Thursday, July 17, 2014

Hammers At Dawn

I may or may not be writing this from a camper.  Ok, I'm in a camper.  But it's more like a small perfect house, because I don't campIf you've read any of my Time Traveler posts, you may understand why not.  No, wait.  I haven't written *that* post yet... The one where we lived in a tent for most of a year in 1977.  Five of us, with my brother in diapers.  Outside shower, outdoor kitchen, washing dishes in a pot on the ground, with goats and chickens that came in the tent.  Oh, yes.  I will write that post eventually...but-
 
Anyhoo.

So, yes.  We're in a camper on a mountain by a lake.  My oldest and my husband had to leave at 5 a.m. this morning for the one-hour commute back to civilization because WORK, so we got that kind of relaxing 5 hours of sleep you get when you are relying on the alarm to go off on a Droid with 60% battery left and no electricity, plus the requirement that "If I miss work, I will be fired.  Mom. Are you totally sure your phone won't die?"

Of course I said yes.  Because I wanted her to sleep without worrying that she may miss work, get fired, not be able to go to college, and end up living in a van down by the river.  All because her mom wanted to go camp by the beach. 

The good news is that my phone didn't die, and that horrid Droid alarm did exactly what it should do...which is: wake up everyone except herI'm kidding.  She eventually got up, after I was completely awake, and they left on time.

I snuggled down to go back to sleep because hello--NO ONE IS AWAKE THAT EARLY.   Seriously.

I thought a lot of time had passed when I heard another camper start up....their generator... in the absolute still quiet of the forest.  With no clock in sight, I mentally forgave them and assumed that it must be later than I thought.  "Well, yeah.  It's probably like 7.  They are probably morning people and were kind enough to wait until 7 for their coffee." I drifted back towards the sleep I still hadn't really had.

Then.

Gun shots.  Six.  I counted.  Where we are, this isn't really cause for alarm, so I tried to sleep again.

Then.

Hammering.  I kid you not.  Now that I'm awake, I'm not sure why hammering is more alarming than guns?  All my windows were open, so it sounded like someone was building something IN THE NEXT CAMP SITE.  At first I thought "Ok, sure.  They're probably just tapping the end of their picnic table together so they can have breakfast safely.  It's cool.  They'll stop soon."

Guys.  It didn't stop.  I sleep light, so this was a total deal breaker.  Bam.  BamBAM .BAM

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM.   

BAM!!!

I shut the windows and tried to sleep anyway.  It went on.  I tried to imagine WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY NEED TO BUILD RIGHT NOW!!???!! 

Finally I flung the covers off and actually went outside in my jams barefoot and stood in the road looking for the source of the noise.  I couldn't see anything.  The next camp site was still quiet.  I did my best *arms flung out* gesture that universally means WTH, GUYS??? WHAT ARE YOU HAMMERING? DO YOU REALIZE THERE ARE PEOPLE SLEEPING RIGHT NOW?? Not a soul was visible.  Just the sound of hammering.  Two hammers, actually.

I gave up and went back in the camper.  Glanced at the clock.  I had to squint...the big hand is on the... 9. Little hand allllllmost on the ...6..  Wait. 

It's 5:45? 

WHAT THE EVERLIVING HECK ARE YOU WORKING ON AT 5:30 IN THE MORNINGI can't even.

It did finally stop, and I was able to sleep. I woke up at 10:45, which felt great.  Kind of like being on vacation.

Plus, I found two bars of service on the windowsill of the camper and woke up to an email from one of my favorite blogger friends, so it looks like today will be ok after all. Except I have the added joy of customers being able to reach me while I'm camping, so that's a love-hate kind of thing. Yeah.  The service is patchy at best hereSorry I missed your call while at the beach...really!

P.S.  They are still hammering...someone must be building a house, or a mountain-top monastery, or something.   Gah. 

The view from my door right now.  With less hammering.

14 comments:

  1. So what the hell was being hammered?? Did I miss it? I'm a lazy reader, I guess. WHO WAS HAMMERING!

    Funny post!

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    1. I wish I knew! It's a mystery. I can't see any sign of construction, so maybe they're over the hill building a barn or something. Maybe they don't realize there are campers within A MILE. Maybe they wanted to beat the 100-degree heat and get the roofing done early. I have so many questions. But mostly, just WHY?

      Also a small part of my brain is wondering who fired 6 shots from a gun at 5 a.m., but somehow seriously, that's not as annoying... lol

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  2. Funny you should mention this subject. I was awakened at 6:00 am on a SUNDAY in the suburbs by a roofer using a hammer on the house behind me.

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    1. It's a house, sure enough. I walked up the hill and could see new construction. They started early today again, but it seems quieter...maybe they're trying to hammer *lighter*
      :)

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    2. Aw now I'm bummed, I thought for sure your "hammerer" was a cool woodpecker going after bugs in a tree...

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    3. lol. I wish. At least then I could have yelled at them to go away... ;)

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  3. WTF???

    We should all get ONE pass to punch someone in the face without repercussion. You should have used yours on the hammerer. Hammerer? According to spell check..it's valid.

    I'm glad you got to go back to sleep and weren't shot or hammered to death. By the hammerer.

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    Replies
    1. Hammerer is totally a word. And I should get a pass to go out there and at least turn his hammer around and bonk him on the head with the handle at 6 a.m. Once. Or once for every time they woke me up. Or for pain and suffering, because every time I write about them from this camper, I have to do it with my phone propped in the windowsill and type while kneeling on a rocking camper/living room chair backwards. Either way, they owe me.

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  4. That sounds lovely! Except for the hammering.
    I remember when I lived in an apartment complex it always seemed that the mornings I got to sleep in were the mornings they decided to mow all the lawns below my window/reroof the building/my neighbors liked to sing gospel music.

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    1. BWAHAHA. I love the gospel music thing!

      I have a secret weapon though.. EARPLUGS BABY. I slept like a baby last night, right through the wedding on the beach and subsequent partay-crown around their fires until late last night at camp. Dogs, babies, ATVs. Bring it. I couldn't hear a thing.

      muahahaha...

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  5. That looks like a beautiful place to camp, but my husband would tell you that you're not at the beach unless there's an ocean in front of the sand. We are going to attempt to go tent camping with our 3.5 year old and 1 year old later this summer. Wish us luck and no chickens or goats in our tent!

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    1. Ooh, yeah, no chickens or goats is always a good thing. Brave soul.

      I agree--BEACH should mean ocean, and ocean should be WARM ENOUGH TO SWIM IN, but if you squint through the trees in the picture above, you can see there is a 7-mile lake stretched out forever just at the bottom of the hill. I use the term "beach" loosely, because, although there is sand up above, the actual water part is entirely made up of 2-4" river rock that requires aquasocks or a fire-walker's, um, lightness of foot. Lots of ooch/ouch/ooch/ouch going on. But the water was great this year. Much less numbing than usual... ;)

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    2. Ear plugs.....now why did I not think of using those back in CA
      when the neighbors flock of geese used to have their mating season right under the bedroom windows around 5am. The only
      plugs we had were in the shot gun, which I would have liked to
      use, just to watch them all scatter so I could have had a good
      laugh at least but your dad was afraid I'd piss off the landlords,
      who owned the geese. Gurrrrr
      Mom

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    3. Oh yes, I have a story to write about them, too... heh heh

      Remember her telling us not to worry about the mountain lion you saw out back on your walk one night, BECAUSE SHE WAS FEEDING IT ?

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