Why do we do this to ourselves?

We camped in our backyard two nights ago. We should have known better, us being adults and all.

We have a son who's earning his Webelos badge in Cub Scouts, and he needed to finish up his Outdoorsman, so we made it a family event. Why not?

Ah, camping! I love the idea of you, but the reality of you, not so much.

I used to love it before I was in charge of a nursing infant and a toddler-in-toilet-training. Because, really, who wants to spend the entire camp-over in the porta-potty? No one, that's who.

It was pretty much the best of both worlds. I made and cooked tin-foil dinner inside, with the convenience of all my major, modern appliances, and brought already-served dishes out to my family as they were sitting around the fire pit, ablaze in its toasty glory.

When dinner was over, I went back inside and mixed up the pumpkin dessert for the dutch oven. Once mixed, I marched the bowl with the batter outside and dumped it into the ready dutch oven covered in hot coals.

When Toddler needed to go potty, we went inside and enjoyed indoor plumbing, liquid hand soap, and the luxury of a clean, white towel. Then we skipped back outside to play.

When clean up time came, I went inside to use the deep sink, the industrial sprayer, the steam mode on the dishwasher, and the left-over shelf in the fridge. Then I went back to the camp fire to sip hot apple cider while Daddy played the guitar and the kids joined in the singing.

We sat in our camp chairs--positioned just so on our stamped concrete--and watched the sun set, the moon rise, and the stars twinkle. It really was so magical. I tried to focus on the moment and store it away in my heart, where it will be kept safe until I need to relive it again in the winter of my life.

But then it was time to sleep.

Let me just say that we have an amazing tent trailer, which means we sleep on a mattress, about three feet off the ground. But even still, I slept the sleep of the waking dead.

I don't do closed spaces very well, and for me, few things are more claustrophobic than a sleeping bag. But put a teething, nursing infant in there with me, and I have to go to my happy place to keep from screaming and waking up the other children.

Then there's the matter of the cold autumn nights. I don't do cold, either. And even though I was wearing my warmest, coziest pajamas, I was too cold to sleep soundly. In fact, I wore my pajamas and my long underwear until dinner time the next day because I just couldn't warm up.

But the worst part was that my husband didn't sleep either. And he messed up his back. So he was the walking dead while I was the waking dead, and we weren't a happy pair, to say the least. Throw five, tired, moody children into mix, and you can imagine how yesterday went.

In between mouthfulls at lunchtime, I studied my husband. He couldn't move his head to either side, his back was tight and caused him to sit perfectly upright, and he had to cast very sidelong glances in order to make eye contact with his fellow diners. Because I was tired, I was pesty, and I decided to pretend I had a back/neck condition, too. I just copied all his robotic movements and shared strained sidelong glances with him.

When he caught on to what I was doing, he snorted and then remarked, "Well! There's nothing so bad that making fun of it can't make it even worse. Thanks for putting this into perspective for me." I laughed with him, being careful to hold my head still so as not to hurt my kinked neck.

When he left to visit the chiropractor, I gave him a sideways kiss. When the coast was clear, I tiptoed to the garage to find our blow torch.

Alas! Our tent is flame proof.