Packing and Food Preparation

Packing and preparation was a full day of work. Lizy doubted I’d be able to fit all of our stuff into the Kia Soul. I had faith in the car, though. I put the cargo box onto the roof, which was nice and clean from being washed the day before. I stuffed the cargo box like I’d never stuffed before. I was impressed by how much stuff it could carry when we needed it to.

I also did food procurement and preparation for the trip that day.

I made a run to JL Produce, a Mexican grocery store near our home, for skirt steak, low moisture pre-shredded cheese, salsa, peppers, and chips.

I had made beans yesterday to eat and had purposely made extra for the trip. I refried the beans with onions and olive oil. Then I fried up some scrambled eggs. Afterwards, I made bean and cheese quesadillas which we also ate for lunch. I also made a few breakfast burritos, containing the refried beans, eggs, cheese, onions, and jalapeños. I precut vegetables for both dinners I was going to cook while camping and put the meat in a marinade.

While I was cooking, I gave Theodore some of the scrambled eggs to try. It was his second time having eggs and he seemed to love them. He ate a lot of them. However, after about thirty minutes he developed hives on his face. Lizy went into protective mother mode and after trying and mostly failing to get him to drink Benadryl, we left in a flurry to take him to the doctor. I didn’t even have time to put the food I had prepared for the trip in the fridge.

Allergic Reaction

His hives had mostly cleared up by the time we saw a doctor. Not that it was so long, but he seemed to get over it quickly. It never really seemed to bother him. Obviously, it freaked us out, but he always seemed to be fine. It’s hard to know what way these sorts of things are going to turn out at the outset, though, and I’m glad we went.

The doctor referred us to an allergist and prescribed him an EpiPen in case of an emergency. She told us it was still fine to go camping. Afterwards, a nurse tried to give him Benadryl. The nurse would syringe a bit into his mouth. He’d hold it in his cheeks like a squirrel and then when he thought it was safe, he’d spit it out. This happened three times before the nurse gave up. I think a little got down his throat.

Getting the EpiPen was an odyssey in itself. We went to the Costco pharmacy first. They were out. They could order it, but it wouldn’t come until Monday. We wanted to leave tomorrow morning for Pinecrest. Next, we drove to a CVS. It was out there too. Lizy tried calling the clinic to get the prescription changed to a different EpiPen that the CVS did have. While Lizy was on the phone, we drove to a third pharmacy, the 24-hour Walgreens. Luckily they had it. However, the issue with this pharmacy and the reason we didn’t go there first even though it’s the closest one to the clinic is that anything you do there takes forever. For them to figure out the medication, get the prescription transferred, and charge us, it took over an hour. We almost left, but then as we were leaving, they called us over to pick up the medication.

Door to door, the whole ordeal took about three hours. I felt very glad that he had the reaction when we were at home and not when we were camping, though. And I was glad we had the EpiPen if it was ever needed.

Finishing up

Lizy and I ate a quick dinner and then she went to sleep with the baby. I kept packing until I was too tired to continue. I went to sleep around 11:30 pm.