Kage Baker always said, “Don’t plan anything important for the Monday after a Faire weekend.”
This is wisdom pure and undiluted, as one is always mostly dead on those Mondays. Even if one went in civvies, did nothing strenuous or useful, and even left before moonrise. Which, most unusually for me, I actually did. And I didn’t even have to drive home, being instead kindly ferried by a good friend.
Nonetheless, even with a quiet Sunday under my belt now, I am still half dead today. Getting the nephew to and from college was a real challenge; even apart from the weather, which is currently threatening most unseasonable rain. And this after Saturday being in the 90’s when I was in Irwindale! The seasons these days are like the ones in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but not with such nice illustrations.
In the meantime, there were laundry and dish loads to do; a malware scare to track down and innoculate the home network against; lots of e-correspondence of the “My God, what were you doing out there?!?” variety. Also, I slept a lot.
Because Kage was right – you never get anything done the Monday after the Faire weekend before. If you are normally lucky, you get to unpack the car from the night journey just past, when you got home at 2 AM and were too tired to do more than unearth your deodorant and carry it indoors. If you are only slightly lucky, you got home today, wincing and shrinking in the daylight like a lost vampire. And if you are really unlucky, you woke up in a back seat or a cheap motel room in Buttonwillow, wondering where to get a fuel pump for your cherished mid-60’s VW squareback that became an expensive paperweight somewhere about midnight on I-5 …
Real life, Dear Readers. The bane of all performers. More reminiscences tomorrow, when my brain comes back online.
Kathleen, Kage and the Company 
Amem, Sistah!
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Gracious, can’t even spell “amen” on a post-Faire weekend.
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funny, you should mention a mid-60’s VW squareback’s fuel pump. The last time I did Southern, DJ, Laura and I drove down in my- yes- ’65 VW squareback, and it had a fuel pump that would, every few hundred miles, lose a tiny, but vital, pin which (fortunately) would just drop out and lie on top of the engine. I would then get out (probably somewhere around Button Willow), replace it, and we’d drive on. I’ve long since stopped driving cars that fell apart and could be put back together in some roadside parking lot, but would you believe I miss it, sometimes? Nostalgia is such a liar.
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Ah, Buffalo, the VW squareback was not chosen at random! The one-time Guildmaster of St. Blaise had one, which he dearly loved – so much so that he hand-made parts for it, and the tools to install them: they were otherwise unfindable. I heard many tales of it. As for me, I changed an awful lot of parts on my series of beloved LUV trucks (quarter-ton pickups, one step above a Tonka Truck) in parking lots by the light of a flashlight held by a shivering, cursing Kage … and you’re so, so right. At this distance, those times flat on one’s back on icy asphalt has a charm not to be imagined when one is actually doing it. But even though nostalgia lies, I sometimes miss it too. Man, those times must have produced some incomparable endorphins!
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I fear that to a certain extent your training has expired. But I know that its the milage as well. Today I feel as if Robbie (harbouring an unknown grievance against his master) snuck in to my house and beat me black and blue with a sock full of quarters. It was a blessing and a delight to see you and Louisa. I hope someone got pictures. Else no one will believe it.
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I am definitely out of date on my Faire Wilderness Survival Certificate. But I didn’t do too badly Saturday. The shot of really good whiskey helped … I believe I got a photo of you and Luisa; God He only knows what Luisa – camera woman deluxe! – got. We will check!
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