Campfyre Stories

Heh.  Saturday.

We signed up for alternating Opening/Closing shifts so I slept in.  I had the whole morning to myself and decided to attend a workshop on making wire-wrapped stone jewelry.  I wound up with a gorgeous and unusual pendant of Ocean Jasper from Madagascar.  It was fun and easy and I’ll probably never do it again.  Heh.

One of the women who also took the same workshop, it turns out, has a strange thing in common with me - a pepper allergy.  The weirdest part about pepper allergy (mine AND hers) is that it’s anything with the word pepper.  So even though Bell Peppers and Black Pepper and Cayenne Pepper are not at all related, they’re all encompassed…  It was very validating to meet someone with the same unusual and often-suspected condition as I have.

After the workshop, I went on shift to chaos her and there.  Someone, it turned out, needed to stay (very) late so that Martin Sexton could sell his swag for a half-hour after his performance, which was scheduled to end at 12:20.  I volunteered to do it on the condition that I’d get Sunday off completely.  I wouldn’t find out whether or not this was the case until I came back to help close up shop, but I figured it would probably happen.

When I went to dinner, I ran into a friend on a different crew.  He and I have been festival friends for quite a few years now.  We’d had little change to catch up this time around, so we made a point to get a few minutes in.  I had dinner with a new friend (and crew mate) of mine, who is totally fabulous and I invited her to my campsite for a beer before she went on shift.

We shared some of my favorite beer and dolled up with glowsticks.  My niece pronounced it a "beer and glowsticks party", but then told us that they were having a better party "over there" when the 70’s music started to drift over from a neighboring camp.

Meanwhile…  in the tent that one of Spawn’s friends was staying in there were 4 teenagers piled on top of each other.  Spawn, the 14y/o girl camping with us, and a brother and sister that Spawn had befriended.  They were just hanging out being lazy, lying on top of each other cuddling.  First the sister left, then the brother left, and when he did, I noticed that he zipped up the tent door.  When he came back for a forgotten object, he scratched gently on the door and opened the zipper just enough to get his forgotten thing.

It was then I suspected that Spawn was having a festival romance and, probably, his first (and second and third…) real kiss.  Heh.

But you don’t go from first kiss to needing condoms from the med tent, so I didn’t worry.  They’re good kids, they’re smart kids and they’re young.  This puppy love is something that they need to have without my becoming overly concerned.

That said, all MY friends are teasing the hell out of me.  But I keep checking, and they keep confirming that, no, they don’t believe he’s irresponsible or that he’ll follow in my (stupid) footsteps.  They’re just being assholes about it.  I can live with it.  Better they tease me than tease HIM.

So, anyway, my friend and I parted ways and I went off to kill the last 2 hours before breaking down the Merch Tent and to start my Martin Sexton shift.  I KNEW, even before it was confirmed, that I would be working this "shift".  All day long they had been announcing that we would be staying open…  all day long they had been announcing that Martin Sexton would be doing a signing after his performance. 

I may never forgive that man.

We finished selling close to 1:30am, when the sky OPENED UP and it poured buckets, essentially trapping me and my crew chief in the Merch Tent until close to 3am.  I tied plastic bags on my feet and snagged a lost (cheap) rain poncho that had been left in the Merch Tent.   Then I carefully made my way through the slick (because it was all smoothed) mud and back to the car.  At 3am.  Yeah.

But I was amped from all the excitement and, so, wrote my low-tech blog entry on paper and listened to the cheers and howls of appreciation for spectacular lighting and the lull in the rain that was probably believed to be cessation.  Heh.  Suckers.