For some reason The Fam and I were sleeping in an old wooden chapel in sleeping bags.  It was kinda awesome actually.  Very cathartic.

Then I decided I needed a shower.

I’m standing in my bathroom in a brown robe and just as I’m getting ready to turn on the water and get in, a friend of my daughters’ knocks on the door needing something from me desperately.

I told her that I was getting ready to take a shower and she would have to wait.  She left but then came back right as I was about to step into the shower.  She thought it was funny to interrupt me.  She left and came back over and over again.  It was not funny.  But I somehow managed to convince her to GO AWAY forever, when my daughter came to tell me there was someone at the front door who needed to see me.

It was a woman from church.  She was selling soup.  She’d come by to see if I wanted some soup.  I told her no but that didn’t stop her, her adult daughter, and her grandson from coming into my bathroom to look at my shower.  I’m like, “I’m trying to take a shower here…”  She’s all, “Sorry, we’ll get out of your hair…” as she’s walking around my shower.  It was weird.

The next intruders were two men I’ve known for a long time who just needed to use the bathroom to shave.  Sorry, we’ll make it quick.  “Um…..”  I just want to finish taking my shower, people.

Suddenly, the shower is no longer in my home, it’s in a quaint little convenience store.  I’m still in my brown robe and I’m trying to shoo everyone out of the store so I can finally shower.  Yet another gentleman I’ve known for a while is standing in the convenience store talking with friends.  I tell him I just need a few minutes to take a shower.  He promises to finish the conversation quickly and leave.  He doesn’t.

It’s the next day.  I still haven’t showered.  I walk up to the little convenience store that looks like something you’d see in an old western and find a crowd standing around watching as some woman I’ve never seen authorizes it’s destruction.  I stand there in my bathrobe.

So.  Furious.

The next thing I know, a line is forming outside the old store.  The shower-destroying lady who took away my last chance for a shower is now organizing a hike into the nearby woods.  I think to myself, “Why not?  I can’t smell any worse at this point.”  So, still wearing my brown bathrobe, I join the hike.

Lady hands out makeshift weapons to everyone joining the hike except for a young girl and my daughter Sammee, who is also joining the hike.  The weapons are to protect ourselves in case of bears.

We hike up a hill and never see one bear.  But on the way home, we have to walk through a farm and everywhere you look there are bears feeding on the livestock.  The bears are large and black with white stripes down their backs like huge, ferocious skunks.  We quickly realize that if we’re quiet and give them a wide berth they will leave us alone.

We’re heading down the road toward safety, when just up ahead of us, past a big, red barn, standing in the road, is a huge bear staring right at us.  We back up and start to turn around but there is another bear in the road behind us now.  To the right are trees and possibly more bears and to the left is the barn.  We decide to go around the barn, hoping that giving the bear space it will leave us alone.

We make it around the backside of the barn and someone shouts “clear”.  The young girl and my daughter Sammee run out into the road and just then another huge bear comes from nowhere and runs right for them.  I scream, “Sammee!”  The Lady grabs hold of Sammee’s hand and manages to pull both girls to safety just as the bear was about to strike.  I run out into the road in my awesome brown robe with only a broken pair of shears to defend myself.

I put myself between the bear and the girls, lifting my left arm up as a shield.  The bear bites down onto my arm but I swing the broken shears at the bear, narrowly missing it but giving it enough of a scare that it lets go before it can do any real damage to my arm.  By instinct alone, I hurl the shears at the bear as hard as I can and they manage to lodge themselves in the bear’s leg.  The bear goes down, moaning in pain.  I want to finish the bear off but I’m weaponless.

“Come on,” I scream to everyone, “Kill it!”  I’m terrified that any second the bear will recover and strike again.  But the rest of the people who’d gone on the hike are all frozen in fear.  The Lady steps up wielding a crossbow.  Where did she get a flipping crossbow and why hasn’t she used it yet???  She aims at the bear but never fires.

I wake up.

Traumatized.

Things I wanna know:

• Why can’t I just take a shower, people?  Why you so mean?
• Why did I go hiking in a brown bathrobe?  What was I thinking?
• What’s up, Lady, why you no shoot bear?!?

I don’t know if the bear died or not since I woke up.  Maybe when I go to sleep tonight I’ll have to fight that dummy again.  I sure hope not.  Bears are scary.