38. 6 days in Lilydale

Monday. Showed up. Signs say no fires. Someone is in our reserved spot. Must talk to a guy. He doesn't know what to do. She finally shows up, thought sign out was at 1 (It's 9 according to the workshop guide, 11 according to the guy). We ask about fires. He says yes you can use the grill they have on each campsite. I say can we use a small metal round fire thingy? He says yes. None of this is feeling good. Dave leaves for work. We make a fire on the grill and boil water for soup and dishes. It is our accomplishment. That night it storms big. Usually we like storms. We don't like camping without dad. Michael is the strong one.

Tuesday. We watch the welcome video at 11:30. We go to Cup a Joe and Bargain Shoppe. We camp I guess. We cooked giant Italian flavored burgers from Tuscany over the fire. Basically we camped. People are loud. Each night we walk around town in the dark after we brush our teeth. Noone talks to us. As we walk back we see the security guy asking someone if their citronella candle is a fire or candle. So we ask again, are we not allowed to have fires? He says in the grill. People were having ground fires. Plus food tastes good on a fire. You have to use the grill.

Wednesday. At 1 we go to a message meeting at Inspiration Stump. This is where the spirits talk to you through various mediums. Each did about 2 readings a piece. It seemed like it really was happening for some people. They identified the person talking to them and the topic being talked about. One message, a lady and our group as a whole was being chided to not smoke. This was not typical of the readings. It was to one of our campmates. She hacked all night. Tent walls are thin.
We also went to the museum, the bookstore, got choco tacos and things. We found the labyrinth and various other buildings. Cooked hotdogs on the fire. Noone talked to us. The hacking lady and her friends had night time fires on the grill. I was glad. It smelled good. Too lazy to make a fire at night.

Thursday. I went to a Nutrition Workshop 1:30 to 4:30. She pretty much had much training and suffered many eating styles which basically harmed her for years due to the inappropriateness of the eating styles for her body and what she wanted to do with her body.. Some diets are good for some people and TERRIBLE for others.. I guess I pretty much already knew this. Nice to have someone out there back it up with experience I guess.
http://www.realnaturalmedicine.com/

We ate out at Grandma's that night. It was awesome. I also met the lady in the tent next to us that night on our night time walk. She's a shaman from New Jersey. Barbara Cannell. Super interesting. Her mediumship comes through touch. She gets things while doing massage therapy.. She works with a healer who channels old famous surgeons and drs. The healer literally does surgery inside of people through spirit channeling.. We talked about everything.

Friday. Katie Fox was in town. One of the founders of Spiritualism was Katie Fox. But this one is our friend, unrelated. So she met us at Cup A Joe (you can get a shopping pass to get in. You need to get it stamped at the places you shop at.) We checked out the pet cemetery. The boys and I went to another message meeting at 4 at Forest Temple. We got no messages. Then we went to Katie's land and she had a Hungry Ghost party. Night before full moon. We burned our problems and things.

Saturday. Ugh we thought we were going home. But realized we thought about it wrong. Had paid for 6 days which actually means nights. What were we thinking? The portapotties are getting nasty. The slugs are getting annoying. Ground in. People really seem to suck. A lot of people are here today. So we camp. We do camping things. We hang out in the woods at our campsite. Our loud neighbors have 2 popup campers and 2 tents and all their cars parked in the much smaller than a state parks space. There are some this little light of mine people with 3 tents across the way. We unexpectedly have a really nice camping day. We all get along we are HAPPY. We eat at our camper lunch and dinner. Just hang out. Cook bacon and eggs on the fire. for dinner. Happy.

I tried to go to one last message meeting the people were hideous. One girl was doing her iphone. I couldn't hear the soft spoken main medium. I walked out when the people walked in with their cartons of food and drink cups. It says no food and drink etc.. But I am happy. I realize human gatherings are not for me. I hate them. It is clear. Humans suck. But now I know. The boys and I camp together and we are happy and alone. We wash the dishes. It takes some time to boil water enough for the greasy egg and bacon pan. We finally sit around the fire ourselves. Just as the sun goes down, the security guy comes over and says people have reported you are having a 3 foot high fire.. I said you realize we talked to you about it? Now the rule is you can only cook on the fire.. We don't like getting in trouble. BUt how can you follow basically non existant or ever changing rules? It felt like our wonderful day was mostly ruined by a crap ending. But we took our night walk anyway. It was annoying. We saw someone parked in front of the no parking sign. Yes this represents the Lilydale we know. But of course WE get in trouble and basically lied about.

When we got in, the camp was mostly quiet and dark. We were surprised. When Dave got in at 12:30 the tents all had lights on. The campsite next to us had a giant singalong until 2:30. Dave tried to find someone in charge but could find noone. He said if it had been anything but music, he would have been fine.

Sunday we were home by 9:30 am. As Jon cleaned up his bed in the camper, he found a dried slug under his pillow.

8/18/08