Packing the van

I remember a riddle about a farmer and a rowboat. The boat could hold only
himself and one other item, passenger or animal.
The farmer lived on the opposite shore from his supply sources and the boat was his
only means of travel to the farm. One day
he went to the store and bought a bag of corn and collected a chicken from
someone who had lost it to him in a card game.
Alongside his boat was a fox waiting - the fox lived in the bushes along the
riverbank. The farmers dilemma was how to get
the chicken and the corn across in his boat while dealing with the fox; the various
trips to navigate the relationships between
the fox, chicken and bag of corn would keep us occupied for hours on the drive to
the lake.

Getting all my gear up to the lake is infinitely more complicated. Jack is driving the
van to the AutoTrain; he will debark
in Lorton Virginia, drive it to New York, and after his oral argument on Friday, he will
drive to Island Pond (the nearest
town), overnight, and then arrive at the lake on Saturday morning at the same time
as the pontoon boat is delivered by Newport
Marine. This gave me the chance to plan for the summer and pack accordingly. For
readers who have not been up to our little
corner of Heaven, there is very little shopping available beyond hardware stores and
two Family Dollar stores. Walmart is 90
minutes away; Office Depot is 3 1/2 hours. There is a Radio Shack and JC Penney
within an hour and 15 minutes, and lots of
AgWays for plants and chicken incubators. No art supplies, though there is one
fabric and one yarn store 45 minutes from the
lake (in opposite directions). And we do not have a street address, so Amazon does
not deliver - we can pay $2 a box for
the Norton General store to hold our deliveries, but even 2 day shipping takes 4
days.

Here, from my actual notebook of organized notes, is the list of what fit into the van:

Vermont Childrens Theater totes (150 logo printed totes for fundraising)

Stained glass art for VCT (24 x 30 crated work)

Copper tubing and 6 bottles for handmade bird feeders

Garden bags for landscaping (60 bags of various sizes)

Card making supplies: Tools; stamp pads; cuttlebug machine and 20 dies and
embossing folders; glue and adhesives;
sayings and rubber stamps; cardstock; heat gun and embossing powders; ribbons in
a large plastic container; laces
in another; cards and envelopes; accent papers in various sizes; pencils, gel pens
and markers; sequins and glitter;
flowers and other embellishments. Luckily, I have narrowed down what I plan to
make to just 3 types of cards, or this
list would have been a lot longer.

Felting supplies: 3 large carriers of felt and fleece; tools and pattern books

Beading supplies: 2 totes and tool chests of beads

Curtain fabric for 4 different sets of curtains

Rug making supplies: hooped rug canvas and 2 backpacks of yarn

Weaving supplies (I bought a second loom last summer to keep at the lake): shuttle
and bobbin winder; 2 wood crates of
warping thread and yarns

Stained glass supplies: second set of tools to leave at the lake; crate of glass to cut
birds; solder and needed chemicals

Soap supplies: carrier oils; essential oils; beeswax and recipes

Trial bag (for the non lawyer, thats a big square leather bag) with books on Catholic
history, hymns and saints for a
board game I hope to work on about Catholicism

And thats all for the Projects section of the van. Note to self: at end of summer,
compare how much of the above was
actually used.

Then there is the Sirius radio; Stephens 3 boxes of books and tapes; the printer; the
linens; Jacks generator parts
and new generator platform; fishin poles; batteries; lanterns; and some kitchen
hardware.

Oh, and a duffel of clothes for me a minor thing.

Jack swore he could see through the little tunnel hed left in the middle of the cargo,
and the front seat was clear for
his lawyer stuff.

This is an improvement over the year when Stephen brought along his 5 foot tall
brown bear (Kenai) AND ventriloquist dummy
(named Slappy). Slappy sat on Kenais lap, both of them belted in on the front
passenger seat. Truck drivers passing us
on the right side would slow down to take another look. Tool takers let us through
for free.

All of the above will be waiting in the camp, lugged over by Jack in 4 backbreaking
trips on the pontoon boat, then up
the hill and up the steps to the camp. Evenings and rainy days will be spent
stashing it all away, hopefully by the time 6 more members of the family arrive in
two weeks.