If you saw Monday’s photo of the day, you might have been wondering about the tepee. Now that I’ve recovered from that trauma, I can share the story.
DialogDog has an aunt who some would call eccentric (to put it nicely). She decided that she wanted to live in a tepee, so her sons bought her one and told her she could set it up on some land one of them owns about 16 miles from Utah.
For the last year, we’ve been hearing about how there was going to be a blessing of the tepee and we were all invited. Of course, the date coincided with our trip to Korean Heritage Camp, so after camp ended Sunday afternoon the three of us piled into the car and headed west for five very long hours.
About two hours away from our destination, DialogDog’s mom called to tell us even though we were running late we hadn’t missed anything because the tepee still hadn’t been erected yet due to the absence of an all-important rope — at which point I realized someone had forgotten to tell me the whole story and we were actually driving 250 miles out of our way to build a tepee, not just to bless one.
Now, before I go any further, let me point out the house renovation we started last summer is still a work in progress. Although the upstairs is painted and the wood floors are in, the basement is about 3/4 gutted and the new front porch is not anywhere near finished – all this because DialogDog has been too busy with his 60-hour-per-week job to finish the project.
So, there we are Sunday driving across the state to work on someone else’s “house.” At first, I was OK with it, because I envisioned a beautiful green field with maybe a stream and some good photo opportunities. Then we got there and reality set in.
The idyllic setting I had envisioned was actually a wind-blown dirt field with nary a drop of water in site. And the only facilities consisted of a port-a-potty and a pop-up tent.
As for photo opportunities, this was the view:
So after getting covered in dirt and smacked in the head when part of the tent collapsed in the wind — not to mention witnessing a bunch of idiots fumbling with the tepee, which still hadn’t been put up by the time we arrived on the scene at 6 p.m. — I told DialogDog I was out of there and headed back to civilization and the nice, clean hotel with a flush toilet.
When DialogDog and the Midge finally showed up at the hotel hours later, they reported that the tepee still wasn’t finished and most of the “help” had gone home.
Fast forward to Monday morning when we were all freshly showered and ready to head home ourselves. As we sat down to a lovely al fresco breakfast before hitting the road, DialogDog’s mom called to say the half-dozen idiots working on the tent the day before had gotten it erected overnight, but it had since fallen into the pit that it was being built over so everyone was going back out later in the morning to try again — everyone but my father-in-law who may be the only smart one in the entire family.
The question was whether DialogDog — who had been battling a nasty cold and was facing a five-hour drive home — could be counted on to help out. I immediately chimed in that not only was I joining my father-in-law in not going back to the wind-blown dirt field, but I also wasn’t giving up my car for the day.
So off I went to check out some art galleries and shoot some pictures in the nearby orchards, while DialogDog and his mother took The Midge out to play Indians with the idiots again.
If you follow me on Facebook, you saw that at this point I was finding it particularly ironic that a bunch of guys standing around in a dirt field for two days with a tepee couldn’t figure out how to “get it up.” My friend John, who thinks I spend my time driving around town to various Starbucks, messaged me and said if the tepee had a couple boobs on it, the guys wouldn’t be having a problem “getting it up.”
Sure enough, in the end, it did take a couple of boobs to get it up — boobs in the form of the one-and-only true Indian in the family, who also happens to be a woman with more smarts than the collective brain power of the band of bumbling idiots.
After being shushed all day Sunday when she tried to offer advice, she took charge Monday and ultimately got the job done. Here’s the end result:
(And yes, that is the hood of my car in the photo, because I refused to get out of the car when I went back out to the dirt-laden field to retrieve DialogDog and The Midge....)
