Well that was - warmish

Back from Sapphire Joust. Update/entry in bullets or short choppy sentences because my mind is gone, gone, gone. I agree with everyone who says that it was an experiment in living on the surface of Mars.

We were the last folks to leave the event. It was embarrassing as heck. The days of 'pre-pennsic shakedown' for our camp set-ups at this event are over. (I am declaring it so - Arni disagrees.) What we can do as a family we can't do as a couple. By the time we had gotten everything packed up, I was suffering from heat exhaustion and had re-injured my back while Arn was walking the heat exhaustion road and (more frightening) his heart was pounding so hard I could feel it when I put my hand on his back. So nice as our set-up was, that's the last time we bring so much stuff for anything other than Pennsic. Not to mention that we totally let down the Autocrat by leaving so late.

I was a grump when we arrived late Friday night and started the event snarling at my camp-mates.
I was a grump at two order meetings, the only two I attended. While I said what I believed needed to be said, my manners were poor and my vocabulary/tact even worse. I was appalled at myself for having (probably) hurt the feelings of folks I didn't mean to. There are ways and there are Ways to say unpleasant things - I bumbled through like an Ogre in a strawberry patch. Not good. Heat problems or no, I should know by now that I don't speak or think clearly when I am that hot and stressed.

( the good stuff )

Rocks in a backpack?

Arn has a phrase he uses for folks who take on guilt and never let it go - he says, "you're putting another rock in your backpack, aren't you?"

That phrase came back to me on the way home from the event when we were talking about how we determine which candidates for Peerage we feel are 'there' and which ones are still in the 'let's watch them' stage. Because calibrating our personal support for a candidate is so subjective and so personal. And in the course of that conversation, I remembered his analogy and thought about how useful it would be when applied to a person's body of work within the SCA... their backpack might be filled with one or two massive rocks or stuffed full of loads of medium ones - but at some point, viewed from the outside, an observer would say they weighed the same (and no, I'm not carrying the analogy to discussions about what kind of rocks they are and if they are valuable or not and all that. Work with me here.)

So. I admit, I'm a tight-fisted person when it comes to the higher awards/recognitions. For instance, I think that if a body of work only benefits the small group a person lives in, then an award from that small group is the proper one. If it starts to bleed over to benefit folks in other groups, then when it reaches the point at which a kingdom is positively affected by the person, then a kingdom-level award is apt. And only when a person's body of work has made a Society-level difference should they be recognised/elevated to a Society level Order.

And in some books, that makes me a meanie. I'm okay with that. In the law of averages, I'm probably evening out someone else who thinks that everyone deserves any award they want. Okay.

But as someone who quit being a leader-trainer for the Boy Scouts after it became common for 13-year-olds to get their Eagle Badges via one week at Scout Camp, well - that's just the way I am.

But I am curious about how other folks view it. Both Peer and non-Peer, Kingdom Order members and those who look at them...I'm especially curious because in conversations with those who are beloved to me, the frustration of not being able to speak clearly about something so personal and yet so elusive to describe is difficult to deal with... So I'm appealing to those who read my journal and are in the SCA - how do you describe the differences between local/kingdom/Society recognition that you would use to advise the Crowns?