The temperature was a dusty 97 degrees. I was parked in a remote parking lot of Yellowstone National Park. Two dark figures ambled on the horizon. They were the only things moving on the flat, windless plain.

“Are those specks them?” my mother-in-law asked. She leaned forward beside me, squinting as she tried to focus on the distant figures.

Those specks were our husbands. While the kids finished their lunch, my husband and father-in-law told us they’d be “right back” They wanted to “check out that field.”

For the first half-hour, I was game. I told the kids to explore, even though the thought of them stumbling across a snake made my mouth dry. I refused to turn on the car’s air conditioning in the unspoiled landscape, even though we were all red-faced. I suggested the kids photograph Yellowstone’s vista, even though we had 10,000 pictures of other Yellowstone vistas identical to this Yellowstone vista.

By the second half-hour, my good humor faded. I had no idea where I was in Yellowstone. No clue how to get back to civilization. No cell service. What if we run out of water? What if someone needs to pee? What if a psychopath looking for wives abandoned in Yellowstone adds my head to the collection in his fridge?

“Let me tell you something,” my mother-in-law said. “This is … ”

Wait. I don’t think I can repeat that word here. And not because anyone who knows my mother-in-law wouldn’t believe she said it.

Which they wouldn’t.

If Cinderella’s fairy godmother came to life, she would be my mother-in-law. She is loving, maternal, and just wants you to be happy.

But the word she used describes matter from a bull’s hindquarters.

Yeah.

“You know,” she went on, “I never reigned Dad in. I always let him go,” she said of my nature-loving father-in-law. “That’s how I wound up in a car in Yellowstone in July. Don’t make that mistake.”

While it rocks having a mother-in-law take your side, her advice was flawed. I was already in a car in Yellowstone in July. She managed to avoid that fate for 40-plus years of marriage. I achieved it in under 20.

Worse, I had so rapidly suffered that fate by my own hand. I encouraged my nature-loving husband. If Mother Nature was his mistress, I’d book their hotel rooms.

Listen. I know the best place for me is in my family room watching Worst Roommate Ever while I eat a Crumbl cookie. The family room is climate-controlled. Water is abundant. The bathroom is three steps from the sofa. And except for the skink that got in last summer, my family room is devoid of slithering, scaly critters.

Unfortunately, that situation is not the best situation for kids. Like California for The Beverly Hillbillies, outdoors is where the kids ought to be.

Getting the kids outdoors is my husband’s job. It should be, right? If he loves Mother Nature so much, the two of them can spend time with the kids while I check out a few despicable roommates.

The problem – because isn’t there always a problem? – is that he works many, many hours. Twenty-four-hour shifts and weekends and holidays. He’s gone a lot.

So when I received an email about an outdoor event hosted by the Academy of Natural Sciences, I was not surprised to see the date fell on one of my husband’s twenty-four-hour shifts.

I really wanted the kids to do the event. But I really didn’t want to be the one to do it with them.

The unwritten Handbook of Good Parenting clearly states in a situation like this, you do what’s best for the kids. Your phobias and Worst Roommate Ever have no place here.

So we registered for the event.

We would hike to a creek. We would examine invertebrates to assess its health.

First of all, who knew, right? Invertebrate populations indicate creek health? Like E.coli indicate gut health? Huh.

And second, that sounds like a lot of opportunity to come across all kinds of things that slither.

I guess Mother Nature enjoys her trysts with my husband because she had my back that day. The temperature was far too cold for reptiles.

It was also pouring rain. So maybe Mother Nature is bitter about sharing.

For over an hour on that cold, rainy Sunday morning, the kids and I stood in the creek, scooping empty mussel shells and wriggling worms from between the rocks. I wasn’t a fan of the worms, but I was a fan of my kids’ joy as they dipped their hands into the frigid water, discovering more limnology with each chilly dive.

Limnology is the study of freshwater bodies. You learn these things when your husband’s girlfriend is Mother Nature.

As if to prove my point, my phone rang on our drive home. A friend’s neighbor discovered a dead raccoon on her lawn. They were seeking advice on how to handle it.

My advice.

Well, they were actually seeking my husband’s advice. But he was – where else? – at work. So like my kids, they were stuck with me.

I made a few suggestions, reluctantly thinking if my suggestion didn’t work, I’d take care of the raccoon for them.

But I really didn’t want to.

I’d been outside enough for the day.

Let somebody else have a turn.