So Much Fun

Thanks to everyone who came to The Fiber Event at Greencastle this weekend.  We saw many good friends and enjoyed seeing the projects everyone has made since last year.  We met many new people and really enjoyed getting to know them and talking about yarn.   The new layout of the show was wonderful and both customers and vendors were pleased with how easy it was to see everything and move around.

There was only a little drama this year when 20 minutes from home on the way to the show, our truck died.   As in - quit right there in the middle of a very rural road in Owen County at 6:30 in the morning.   An hour away from the show.

Thank heaven we had taken both cars and I was right behind in the jeep.   Lily and I took the jeep, already stuffed with the yarn, on to the show while Eric and Claire tried to figure out what was going on with the truck and find a way to get the booth structures, tables and trees to the show as fast as possible.    It was a very long 3 hours for me, waiting at the show, wondering what to do with 30 bags of yarn and no trees.  [Other vendors and I had a plan!   We'd pull 6 -8 or so of the fairground's tables out and use those.  Our booth was right next to the place where the tables were stored and other vendors offered their extra table covers.   I love these women!!]

Long story short, after Lily dropped me and the yarn at the show and drove back to Eric, and our wonderful neighbor brought her truck out to help, we were able to get the rest of the booth to the fairgrounds 10 minutes before the show started.   Yes, there was a lot of crazy rushing around, but many other vendors lent a hand setting up while Claire and Mary put the the trees and racks together out at the truck.   We were up and selling in record time.   And it was crazy busy for the first couple of hours.   Once things calmed down, I was able to pretty things up.  By late that afternoon, you'd never have known anything goofy had happened.

By noon, Eric was able to get the truck towed back to our favorite mechanic in Bloomington without selling our firstborn [Lily was happy about that] or his right arm [Eric was happy about that].  We just heard a little while ago that the truck's fuel pump had died.   It's a pricey fix, but not hard.  That truck was going to die this week anyway.   It's good that we were all together when it happened and that nothing really bad happened.  We were able to rent a little UHaul trailer to get things home in from the show.   All is put away now and we're good to go.

Many, many thanks to all of our friends at the show who stepped up to keep me calm [I was definitely not calm!] and help us get things ready at the very last second.    The Fiber Event has wonderful organizers and vendors.  This is one of the reasons we have been doing it for almost 20 years.   We love this show!

The Limestone Bench

Last week we needed to move a heavy limestone bench to a part of our property that hasn't seen a truck for a few years. 

As you can see, we got the truck there anyway.




It was the kind of thing my dad would have loved.   He got a kick out of pushing his vehicles and equipment past their reasonable limits. 

Legend has it that once he snowplowed most of a large parking lot in his little jeep with only two gears - 2nd and reverse.  Or maybe it was just reverse.   [This is how legends happen.   Dads do crazy things and over time their kids forget how things really happened but we keep telling the story as if we actually remember what happened in all its glorious detail.   Folklore in action.]

And then there was the time that we took the van to Willow Slough in northwestern Indiana and Dad drove through what I am sure was miles of flooded road.   In the van.   With water up to the floorboards [but not high enough to get inside the van.   I think.]   I was sure we'd float away any minute.  

My sisters have even better stories to tell, I'm sure.  

Anyway.  

Last week we channeled Dad and drove the big truck down this very narrow path through the brambles and roses and past some baby dogwoods that I've been wanting to get to be big dogwoods....

...and down this path under some very low hanging branches, which got caught in the ladders on the top of the truck....

...so that we could put this bench in a private corner of the woods next to the creek. 

The truck just barely fit, but fit it did.  

The bench looks nice here.   And Dad would have laughed at me for being worried about the truck. 

He'd have grinned at me and said, 'What were you worried about?   Doncha trust me?'


And he'd have teased me for the rest of the day. 

And then maybe we'd have sat on the bench for about two minutes before he'd have said, 'Let's go.  We have work to do.'  

But maybe he'd have gotten up early the next morning to come sit here and watch the squirrels and deer in the early morning mist. 

Things that drive down our road

We don't get much traffic [maybe two dozen vehicles a day?], but what we lack in quantity, we more than make up for in quality.  

We get a lot of pickup trucks - big ones, little ones, new ones, ones held together by duct tape and rust.  Some with canoes strapped to the top.  Some hauling horse trailers or trailers full of hay bales, or trailers full of 4 wheelers or a trailer with a deer on it. 

We get assorted minivans full of groceries and kids.

Sometimes during nice weather, we get a convertible now and then.  

When the neighbors have kids who have just learned to drive, we see big clouds of dust where a car zoomed by so fast we never saw it. 

Some years the school bus goes by here.  [Not this year, though.]

We see tractors.

We see tractors pulling bush hogs and mowers and hay rakes and balers and ten years ago we even saw tobacco wagons full of tobacco. 

We've seen dogs and foxes and coyotes on the road. 

We've seen sheep and horses.   Sometimes even nine horses at a time. 

We see motorcyles.

We see four wheelers.

We see Gators.  Not the crocodile kind - this is Indiana, not Louisiana - but the fancy four wheeler kind like these.  [I want one!]

We see people walking by. 

After bad weather, we see the REMC trucks go by.   And then dump trucks full of gravel.  

A couple of times a year we see the road grader go by, filling the potholes and re-spreading the gravel over the muddy strips in the road that show up over time.  

And once in a while we see someone drive by on a zero turn mower.  

Traffic out here is an event.   When we're outside, we always stop and look up and wave - even if we have no idea who it is.   We've made good neighbors out here simply by waving every time a car [truck/tractor/mower] goes by.   We all mind our own business, but when we take the time to acknowledge our neighbors as they go by, we quietly forge relationships that will pay off in times of fire, bad weather, etc.   Once in a while we need each other out here and it's nice to know that a friendly face will meet you at the door - even if it's the first time you've ever been to that door.

Mistakes

I am by nature an insecure person and that insecurity, coupled with an intensity to rival that of a nuclear blast, did not, shall we say, make it easy for me to laugh at things in my life.  Laughing at things in my life would mean that I was laughing at myself and that would be to admit that I was human and therefore imperfect.  I would have to stop berating myself for my mistakes and start laughing at them.  I was also secretly afraid that if I took things more lightly, then I wouldn't learn everything I needed to learn in order to make fewer mistakes.  My whole goal in life was to Avoid Mistakes.  It was a strategy that wasn't working.  So, I started yearning for a sense of humor and low and behold, laughing at my life began to feel good.  Also, truly comical material increased exponentially in my life.

Sometimes I felt like I was living a comedy routine.  Slapstick.  And I was the straight man.