Parents know that life with kids involves compromise and what were once mature adult holidays become child friendly extravaganzas. In camping language this translates to having to pack everything – including the proverbial kitchen sink!
And when you think you have every angle covered you arrive to find that in camping terms you really are an amateur and your little ill-equipped site flags to experienced campers you are small fry. To use an Aussie analogy, it’s a bit like comparing the size of a man’s shed (or worse still not having your own shed!)
The one essential piece of camping equipment we don’t own is a camp dunny. In most cases it is not good form to encroach on another camper’s dunny since they have to empty it themselves. Here lies the compromise as there is always with kids.... save energy (and midnight walks avoiding toads) by camping close to the amenities block, or save supervision energy and set up camp in close eyesight to the communal bike tracks. The bike track was the vote.
This meant many long trips to the toilets versus mastering the art of squatting. I have not mastered the art. I ended up peeing on the hem of my trackie daks and almost fell backwards onto a cactus.
Given I’m too much of princess to every really enjoy camping (it is a duty thing – Godly submission to husband and children...) there is no point in investing in all the camp equipment it would require to make it reasonably tolerable.
But I have found a solution to not squatting!
While watching an Aussie reporter in a satirical attempt to showcase Indian culture, there was a story on the “Indian Dunny Man” – a bloke who has a historical toilet museum.
The one that caught my eye is the “Go Girl” purple plastic contraption that is a mobile device when there are no loos to allow a woman to pee without squatting. Without too much graphic imagery and doing an anatomy lesson, let’s just say that it has a bowl like thing at one end and then flows downward in a tube like shape to deposit the urine away from you and closer to the ground – ok, call a spade a spade – it is a purple open ended penis attached to a small dish!
I was very amused and excited and told my husband about it to google it for my Mother’s Day present. He replied “No way, I’m not going to give you anything that gives you the ability to stand up to pee”
This device gives new fuel to the “penis envy” argument! I’m getting one.
Hilarious!
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