My cursed weekend

First of all, my weekend was awesome, despite being cursed. But cursed it most certainly was. I’m nursing various minor physical injuries I sustained since Friday, but it’s my shattered psyche that may never recover. All of this can be traced back to Roark’s Machiavellian insistence on using a white lighter.

I’m getting ahead of myself. This weekend Kelly, everyone’s favorite den mother, took a dozen of her closest friends and acquaintances to her family’s cabin on Lake Ozette, a secluded lake right by La Push. Since this was to be a holiday weekend, my first real one since I became the single point of failure on my team at work, Roark and I splurged on some holiday cigarettes, a pack of Marb menthols. A sinful selection, to be sure. I’m not a break-taking smoker anymore, so I don’t carry my lighter on me most of the time. As a result, every time I wanted some mentholated smoky goodness, I had to use Roark’s lighter, which is a white Bic covered in electrical tape. It appears black on casual inspection, but it’s white underneath the camouflage, and that makes all the difference in the world.

One of my few superstitions (belief in the very real sasquatch doesn’t count) is my fear of using white lighters. I inherited it from my older sister a long time ago, and after adhering to it for years I seldom question its veracity. It’s not important why white lighters bring bad luck, only that they do. Logic need not apply. Because of a paucity of non-white lighters on the trip and my overwhelming urge to fill my lungs with vacation-nicotine, I resorted to lighting up with the fell device several times. Witness the effects.

Kelly, Marc, Ivonne and I arrived at the boat launch around 12:30 am on Friday night. Everyone else in the caravan had taken another highway directly to the cabin, and if all went as planned they would be waiting for us there as we pulled up in the boat. Unfortunately, several hurdles stood between us and successful completion of this plan. First was the pitch darkness, but that’s really a minor quibble. More importantly, the strip of beach where we were ostensibly to launch the boat was a long, shallow incline that didn’t get deep enough to submerge the trailer until about 50 feet out. Since Marc could only back his Subaru up to the point where the tailpipe got submerged, that meant we all had to wade in, detach the trailer, and push it by hand those fifty horizontal feet into the lake until the boat floated off. Despite getting soaked pant cuffs, that part was actually pretty fun. After a sightless speed ride across the steaming lake, we arrived to a roaring fire and the welcome of everyone present. Apparently Roark and others were up until 7 in the morning getting tremendously drunk and making a racket, but I dropped into an exhausted sleep almost immediately.

In the morning I woke up and realized I had pitched my little A-frame tent directly on top of several large pokey sticks, but that didn’t register immediately, because Roark was lying on top of me and shouting “lima bean tent” over and over, then hauling me outside in my underwear while I tried to stay asleep. Both the sticks and Roark’s shouting are part of the curse.

The next evil omens came from the dogs on the trip: Kelly’s springer spaniel Dosie and her coworker’s pit-bull Thor. Both of these animals have something horribly wrong with them, as evidenced by the foreboding sounds they emit whenever not completely satisfied with life. Dosie moans and wails whenever Kelly’s dad leaves her sight, sometimes in a manner very much like the cows raised on the Jensen estate, sometimes disturbingly like a human child. Thor, on the other hand, has the canine equivalent of a deviated septum, and snorts and grunts like a wild boar, even when pleased. Between the two of them you couldn’t walk to the outhouse and back without hearing evil sounds coming from knee-level.

But all of the above are relatively minor complaints compared to a tragedy mostly brought on by myself, but no doubt augmented by the curse. After returning from a very successful bout of waterskiing, I ran dripping water to pick up Taeva and throw her into the water. Somewhere between the general wetness, our relative weights, and her squirming to disrobe, I almost dropped her directly onto the boombox sitting on the dock. She and the boombox were fine, but I tore the hell out of my right foot, bruising and cutting myself badly enough to give me a limp that persists still.

If the above doesn’t convince you, consider that later that night Will knocked a perfectly melted s’more I was preparing for Kelly into the fire, ruining our delicious plans for ten whole minutes.

All in all, I give the weekend a 9 — without the curse, we’d be all the way at 11. Thanks, Kel.