blah, yadda, blah, empty the cereal container, something about tea, yadda yadda blah." I do the one or two things I remember and then ask about the rest. Then I get, "I told you to ..."

I have not done this for 30 years like she has. And the food, by and large, isn't stuff I eat or have prepared. I have no idea, for example, what a good salad bar looks like, how to make tomato soup or how long to boil eggs.

I'm getting blamed for stuff I didn't do, too. This might have been my tipping point. I know last week I was in a crappy mood and although 99.9 percent of it was because BOTH jobs I was so close to getting weren't filled, it had a lot to do with hamburgers.

I counted the darn things. I know what hamburgers are. I used two complete boxed, identially marked with "beef patties" on them. I then went to a third box, also marked "beef patties," and used about nine or so perfectly round burgers.

Burgers I eat. I know what they look like, both raw and cooked. These were burgers. Pink, somewhat round and all. But one of the boxes came out of the oven shaped a a little funky. Like the salisbury steaks we serve. Now, they were not salisbury steaks, but they were shaped like them. The looked like burgers, though. No fake little grill marks like on the salisbury.

Never mind. Pocahontas saw them and, in front of everyone, told me I'd messed up and that they weren't burgers. I said yes, they were, and explained how I knew. She claimed the third box was salisburies, I was just too dumb to notice (not her words, but clearly her meaning.) I asked how many "salisburies" she'd seen. She said she'd counted 21 so far. I said well, then you're talking the ones from the burger box, because I only used nine from the new box, and those were round, ask Pawnee. (Who confirmed.)

Pocahontas still wasn't satisfied, saying I'd mistaken the boxes. Now, I have done this before. I can read. I am the one who did the inventory, who loaded the freezer in the first place, who placed all the burgers together, who pulled them and who panned them. I know what kind of box it was. It was a burger box. And I know what burgers look like. Salisbury steaks aren't pink, for crying out loud.

But she didn't believe me, seriously. It went on and on, and meanwhile, I was still feeding kids going through the line. All this took place in public. I was so upset.

Even later, when Pawnee again vouched for me, she was skeptical. She then ate a "salisbury" and said, wow, salisburies have garlic and onion flavoring and this doesn't. Of course it didn't. It was a hamburger. Like I'd been saying all along.

And I thought she finally believed me. Until the following day, when she brought it up again. I looked at her and said quietly, "I swear to you on my grandmother's grave those were hamburgers." And she finally quieted about it.

We had a real salisbury incident I got blamed for last Thursday. We ran out and immediately I was pointed at, asking how many I'd panned. I did 90. And we were out, so what happened? I must be wrong, right? Uh, no, I panned 90. I don't know why you're out.

Finally she blamed the Y, and feeding three spare people who came in. (Never mind I could name three staffers who didn't.) She went on and on about the counts, which have been wrong badly before but we've never actually run out of food. She even called her boss and bitched to him about it, not paying attention to the fact that, while yes we did feed people we shouldn't have, people who should have been fed didn't show.

Friday morning, when I arrived at 6:30, I went to pull the pancakes and stuff out for breakfast. On the rack, facing out and everything, was a half-pan of salisbury steaks. The other lady, Pocahontas' friend, neglected to pull them all out of the freezer when they went to cook them.

I'm ready for it to be over!