The Lawson Family Camping Curse

It is like me to be paranoid, but I may actually have brought a curse onto two of my friends.  The Rimbaud family and the Byron family have camped together multiple times without incident.  The only two times my family has joined them, people have developed pneumonia, had a recurrence of a stomach bug, sprained an ankle, and one poor boy who's only two years old has scraped his chin and cut open the side of his head.

Now, I didn't intend any ill-will or directly cause any of these incidents, but I feel like I'm gambling with their health and personal safety if I go camping with them again.  I like these people an awful lot, and they really don't deserve this kind of bad luck.

Why do I think it's my fault?   Probably because I'm self-centered and a perfectionist.  Plus, I like to delude myself into thinking I can control things in my life.  It's easy to chalk it up to coincidence, but it feels pretty spooky.

One friend said she plans to get some four-leaf clovers and a rabbit's foot next time, but I doubt that's going to be enough.  I think we're going to need to sacrifice an animal or one of the children, probably the most badly-behaved one.  Hands down that's going to be my three-year-old daughter.  Too bad, she was pretty cute.

What do you think I can do to appease the angry camping gods?  Am I really being paranoid or could I be inadvertently jinxing my friends?

There's Something About Gnomes

I started reading online about suicide running in families and got depressed after two web pages.  I started a blog post about how I experience depression as rage, and realized it's going to take a long time and many drafts to describe it well.  And to make it worth reading.

So now, for something completely different and not depressing, I'm going to confess a deep, dark, well, not particularly deep or dark secret.  I have a thing for gnomes.  Garden gnomes actually.  "Fetish" sounds creepy, "fascination" isn't quite it, and neither is "obsession".  So it's just a "thing" I have.  I love garden gnomes.  They make me happy.  They are the embodiment of "idyllic" (extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque).

My favorite gnomes look slightly drunk, like they've just had a few pints of Guinness or butterbeer.  They remind me that there are still moments in life that can be carefree, innocent, or just plain silly.

They also speak to the part of me that wants to believe in magic.  I studied Scandinavian folklore at UCLA, and I remember my professor talking about "nisse," household spirits who help take care of farmers' homes and families.  It's not like I believe my garden gnomes will brush our cat or keep away the raccoons (if they're supposed to, they're clearly doing a crap job), but I'd rather have a garden gnome as a lucky charm than a rabbit's foot any day.

Garden gnomes are usually older folks, and I suppose I romanticize what it'll be like when I'm 80 years old.  That I'll have lived through so much I'll finally stop worrying and just accept life as it comes.  I'll feel more gratitude than regret.  I'll know with certainty that in the end, everything is going to be okay.

I like turtle statues and Buddha statues (the smiling dancing ones anyway), and the sleeping kitty statues, but there's just something about garden gnomes that makes me feel welcome and at home.

If you want to see irreverent garden gnome photos, follow me on Twitter (@prtndurgonodatit).