Currently, there are large plastic bins placed at strategic points throughout the house, and periodically when I spot some item I deem necessary to sustain life, I pull it off a shelf and throw it into a bin. I am packing to take the boys “camping” this weekend, although when you transport more than 80% of your household goods across the state line, I believe technically that is called “moving.”

The local mothers’ club (those snooty bitches!) is hosting a camping weekend in Maine, and I signed up on impulse. I’m not sure what made me do it, as I’ve never been an enthusiastic camper. I’m outdoorsy enough in the daytime, I guess, but at night when the dew point is around 60 I don’t even want to sleep indoors without the life-giving properties of humidity-filtering air conditioning. (However, I did sleep in a sleeping bag with only an airline pillow for my head for three years in the Peace Corps, so if that doesn’t give me camping cred, I don’t know what will.)

Still, the boys are growing up in prime camping country, and I thought they should have the same chance to enjoy summer nights under the Maine sky as I did, vicariously, through all those WASPy books I enjoyed so much as a kid. Except, you know, for real. Camping seems like their kind of thing — they love looking at bugs and playing in dirt and swimming and running around for hours with the other kids — but I am just a tiny bit worried about the sleeping, for different reasons. Aitch is Pavlovian in his attachment to his bedtime routine. If he doesn’t get the signal that it’s bedtime, he doesn’t shut down. In hotel rooms he’s never asleep until after we are. Minor is much better about being able to nod off under different circumstances. I can see him falling asleep on my shoulder in front of the campfire while the older kids run around. But he does not sleep well in the company of others, and once he’s awake, we all will be.

It’s a good thing this is nearby and open 24 hours.