Faire Weekend #1
04.10.2006 - 7:00 am

Thurday:

Two days before Faire Stephanie and I leave my house around 9 a.m. & we get there at 10. Desireee isn't there but she gets there by 1 or 2 p.m. The tent guys are just setting up and her back storage bin gets put in place. But there's a lot of craziness wiht some forklift guy moving trees through our area and so we get delayed and stuff. But me and Stephanie keep working on shit. Work work work all day. We get shit out of Desiree's car. A lot of heavy shit. Work work work. Sorting shit out. Building stuff. Carrying [heavy] stuff.

It's getting dar and the tent is kind of half-ass up. Some guys also dug holes and planted poles around the area, and I seriously had no vision of how the booth was going to look. Everything looked like a mess. But one of the tent guys had this vision and all these ideas. Desiree was lovin it but she really counted on HIM doing it because if he wasn't, she would lose track and not know what the fuck was going where or what had to be done. She was kind of aloof from stress of having to put up a booth that normally takes 2 months to put up to be put up in less than 72 hours. Usually she has a permanent-styled booth that involves a lot of wood and building and construction. This year her booth looks SO different with tents and a lot of billowy-ness.

So anyway. It gets dark, the guys can't work any more because the generator is out. Desiree gets me and Stephanie to go to the Atlas and get a bunch of shit out. Again, a lot of heavy lifting. But we're warrior women, so it's okay. One time we tried picking up this bin together and I was thinking of picking it up with my back facing it so that we could both walk forward. I wasn't aware, because I couldn't see, but I guess Stephanie did the same thing, so she ended up walking backwards all funny and some guys were laughing their asses off and from that point on, we've been known as "Heckle and Jeckle". It was really funny. Those guys were really nice too. A lot of fun.

So then when we do all that and all the other help leaves, Desiree makes a list and we pack shit in Stephanie's and Desiree's cars to go to the laundromat and Home Depot. The laundromat is closed (it's 10pm at this time) so we can't wash the funky fabric that is going up as more billowy stuff (this fireproof heavy ass shit that's fucking bullshit to carry and not to mention GROMIT -- more on gromiting later).

We go to a Home Depot that's open until midnight. We don't leave there UNTIL midnight. We get home at 1am. We're fucking exhausted from working 14 fuckin hours.

Friday:

I gt up at 7am to go to school at 8am. I end up leavign class halfway through. I go to my Grand-ma's as is my tradition on Friday after school and we talk and it was all nice and dandy. I leave her place at 11am and go home to call Stephanie to come over. She's already on her way. So I gte all my shit together and packed for the weekend since we planned on either sleeping on site or going to Marjani's to spend the night.

e get down the hill about 12:45 (left at 12). Take my car. Start working. Basically the same as the day before. We're sore, tired, and feeling aggrivated. I'm still not visualizing how the booth will look, and faire opens 10am the next day. Well me and Stephanie get sent to wash that stupid fireproof fucking bullshit which there's tons of. We go to the laundromat. Stephanie washes and I go look for fruit smoothies. Ended up just getting a fucking shake from In-N-Out. I get back after my adventure to some Juice place and Stephanie says the washing didn't work. We take the shit out, put it in the dryer. I call Desiree. She's frustrated. We go back. We work some more. Finally Desiree disappears to God knows where. Me and Stephanie are told to move a pile of lumber (fucking huge) to the back of the booth and also for me to gromit this stupid fucking fireproof material that's 32ft long and 5ft wide. If you don't know (because I didn't) gromiting is when you put those brass holes in some material so you can hook it on shit. You have to hamer a hole with a little gadget and then put the prass loop in the hole and put another piece over it and hammer down the first piece to lock it in. I made Stephanie gromit since she knew what it was and shit. After some time, she said it was really hard and wasn't quite working.

Desiree comes back. She tells me to wrap the 2x4's with some white material and make it look fluffy and stuff. Stephanie goes off and does some other task and I get on this ladder and start stapling shit. I love staple guns.

So it gets dark. I get my car in and turn the headlights on for light. We get some x-mas lights out and a spotlight and we work allll fucking night. Around 8:30 I call Msrjhani to see if we can stay there for the night. She says coem over whenever the nazi lets you free.

Then Deborah comes by and starts helping and I hug the shit out of her and me and Stephanie grovel at her feet because we really needed her company and energy all day.

We're tired as fuck at this point and somehow I get called to do the gromiting. Did I mention I started my period that day too and was already feeling like fucking shit? I start to gromit, and fuck that. It'd be nice if they were nice little gromits with nice material, but the material was fucking invincible and the gromits told me to fuck off, they bend for NO ONE. So in the middle of this feat with the first gromit. Some guys come over and they say "Hey, we can't do anything else with your booth and we'll be here all night, do you need some help?" I said "OMGAH come here so I can make sweet love to you! Help me gromit!"

So this guy ended up being really awesome. We talked. We did the usual faire-type of flirting. I basically kept him company and held the flashlight while he gromited. After about 3 gromits, he said he had a headache and I told him he wasn't obligated to stay. He did one more I think. Left. His friend came by and said "I heard you need help gromiting." His friend ended up being really awesome too and gromited better and faster and was really funny. I did the same, keeping company, talking, holding flashlight. He smashed his finger kinda bad so I told him I'd bring him cookies next weekend. I gotta remember that.

So Justin calls me and asks where we're at, that the gate is closed. I give him directions for the back entrance and he comes. I'm so exhausted and in pain, I can't really think clearly, and all I want to do is go to Marjhani's. I'm sure Stephanie was in the same boat. We were really sore from the day before and we had worked 12 hours so far. So I told Desiree and Deborah that we really had to go soon. She let us free and we drove to Marjhani's. I called Kelly to tell him we were on our way and he said "Wait, she's just now 'letting you go'? What do you mean 'letting you go'??"

We get there. I almost fall asleep driving there. We get there, Kelly opens the door and gives us eac a gigantic hug and cracks our backs. I runto everybody crying for hugs. Please hug me, I've had a hectic two days with the nazi. Everyone who knows Desiree is hugely sympathetic and me and Stephanie get lots and LOTS of lovin from everyone. We were rejuvinated just BEING there. We felt good. We set up our shit in Marjhani and Kelly's room and we try to sleep. Stephanie goes to sleep around 2am I think. I stayed up till about 4am talking with Marjhani about our days.

Set our alarms for 6:15 as it is Saturday, opening day and the booth is still unfinished, so we have to go uber early.

Saturday:

We get to the site about 7:30, STILL without costume by the way. We work an work and we're STILL doing building stuff at 10:15 am, fifteen minutes AFTER faire opens. We don't even have a wall covering the back of the booth. it's HORRENDOUS. We halfass put up a wall, semi covering shit. It's horrible. 10:30 and we finally get dressed and out on the floor. I sold quite a lot of shit, so I felt good about that.

Justin's there and chit-chat and flirt throughout the day but mostly I'm busy selling shit and he's building stuff.

My voice was shot from the beginning. At first it just sounded like morning voice that wasn't going away, but by the end of the day I was completely horse and couldn't make ANY sound whatsoever. Everyone was making fun of me BAAAD.

Me and Stephanie work the full 8 hours, which went by pretty fast, but our backs were killing us. We were still sore from Thursday and Friday too.

The fun part was having all the guys we met thursday and friday come over and recognize my dreads and yell out "Hey it's heckle and Jeckle!!!" (I'm Heckle by the way). Deborah being there too was nice because we love the shit out of her. She's really funny and cute and teaches us bellydancing moves while we work. I get to play the zills when I get bored and it's fun. And Justin said he'd bring his drum next time.

Also, we saw the two guys that helped us gromit and they now call me Gromit, go figure.

So at the end of the day, we put away all the stock, and I tell Deborah look, I need to go because I'm feeling like shit shit shit -- only basically I whisper this because I have NO voice whatsoever.

We go to Marjhani's camp and she gives us cloaks. We hang out. It's fun. Justin comes by. He was trying to avoid Desiree which I'm sure she worked him alllllll night long Friday.

Finally, Marjhani and Kelly are ready. Me and Steph help load shit and we go to their house. We beat them there (they went to Denny's) so their house-guests let us in, Michael and Leah(?). I met Michael once before, and he's AWESOME.

They realize I have no voice. get made fun of some more. I said, fucking shit, I'm taking a shower. First in like 4 days. It was the best shower ever & felt so good.

When I get out, Stephanie is sleeping (well in the room, actually talking to billy). Tammy is downstairs. I make tea. I try not to talk. We rest until Marjhani, Kelly, Chris and the kids get home. We chat for a time, we go to sleep at who knows what hour.

Sunday:

Get up at 7am and do it all over again. This time we weren't goingto leave until 8 or 8:30 and so we had time to get some make-up, get dressed and not rush. I was afraid to speak for fear of my voice still being gone, so I say nothing for the first 2 hours I'm awake. I speak, it's there, but still really morning-voice like. So I try to say as little as possible and when I speak, do it quietly.

So we leave at 8:30am. We get there at nine. We walk by the Gromiter's booth and they stop us and ask if we like coffee and muffins. So they BOUGHT us breakfast. I hugged them.

We get to our booth and set up. la la la la la we work all day. Deborah gives me the run-down on the cash-stuff, so now I'm able to take orders when no one else is around. Way awesome.

I sell some stuff, Steph sells some stuff, but overall it was pretty quiet due to Palm Sunday.

Again, me and Justin casually chit-chat and flirt. Only this time, he and Desiree were drinking pretty heavily, and my, does Justin look really dumb when he's drunk. He's really aloof and laughs like an idiot with this idiot look on his face. It was funny how muc hthey were getting amused all day and me and Deborah would just look at them like "uh yeah."

The end of the day, me and Stephanie get an hour off due to a lack of business, so we watch Moonie be funny as fucking fuck. And then we go and watch Marjhani's show which was AWESOME. There was this one girl that me and Stephanie absolutely fell in love with. She had this CUTE CUTE CUTE personality on stage. Her presence was fabulous. She had this cat-like flirtatious attitude while dancing. She would like reach out to them through her eyes which looked totally anamlistic. And they way she danced, I seriously just wanted to hug her. Or scream. Or something. Anyway, the show went really well and I had fun watching. Afterward, me and Tammy snuck out a candle holder from Siam that the faire kind of unintentionally stole from Tammy's mom. But they would have gotten mad if they saw us take it, so we snuck it all covert like and it was fun.

We go back to our booth and put shit away. Then me and Justin totally got stuck talking about the book he gave me and he asked what I liked about it and if I agreed with everything it had to say. I told him my thoughts on the subject and he said he felt the same way. All throughout the day too, we talked about our feelings on buying a boat to live on instead of a house and just traveling the world. That's been my dream for years and he said he was in the process of making that happen for himself. Wow. So we talked more on that. Also, when I first met Justin when I worked for Desiree the first time two years ago, I was so close to running away with him and his wife to to this school thing. Long story, but I backed out because billy yelled at me for being selfish. So I told Justin that and he said that it was mostly his idea to do that anyway and with him and Isobel being divorced, she doesn't really want anything to do with it. And it's still in the works in Costa Rica with his friend Ross trying to cover all the bases. So me and Justin are totally talking about plans to start our own anarcho-communism adventure and buy a boat, start a business, be involved with this scool-thing and basically wipe ourselves off the grid and travel the world on this boat with our small community where everyone is with us helping eachother out. Absolutely free. Communism. YES. fuck. yes.

So. I'm like about to cry as we're talking about all of this because that life-style is something I've wanted to do my whole life. And a year ago I would have been so gung-ho about it, I'd drop everything in a second to go. I mean, I was GOING to before I got scolded by Billy before moving to Hawaii. But NOW there's one problem: Robbie.

I have a lot of thinking to do, because I have two great life-styles I could go for. Have what I want with Robbie, and try to be as Buddhist as possible by living life by the moment and be happy. But I'd be in the system and I'd be living a 'normal' life. But at least settle in Germany and have a nice routine, a family, and have a relaxing life with some upbursts here and there.

Or I could go with Justin and have the adventure of a fucking lifetime doing something that HARDLY ANYONE is willing to do by giving up EVERYTHING that I have. Be completely NONmaterialistic. Travel the world WHENEVER I want because I'd be living on a BOAT with a communistic community. Be our own government. Do our own thing. LIVE OUR LIVES completely free. Wipe ourselves off the grid and be true gypsies! But I'd probably give up having a family or getting romantically involved with anyone again. I'd want to be on my own, independant without the complications of worrying about someone else. I can live in Africa for a year if I choose, get picked up by the commune on the boat, go to india, to japan, to china, to europe, to russia, go to the U.S. to sell some shit and be on our merry way again.

So I have some thinking to do and I want to talk to Robbie about what he thinks of being a nomad. Fuckin crazy. Maybe I can be on communism adventure for a few years and then settle. ... who the fuck knows.

yesterday - tomorrow