Lone Black Spider

Wednesday Morning. Oh. Joy.
My eyes seem to be sticking together. I think I need to clean my contacts or get to bed earlier.
I am still a tad upset about last night at Scouts. They held their monthly Board of Review. This time there were four adults drilling these poor kids. I mean really people, these kids are 13 and under! I swear its worse than a job interview. (they say that is what they are teaching these kids, how to perform in a job interview and learn life skills) I say it again, they are only 13 years old ! They are still kids, not some robot trying to advance in life; they are just tying to make it thru each day as a teenager.
Anyways, needless to say, my son did not Rank Advance to Life. We knew that he would not, because the board failed the two previous kids as well and those kids are SPL (Senior Patrol Leader, as in, he leads the entire troop!) and ASPL. What-Ever.

We had our lovely Commitee meeting for Scouts yesterday. I happen to be the Treasurer and am in charge of the checkbook/monies. I dont think most of the people like me very much as I am always complaining that the leaders spend too much money. We figure that our budget will be approx $10K for the year. Get this: right now we have $1500, ha! We are not sponsered by the Mormon church cuz we are non-denominational, meaning we are a mix of everything, so we get no money from the Church. We have to earn it all ourselves. Personally, I think that is better than getting the funds handed on a silverplater and given to the Troop just for the sole reason the member are LDS.
Anyways, we have a lot of fundraising to do if our Troop wants to camp and what-not. But we have new people and they have new ideas so I think it just might work! All in All, it was a good meeting yesterday (surprise surprise).

Yesterday a few of us Parents had Board Of Review training for Scouts. It was a very good training session, but I just don’t agree w/some of the rule the BSA has. Of course, it is mostly the religous stuff. When the Boys ‘rank up’, they get reviewed by a groug of Parents; its like a interview. They ask the boys tons of stuff, like . . . what Leadership qualities they have and give examples, are they living the ’scout spirit’, and what they do in thier daily life to support their ‘duty to God’. This is where it gets tricky. According to BSA, a Scouts HAS to believe in a higher entity, spirit, God, or whatever you want to call it, in order to be a Scout. Well ! Me and my son, um, dont realy believe much in what we cant see or touch, we dont go to church as we sure as hell dont believe in any type of ‘higher entity’. I believe that we make and control our own lives, there is no one else but ME that makes my decision, runs my life or leads me in a certain direction; I take full responsibilty for my life.

Anyways . . . So now if my son wants to rank up in scouts to a Life, we will need to figure out a way to say what the Board wants to hear about God and religion, and to tell the truth, but do it in a sneaky way as to not incriminate ourself and flunk the Review! eGads,that one is going to take me a while; figuring out how to word the correct answer to: How, or What, do you do to support your Duty to God?

Originally Posted Aug26 2:11pm

Okay, we get this very nice invitation to attend a Eagle Scout Court of Honor from one of my sons friends. This is thee highest rank a Scout can achieve. So put the invitation aside, and pull it out like 15 minutes before we are to leave. However, get this, there is no fetchin’ address on the invitation! All is says is Butler West Stake Center. OMG. Like where the heck is that!? I know it is a Mormon Church, but do you know how many Mormon churches are in Salt Lake City !? Every other corner, sheesh. So I start searching on line to find the dang thing, but can find no listing of Mormon Church address anywhere, I have been doing this for at least 30 minutes now and its too late to go. I thought about calling the kid, but I am sure he was at the church way before hand, so that is point is moot. Good Gosh, I really wanted to go too! I wanted to see what a Eagle Scout COH is all about, and . . . I wanted to see how the Mormons do one. Well now my kiddo has to explain to his friend in school tomorrow why we did not show up.

But it really ticks me off. They just expect everyone to be Mormon and know where each Stake is! Well they should be conciderate and put the damn address on the invitation if they want us Non-Mormons to come. Or - maybe they did that on purpose, so that we would Not show up - ya never know . . .

Just a really quick post cuz our tent is sitting in our living room stinkin’ up the place as it is still soaking wet! We got back from our lovely camping trip in the Uinta; man was it cold! As you can see it hailed. More notes later, we have TONS of work to do putting away all the gear.

Well we are just about out of here for the weekend. It is the monthly Scout Camping trip and I am going with them this time. Why you ask ! They are going into the Unita’s and Fishing! I love Fishing! Last year when we went, I and one other leader, were the only ones that caught a fish. So I have to catch another one for sure this year!
The strange part is that there are around 10 Boys going, 7 Male Leaders, and me. I still have worries that some of the Male leaders dont like me. Mosly cuz I am female and after all, this is “Boy Scouts”. But I have talked to some and they have actually said that they forget I am a female; they treat me like one of the guys. This time however, we have 4 new Male Leaders, so I hope they can accept me as well. I mean really, it’s not like I camp w/them all the time. I just go on the fun trips!
We are bringing our small red backpacking tent instead of our large one. I was going to drive, but now we are car pooling w/another leader. Camping is one of those time where I sure could use Lasik; pluggin’ those contacts in your eye in the cool mountain mornings is no fun. ugh.
But if I catch a fish, eat good food and hike around. it will be all worth it. I will be back bloggin’ on Monday. Have a great weekend ya’all !

It just turned 8PM a few minutes ago and we just got home. What’s what that !? On most school nights we are in bed by now (we get up at 5am). However, it IS summer and we had a ton of running around to do after I got off work. I need a flash drive that I could plug in my Jeep (do they even make those?!); I could multi task even more that I do now, ha !
One of our errands included SportsMans Warehouse for fresh Worms and Salmon Eggs. We are going fishing this weekend and I need my Salmon Eggs to catch those Trout!
Actually we went to the Library foremost to get some Scout Books but they only had one. Now we have to go buy one tomorrow. suck. I hate spending money ! but we need this book for tomorrow night as son needs to pass of his Personal Management Merit Badge.
I am so tired this week and getting more worn out very quick. Camping this weekend better be fetchin’ relaxing!
yeah, right. sure. uh huh. *sigh*

Today is my Friday, so fun! We are going camping this weekend with Scouts. It is our annual Family Camp and they have projected about 150 people in total. We will definitely not need a Cat5e Keystone jack, as I don’t even know for sure if they have toilets up there! Anyways, I guess they have it all planned out pretty good as we only have to provide 2 meals for ourselves. So it will be easy camping for me. Since the kiddo and I don’t have a camp stove, we have to cook it all over a fire. Fun and tasty, but lots of work as well. I can’t wait!