Thoughts

Members of the SCA will understand this one - other folks may be a tad bewildered. Or just think "Meh. Weird."

Everyone who has been reading my entries knows that I was working fairly hard on a fundraiser for my barony by making and selling lumpia. Ultimately, this time (we did it last year too) we netted about $1100. Not bad. Altogether our two lumpia-making drives got us roughly $1800 closer to a new baronial pavilion, which we really are needing.

This last Saturday was our baronial birthday event. Our silent auction fundraising coordinator faded into the walls before the event happened so I ended up taking care of that, too... it was no big deal, silent auctions being what they are. Neither was I particularly enthusiastic about it, it not being my idea and I have been rather opposed to 'yet another automatic fundraising thingy for baronial members to spend their money on' event activities. Thus the lumpia - one (needed) lunch at Coronation, and a chance for those who like it but can't make it to order some for themselves outside of our local events.

Anyway. Their Excellencies called the lumpia crew (my 'roller-babes'!) into court to thank them for their/our efforts. I'd forgotten that they'd most likely do that. Then, when I was moving slowly into the background again, his excellency stopped me and said he had something to say to me personally. That caught me a bit flat-footed. He started by saying that they'd appreciated the work I was doing, and that he, personally (being also a cancer-fighter right now) knew how challenging it was to do such a thing while dealing with physical pain and weakness, and that he was astounded by my dedication and hard work while being confined to a chair. He was playing with something in his hands, worrying at it. He told the court that there really wasn't anything that they (Their Excellencies) could give to a person who already had all of the awards that the barony could offer. Then he held up a chain, a circle of steel links. He said that he and his two squire brothers (I knew the now-Sir Colin but don't know the other) went into a Sears store together and bought those chains, 'fence chain number 5' as promises to each other that they would see their way through their training and someday, if they were deemed worthy, they would swear their oath of fealty on their 'brother chains'. It was a physical token of their dedication to chivalry. And one day, he did swear his oath on it, and he wore it for five years before putting it aside for a new one. He said he had always cherished it and that he would have sworn he would never, ever, give it away because there was nothing he could imagine that would cause him to part with it.


And then he gave it to me.

.

Yesterday my husband spontaneously mentioned how much he loves the thickness of the limbs/leaves of our willow tree. This storm season, with its dearth of storms (knock wood!) has allowed the willow to just be peerlessly beautiful. I can't believe it is ten years old now. The trunk is fatter than I am.

Over Pennsic, our Youngest transplanted my little violet plant (Viola odorata rosina <-see what they did there?) because it was dying. I had to walk him through the process over the phone, at near midnight when he was at the house. He sheltered the newly-resituated plant against the willow tree's truck, where it would be safe from the winds and get 'just enough' sunlight in the summer heat. It has bounced back beautifully. But I am still somewhat wistful about it - it has never bloomed, ever, in the four years or so I've had it. It now is darkly green and healthy but still... no flowers.

My days (and nights) have been given over to rolling lumpia, washing dishes from rolling lumpia, shopping for more supplies for rolling lumpia, or chopping ingredients for lumpia. We've hosted two 'rolling parties', with another one tonight and two more to come, and then, I swear, I shall be done with that until after Atlantia Coronation (Oct 5th), which is where we shall be serving all of it. I hope. It is a fundraiser lunch for our barony so we can get a new pavilion. Originally, I was only going to serve freshly-fried ones of four different kinds of meat, but after mentioning a remark made in my journal by loosecanon, the Sunday Rolling Party started riffing on "other ways we can play with fillings". Since we're not even trying to pretend like this is a medievally correct food, the floodgates opened. We tried bananas (not impressed, too bland), then apples. Oh, the apples were a success, especially with a nice (okay, it was based on a medieval recipe) blend of spices which even included a pinch of white pepper. Those were marvellous! After that we had to try other additives, so now we've got apple & raisin, and apple w/raisins & walnuts, as well as apples with caramel chips - those made two people with wildly differing preferences in desserts actually crossed their eyes as they ate them. And then we took peaches (too bland by themselves) and added walnuts to them, which now tastes as though we used a lokim recipe for the filling. We are planning on trying some frozen (fresh) mixed berries with white chocolate, and one of the RollerBabes bought all the ingredients to attempt 'pizza' lumpia, which idea does not thrill me but what the heck, she'll have fun and someone will surely eat them.


In other news, my leg is healing. It still looks incredibly nasty and feels like I've melting plastic stuck to my shin, but it is obvious from our once-a-day pictures that the wound is beginning to close and the areas around the wound are becoming less and less inflamed. Tomorrow I go in for more prednisone shots. Ugh.

Countdown: 217 days to a Gleevec-free life.

Arni's off to Fighter's Practise. Would it be too bad of me to hope that no one shows up? After yesterday's demo, he deserves a weekend day in his easy chair.

The demo was fun, if sparcely attended. I spent the day doing the 'which foods were unknown medievally?" thing again and once again, stumped all the players. But it was fun to talk about the various food items and give little trivia facts about them. Cindel and her son came down from Tir-Y-Don - they were both hugely helpful as was luminaebanis, who was all over the place doing stuff.

There were two LH-groups there, I was happy to see. One was a Legio group (Legio IX?) and the other a new Hussite group formed of (some) members of Lord Grey's Companie. The difference between their set-ups and ours was, um, well it just was. It turned out that one of the members of the Legio group was an ex-Scoutmaster who'd taken a local troop to Philmont and then on around for a month of camping and white-water rafting and Baron Vladimir was one of those boys. The sheer joy on their faces when they recognised each other after all these years was well worth the day all by itself. And that same Legio guy is one of our VNA members so I was pretty happy to see him too. He invited me to join his group - they do Romano-Brit stuff. I just might take him up on that since they demo at a lot of local Celtic festivals. I miss 'working' those.

In totally silly news, my burn is progressing nicely. I think I might have a full skin cover in another week or two. It's looking better every day. I am looking forward to not having to do all this bandaging twice a day, I can tell you! But at least that's down from every-6-hours!

Today's PT session was...challenging. Yes, I thinnk that's the word I want. It is so frustrating to be unable to percieve pain until the stimulus is past the point of causing tears and spasming - but only 5 or ten minutes *after* the stimuli. What this means is when a tech says "don't go past the point of comfort" I have no idea what that point is. I go, then like the 15-minute "I'm full" delay in eating, suddenly I have an awareness that something hurts, said awareness usually heralded by my face screwing up and my eyes tearing. This makes a PT session very challenging and quite frustrating for me and the tech, both. Thank goodness there's a warming pad on my back and an absorbent towel under my face for the 15 minute rest after the workout. I needed that towel today although it did occur to me that crying is all good and all that, but when you're face down in a dark room and attached to an electrical appliance, it's nearly impossible to deal with the sniffles. I mean, salt water on the towel is okay, but let's avoid any thing else, yes? So I spent the time sniff-sniff-sniffing my way through the "relaxation". Then was so discombubalated that I walked out of the clinic in my stocking feet (nice carpets they have!) before I realised what I was doing. It wasn't until I was nearly at the door that it occurred to me why I felt so comfy at the toes. :)

Arn's off setting up pavilions for our Demo tomorrow. I am going to be doing repair work on his black linen tunic - it's a marshal's tabard that I'd made so he could wear only one layer of cloth during the summer when he was marshalling, but being male, he wears it rain or shine. It got so drenched at Blackstone Raids that he needed help getting it off after armour inspections and ripped the neckline (hard to do on a round neckline). So I've repair work to do by tomorrow.

Have I mentioned that I hate the heavy fighting part of the SCA? I know lots of folks like it but I find it as interesting as WWF wrestling or TV golf... so why is it so much of my time is spent producing stuff to support that part of the hobby? And repairing the same stuff, too. In my book, it's not too much different than being asked to make and repair the aprons worn by vict-ugh, patients in a dental clinic for free. Whoopie. Sometimes I regret learning to sew. You want a 40 foot banner that will float in the wind like a japanese kite and have germanic mottoes embroidered on it telling everyone how great your group is? fine. You make it. (Sorry - there's a "let's design a baronial banner" thing going on right now in our group and doncha know, not one of the Big Idea Guys is a sewing person... they're all gonna expect the little woman to take care of creating their grandious thingie. Well, except for Syr Otto, who does sew. I like him a lot. He sews, plays music, does woodworking and painting and is a Knight to boot... now *thats* someone to respect!)

Okay, grump time over. It will all look much better when the pain subsides. It always does.


"The wrinkles only go where the smiles have been" - Jimmy Buffett