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Armed with disinfectant, rubber gloves, mops, brooms, and my middle daughter, I trekked up to camp today to clean my cabin and unpack. Sydney was kind enough to keep me company and the two of us worked hard to get my cabin spanking clean.

My summer home, is a room, about 12x12 with a private bathroom. I have air conditioning, though a fan is still necessary, I have pergo flooring. A bed. Two "cubbies" and a lighting fixture. It's just big enough for my bed and my clothes.

Camp is a great experience, though, we learn very quickly, that there is a lot we cannot control, and we have to accept it.

Today was a good example.

I arrived, as planned, at 11:00 am. When I arrived at camp, I came to find out that a staff member, who had been injured a few days ago was convalescing in my cabin. Though they had him leave fairly quickly, and move to a new resting spot, the cabin was a disaster area when we arrived. His used medicinal supplies littered the floor, the toilet was in the up position, there were food crumbs generous strewn about, used paper towels crumpled on the bed, not to mention the requisite dust and dirt all over the floor.

If we were checking into a hotel, the condition of the room would have been unacceptable. It would have been cleaned and sterilized before we even arrived.

Of course, camp is no hotel, so the housekeeping was left to us. And though it only took a couple of hours to scrub it spotless, and though I've been coming to work at camp for 6 years, there is still a bit of culture shock when I first get there. We did fine, of course, after a couple deep breaths and a lot of elbow grease.

Camp is about "making do". It is about fulfilling basic needs. It is about scaling down expectations. It is about making something out of nothing. And my daughter, proved to me today that she's a great camper. She helped my through the muck, and at the end of the day, we had a great time together.

And even though my room is small and sparse. It's clean. It's private. And for the next 8 weeks, it all mine.

I'm so lucky!!!