Glamping

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don’t want to go camping. I definitely don’t want to go glamping.

Glamping could be one of the most unforgivably cringeworthy words I know.

It sounds like a vise. A tool that clamps. A glamorous clamp. Speculum to the stars. I’ve done it again. I’ve gone too far. And I’ve only just begun.

Because now they want me to verb it. Sure as there are stars above, tomorrow we will all glamp together under solid cedar roofs.

Glamourous camping. Fine linens. (We’ll see about that.) Flinens, maybe. Towels. A country mart store with organic food, aromatherapy and local artisan jewelry.

No one hates camping more than I do. I have not had a great time of it. In college, the guy I went with had us sleep under the stars in the middle of an ant hill.

I like room service, a big bathtub and a nice turn down service. I like someone else to lug my bags and cook my meals when I’m away. Put me in a cabin in the woods, and I can get down with being homey and baking and making my own feather bed when it’s snowy outside. I’m a glamour-puss. Hmmm, a pussamore. A glamapuss. I can also Little-House-on-the-Prairie as long as Pa brings in the firewood and builds the fire.

Camping, though, is for another sort of gal who I am not. Go to it, Glasses-Not-Contacts Women! Pee freely behind bushes and spit foamy toothpaste into shared public sinks. I know the burgers on those outdoor grills taste scrumptious. I’ll live not tasting their hard-earned flavors as I shall live not squeezing Brad Pitt’s buns. So be it.

Speaking of Glamour, I just looked up the top 100 sexiest men on Glamour Magazine, 2015. ‘Cause I’m evidently so out of the sexiest men scene, all I could think of for hot buns was George Clooney, and I feared his buns might, along with my own, be getting a bit, well, soft. I got as far as sexy 58th and only knew two names. Since What’s-His-Face McConaughey always loses me at his piano teeth, I went with Brad Pitt. Matt Damon — though it turns out I wouldn’t have known him in a line-up since I thought he and Matt Dillon were one and the same — would have been my pick. Whatever, my days of Teen Beat Magazine and Shaun Cassidy are somewhere back in that cabin with Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The point is, glamping is for the birds — Neiman Marcus birds who forgot to fly south for the winter — Rodeo Drive birds who threw their plumes into low gear — Tori Spelling birds gone cuckoo cuckoo.

It’s neither here nor there, and it’s got the ridiculous portmanteau (two words blended together to make a new one — like smoke + fog= smog) to show for it.

Why glamp when you could be in a lovely hotel? Go do your nature walks and check in. Or just be a brave little toaster, unplug and go out into the real wilderness and actually camp if you breathe that kind of air. But glamp?

No. Just no. Jo.

Tomorrow my son and I will be glamping. Yes. Just yes. His father who was supposed to go, because he’s so glamperous by nature, can’t, due to the surrounding poison oak, which if he’s exposed to could, according to his allergist, kill him this time around.

All the moms are emailing one another how excited they are. One mom wrote: “There is no way anyone is more excited than we are. I am contemplating leaving the kids in San Diego and coming myself!”

I’m depressed and miserable about going but listed all of my packing ideas as the other Glampermoms did and wrote,

“I’m not as excited as Vicki. I’m contemplating leaving myself in San Diego with her kids. I’m sure it will be fun once I’m there!!!!”

I got no reply from anyone except Vicki gladly offering me her kids. Where’s the Sisterhood?

Four exclamation marks is clearly a cry for help.

Whatever. You know, a portmanteau also has the additional meaning of being a piece of luggage with two separate but equal compartments.

Some of us are glamorous. Some of us are campers. Can’t we just leavell enoalone?