Thoughts

We're home from Pennsic.

I have not had a Pennsic that was so difficult ever, in the 29 years I have been attending. I'd agreed to be a deputy to a department head, who is already overwhelmed with life and on top of that had their son & family coming for a first-ever visit with their grandchild while staying in their camp... and they are the camp master, to add to their stress. They're also a micro-manager who does not believe in training their subordinates and responds to every question or suggestion with a loud and public diatribe about why the speaker is wrong. We bled out volunteers as if we had a cardiac wound. Extensive training-from-below was applied by me, discussions held with their direct superior to reinforce "volunteer management advice" and I bit the inside of my cheek so much I ended up with a cold sore in the raw area.

"How bad was it?" you ask.

I worked 20 hours straight on Landgrab Friday because I was unsuccessful in pinning them down on forming a schedule in advance when only they and I could be in charge of a shift and the department had to be open for 38 hours straight. Then when they came to relieve me so I could finally rest they let me know that they'd need to be relieved soon because they spent their sleep hours working on the infrastructure in their camp and "missed their window for sleeping".

I made it to bed around 5am (was relieved on Saturday at 4am), falling asleep in a closed tent which roasted in 91-degree (f) weather and woke up to heat exhaustion around noon, woozy and weak. Had to phone my husband to come take care of me because I could not stand without aid... he opened up all the sides of the tent for air flow, force fed me water and juice, trained two fans on me, and stayed with me until my temperature went back to normal, then went back to the department we'd been working in to continue the work he'd been doing there since 8am. I saw him again when I returned to the department around six in the evening and we both worked until it closed that night at 10pm.

That was just day One and a half.

We didn't have time to cook any food. Everything was grab-and-go or purchased from a food vendor. We didn't have time to help our camp set up hardly at all, or to assist at tear down. We didn't see a battle, a class, a show, a party, someone else's camp, our friends, or the merchant area except for one hour the day after our department closed down. (I got to see Kendrick which was a treat.) I never set foot in the Cooper's store - I hear that the upgrades are fabulous. I look forward to seeing them next year.

I got heat exhaustion twice. And retained so much water that I had to buy men's extra wide shoes to make it through the second week because I'd damaged one little toe from jamming my feet into shoes that were too tight. We thought I might have broken it. Oh - and had a UTI to boot.

One night I posted something on Facebook about how sad I was that a camp I knew well had six parking tickets (between two couples) and that meant that they'd lost their seniority on their block - and was immediately attacked by members of the unnamed camp for "betraying them" (of course I had not named anyone or the camp) and "owed [this ticketed couple] and [that other ticketed couple] a public apology as well as one to the whole group for not acting like a Peer and attacking them in public..." I just set the post to "private" so I could save it should the offended parties try to do more than merely backstab me now that we're back from the event. I'm still a little at a loss how I'm the bad guy for mentioning a camp losing their block seniority in a post explaining why I was sad that day while the ticketed folks have become my poor viciously benighted victims. They are, of course, blameless and what I was posting about "never happened". My spouse asked me why I'd posted - why did I let myself care about what they do to themselves? He is right, so I've set myself a new rule - ignore the group. Disengage from any interaction and from their FB page and put myself in the mental space of noting but not speaking about anything the group does. I'd been heading that way over the last year anyway and this just put the nail in the coffin of an already dead relationship.

Nonetheless, and barring all of that, friends did stop in to say hi while we were working, and we had little moments of joy when they did even though we were usually too busy to talk for more than a couple of minutes. One person volunteered at my department specifically to spend some time chatting with me between duties. It was lovely to catch up with her. She's grown up so much! I've known her since she was a senior in High School and now her children are almost all out of High School. Towards the end of the event, there were more people allowed to be in charge of a shift and I even got a whole day off to go into town and do laundry and shopping. My spouse had to work though. That was tiring in its own way, but I felt a lightness of freedom too. One friend brought a sample of her cooking to me to taste - beans cooked in bacon fat with onions and garlic, spiced with a mix of herbs and spices she'd bought at Aunty Arwen's. That friend cooks over a fire every year and tries to eat what her persona would have eaten. And she brought it to me in an adorable little cast-iron pot that had been enameled on the inside and had a wooden lid. Hers is enameled in red but I could only find it in black - I'm going to get me one of those pots! It is just the right size for one person or two not-so-hungry ones. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KBY4RCF/ref=ox_sc_act_image_2?smid=A1TWYVWG4QDVKK&psc=1

Before Pennsic I was asked if I'd be willing to take on getting new walls for our camp's giant ger and I agreed. The old walls had been thrown away (without anyone being consulted) because "they take up too much room in storage" so I searched for a useable alternative and found seven-foot-long fabric shower curtains with a repeating design on them. Folks in the household threw money at me until we could buy as many as we needed. They look like a Persian interpretation of Mongolian art. The curtains are lightweight and pack down into a tiny pile. They are polyester so will age over time but we can replace them at need or maybe someone will make real walls someday. In the meanwhile they worked very well and looked pretty, too. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DB17DG1?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details


We also brought "sheep walls" from home, three-foot-long panels that we'd made for the Great Dark Horde encampment for War of the Wings long ago. A long-ago Autocrat had decreed just two weeks before the event that every camp was to "be completely encircled with sheet walls" but they'd typo'd and had written "sheep walls". So of course our quickly-thrown-together walls featured sheep of all varieties. At Pennsic we've been using them to hide a big plastic sink at the top of our camp but this year we learned that our regular walls had gone walkabout, so the sheep walls were press-ganged into being camp walls. We have a long boundary at the foot of a hill that we don't normally wall off, not having enough red & black panels to use. We made it into a clothesline this year but weren't really thrilled with it. I'm going to make more of those sheep walls, as are some of my household members, and we'll run the sheep walls along that boundary. Lots of people walk along that block edge as it is beside a road leading from the Bog and lakeside areas. I think the walls will entertain some of the children who make that hike.

I'm supposed to be doing chores to get ready for camping this weekend but instead I am playing here.

I got a message requesting my help with a person's elevation ceremony in another kingdom (verbiage and ceremony ideas) and it was a bit of a challenge. I will not be celebrating that person becoming a Peer. But I live very far away and only see them once a year, so maybe within their home area they are kinder and more service-oriented than they are when I see them. The dilemna is one SCA peers rarely talk about.

Tonight will be a night of leftovers. I tried a slow-cooker recipe for chicken cooked with cream cheese, a keto one. It is very good but also very rich. Knowing that we couldn't even finish half of the original batch, I laid in a zucchini and a summer squash, which will get turned into zoodles to serve as a base for the creamy chicken. The recipe suggested sauteed spinach as a side so first I tried that. Boy, did I learn a lesson! It includes freshly-cooked bacon crumbled on top of the chicken so I had this wok with a bit of bacon grease in the bottom, right there and handy... you see where this is going, right? There was way too much grease and it was too hot - the spinach nearly exploded out of the pan when I tried to pour it in from the bag. Got that settled and fried it up while being amused as usual about how much it shrinks down. And then tried to eat all of it after my spouse refused to eat spinach. Ugh! Grease! I ended up using three paper napkins to soak up enough bacon grease to make it even remotely edible. Well, they were napkins saved from a take-out order a while ago so I guess they weren't wasted. But my gawd, the grease! For the record, that is the first time I've ever cooked spinach in anything besides an Ember Day Tart. Lesson learned. And having learned it, I'll be making spinach for myself more often now that I know how. Unlike my Philistine husband, I like spinach. The chicken really does need a side dish. It would be lovely over pasta or rice but I have to forgo that so zoodles it shall be. And Himself agrees that would be tasty.

Tomorrow a friend is coming over to use our seal-a-meal machine. I had suggested that she and her husband use the same dodge I do for preparing Friday night dinner after setting up camp - I make a soppy dish in advance to freeze in the boil a meal bags and serve it in bread bowls so I only have to wipe water out of the pot and wash silverware after dinner. Then I remembered a friend's meal plan where he used the same bags to mix the ingredients for individual omelets, which cook up nice (and square) in the bags. Since our whole camp is of archers who will rise and head out to the archery range to spend the day, I am going to ensure that everyone has some protein under their belts. I hope that my friend likes the doged. She and her spouse haven't really camped at SCA events since they were mainly living in Europe. I'm sure she'd have advice for me were I headed for some event held in a castle.

Speaking of belts, I just realised that I will have to wear a belt pouch in the SCA from now on. Man, I hate doing that. I look like a sack of potatoes with a string around it. But my glucose monitor is new since our last SCA event and it has to be within 20 feet of me at all times. I could put it in my basket, yes, but sure enough I would get up to help with something and wander away while totally forgetting the thing and then it will have a little monitor heart attack and start alerting like a smoke detector until it is reunited with me. It has startled my DH often enough here at the house when I've gone into a room too far.

As I wander around the house a subject bubbles up that I think I should write about, but don't you know, by the time I get to my computer the thought is gone beyond recall and I'm back to whatever house stuff I need to do, or what folks are talking about on FaceBook (KM's newest pattern certainly has been taking up mind space). I hate that the good subjects just fade away. I end up writing about health-stuff like some old nursing home resident. bleech

I just re-started a home meal delivery service again. It isn't a weekly service (since I can tell it to skip any week or change the number of dishes delivered at any time) so for now about every two weeks we'll get a box of six ready to nuke meals that are different and tasty. Fresh, anyway. There had been few washouts when we were subscribed before. We kind of enjoyed the service last summer but I stopped using it out of price-guilt as the meals average out to about $12 each, which is much higher than what we normally spend. Still, I can select for low-carb menus and everything is already measured and the nutritional values set. I do appreciate that. I'm not much of a chef so it pleases me to have a chance to try "Chicken & Pumpkin Parmesan Risotto", "Slow-Cooked Red Wine Beef Brisket", or "Bistro French Onion Chicken" with a couple of sides for each. I'd likely be eating naked hot dogs for dinner on at least one of those nights if the meals weren't in our fridge. Or ordering from take-out or delivery, which is considerably more expensive. A meal delivery service where we have to do the cooking is Right Out as far as I am concerned. When I remember to eat I want it immediately, not 45 minutes and some labor later, so this "nuke them whenever" arrangement is perfect. Especially since I like pre-made salads I can buy at the grocery store too.

Now that we're entering back into the SCA in-person event routine I can find plenty of people who will appreciate the packaged freezer slabs that come in the meal delivery boxes. I like that the service uses earth-friendly packing material and recyclable everything. Well, I don't know if the little serving dishes are recyclable. I've never checked them for a number. I should do that. And I'll have plenty of ice packs to share since we still have three in our freezer. They are about the right size to fit flat in a 50-quart wheeled cooler so it makes getting things in and out of the coolers very easy. And they do last long enough for a weekend event. Or I can let them thaw, clip a corner of the package, and drain them into the sink and then recycle the packaging.

I just put shredded pork and a package of pork drippings (the liquid remains from our slow cooker) in the freezer. I've been promising myself for a week that I'd turn it into lumpia but one thing and then another delayed me and today, after waking up yet again with a throbbing headache, I decided I'd better safeguard my fixings by freezing them. The drippings are going to be substituted for the water I use to make the rice for the filling. It'll either work or be a disaster. Poor me, I'll have to taste the rice before it gets mixed in with the rest of the filling.

I don't know how long it takes for the internal part of an eye to change its pressure after a diabetic gets their blood sugar down to a safe level but I hope it isn't too long. I need new glasses. I'm fairly certain that eyestrain is the major contributor to my daily headaches but it is still too soon after the endocrinologist's appointment for me to get my vision checked. Uncontrolled high glucose levels increase the internal pressure in the eye and distort vision. My levels are dropping now and stabilizing so it shouldn't be too long before I can make a vision appointment. Since I'm wearing trifocals my glasses are expensive even with the great insurance we have so I'm trying to be patient and play the waiting game.

I bought a fez a few days ago. It's large for my head, which is a good thing as it will sit low to be the base for an Ottoman Turkish headcover. I'll have to remove the (sewn on!) tassel and then do some sort of decorative work on it before adding a veil or else I'll risk being mistaken for a really strange Shriner. I'm looking forward to the project. I only have two Turkish coats and one undertunic - and that tunic has got to go! It is a heavily woven cotton and doesn't breath worth a darn. I think I could sew it into a sack and it'd carry water. But it worked for the quicky purpose I needed it for and I don't regret making it. I would regret not replacing it with something better. I am torn between using some of my already-purchased cotton (or maybe there's some linen) muslin or leveling up to buy a really thin almost-transparent linen, which would be more correct-to-period. It'd be nice to reduce my fabric stash a bit more but since I'll be wearing this next Pennsic in the summer heat, linen appeals. And at some point I'm going to make one or two more outfits. I like wearing Turkish garb.

There were seven of us for card playing yesterday. We started with Uno and never did get around to playing any medieval games. I didn't join in the rounds since my piriformis muscle was screaming at me but its noise was muffled midway through by hydrocodone and two muscle relaxers. It was the maximum dose but it worked so that was fine. Didn't even make me silly while folks were busy with cards. I sat in a well-padded desk chair to chat. I am concerned about the rate at which I am medicating, as it is every six hours - I'm burning through some major drugs here. The dread about addiction hovers. Bossman scoffs, though, as he points out that the doc would not have prescribed the drugs in that manner if he didn't expect me to take them and 'stay ahead of the pain' instead of doing what my husband and I both do, holding off on taking anything until the pain makes it absolutely necessary. He is sure that I won't need to be concerned about becoming addicted.

We filled small brown paper bags with candy and treats for Easter. The bags were our 'baskets'. They were just leftover [microwave popcorn popping] lunch bags that I cut handles into and wrote each person's name on but they worked, and we enjoyed our treats. Everyone contributed which surprised me. It worked so well that we decided (that is to say, I announced) we were going to host a party for this small group to stuff holiday stockings for each other in December. It will be fun to see what our friends get for each other. I wanted everyone to have advance warning so we can cache small gifts as the catch our eyes through the months ahead.

Bossman took the chicken I slow-cooked a couple of days ago and hand-shredded it, then mixed it with mayo¹, a little mustard, and chopped onions to make a sandwich filling. We ended up, though, treating it like dip and using up nearly all of the 'artisan' crackers I had squirrelled away in our larder. One of our friends, who doesn't eat tuna or chicken salad sandwiches, munched on the low-carb crackers I'd pulled out for the two diabetics in the group - and ate nearly all of the bag! I know what to stock for his snacks from now on. The spicing treatment on the chicken meat came through very well. We didn't need to add any seasoning.

Later today features a visit from the dryer repair guy. He warned me that the repairs may go over $200. For a *bleeping* dryer buzzer! It never turns off now instead of making a short buzz to let us know that the cycle has ended. We have to leave the dryer door open to make it shut up. I hate this as I usually get the urge to do the laundry in the middle of the night when I am awake and my mate is sleeping. The buzzer is so loud that it can wake him up in the bedroom when I open the garage/kitchen door to go the laundry area. So if he can, I am going to ask Art the repair man to just shut off the buzzer if the dryer will work without it. The price of the replacement part is what is driving the repair cost. Art himself charges a very low service fee. I swear I feel like I should give him a tip to be fair to him!

I found the referral for the headshrinker in my pile of papers I haven't sorted and filed (finally doing that), so I shall be placing a call to her office after the dryer repair is completed. And returning a call the endocrinologist's secretary made while I was fast asleep on Friday. Bossman didn't wake me up for that one. His current credo is, "If she managed to fall asleep, I'm not disturbing her." I appreciate that - except for when I don't.

The kitchen table is clear thanks to our card playing, so I think I shall pull out my sewing machine and start on that overdue project. Oh! and call the hotel where Known World Herald's and Scribes is being hosted so I can make room reservations.

¹We tried "Duke's" mayonnaise. All of our southern-raised friends are quite particular about using that specific brand so I thought we'd give it a try to see what makes it so special. In flavor it is somewhat between 'Real Foods' mayo and 'Miracle Whip'. Not as sharp as the former or as sweet as the latter. So we am glad to have our curiosity assuaged.

Yesterday I proved that I have absolutely no idea how to carve a bone-in ham except to just keep slicing off sides of the ham until it is mostly a bone with some tiny bits sticking to it. I now have enough of the off-cuts and bone to prepare for a big pot of ham & bean soup. And, I began thawing out a roast destined to be cubed and turned into beef noodle soup. Mostly to use up all the stock I froze each time I made a pot roast.

So what does my husband want for dinner tomorrow? Sauerkraut and Brats.

I spent 3 hours on the phone after a half-hour on their website wrangling with Nextel/Sprint and tentatively believe that our problems with our plan & bill may be resolved. Maybe. I'll know when I get next month's bill. If it is resolved, it is going to be better than what we've got now. We gave up unlimited data when we bought our new phones (and didn't know it) and ended up with four phone lines between the two of us (and didn't know it) and got locked into a 4G data plan that we had to pay extra for - about $80 above our previous monthly bills. Well sort of, in that extra charges were tacked on rather hit-or-miss so I could never be sure of what I'd be paying each month. That should all be over and the rep got us back on unlimited data and found a way to reduce the charges for the two extra phone lines which were apparently a requirement to get our two new phones and a tablet. Since we have to keep the tablet's phone line open until the payment plan is ended, my husband now has unlimited data on it. For that he is thrilled. Seven months from now we'll be done paying for the new equipment and our bill will go down by $75, finally reaching the level that the lying local sales rep told us was our 'new monthly charge'.

The guy on the phone suggested that the next time we need new equipment we should skip the local store (he indicated that while my complaint will be filed he doesn't know - nor should he tell me if he did - when the local manager and is used-car-dealer sales style will be changed. Meaning when the manager gets fired and the sales guys have to be retrained.)

Slowly I am reclaiming the home administrative tasks that have been in abeyance since I swung into depression. It feels good. I even finally got the checking account squared away with three month's worth of missing entries added in and the account balanced. And now without the looming mess over my head it is easy again to maintain it.

I haven't posted much lately as I've been coping with the side effects of a new prescription which have been somewhat debilitating. It is for depression & anxiety, which are something I have a hard time admitting to myself that I am suffering from. It seems too easy to take things day-by-day and not see the cumulative effect until something forces you to do so. I'm not sure I am comfortable, yet, with taking a 'mood altering drug' as I am an old-school kind of person who believes that I ought to be able to bootstrap myself back up to 'normal'. Other people have a legitimate need for medication, but not me! I should be able to tough it out and fix my own attitude. Funny how we're so often mor3e judgmental about ourselves than we are about others.

Well, my blinders weren't working and unstarted or unfinished chores hit the stage of being direly overdue so I was no longer able to feed myself excuses. And thus the medication.

It causes tremors and sleepiness (but not much success in actual sleeping), as well as excessive sweating and worse, it has affected my vision so my glasses - trifocals - do not give me clear vision in any strength. That irks me as they are brand new and there is no way I can afford purchasing $450 worth of glasses 'just because' only months after getting these ones. I've been spending a lot of time in bed staring at the inside of my eyelids or reading books in a bid to get tired enough to achieve real sleep. You'd think that would be a cause for anxiety all on its own but no, it just makes me more prone to laying there bored.

So I've not had much to write about. Even this post strikes me as "blah, blah, health whining, blah".

Tomorrow we're having friends over to celebrate the Fourth of July. Or more truthfully, we're using the holiday as an excuse to have friends over. None of us truly feel celebratory about the USA right now. I'm looking forward to laughter and weird foods. I think everyone coming over is bringing something different and they all have lists of things they refuse to eat. So it should be an eclectic mix. We're firing up the grill. Folks will being a meat for themselves and a side to share. I made an offhand remark to my husband about the sorts of foods we once thought of as traditional for this holiday and now I'm cudgeling my brain trying to remember what goes into 'traditional' jello with fruit in it. His eyes lit up when I mentioned it so here we go.

In a little while we will be going to a five-day camping event. I have to be honest - the only reason I am looking forward to the event is that I will be cooking for about 10-15 people and that makes me all squeely-happy. I've been happily contemplating my menu and my diners for months now. But I threw the invitation open to everyone in our camp (it is a small camp) and now have a couple who will be on the plan who will be camping for the first time in about 17 years. No, longer than that - Pennsic 17 was their last event. He is handicapped with fibromyalgia and diabetes complications. That doesn't affect my menu planning much at all since I, too, am diabetic. There will be plenty to eat for him and I without shorting the selections for the normal (and the food-sensitive) folks.

I am ashamed to admit that I am now dreading the event because of this couple. They are open-handed and kind folks... but he's been shut up in two rooms of their home for years now and is one lonely garrulous man. Constantly talking about himself, his past jobs, honors, and actions for hours on end. Hours. And any sign of disinterest results in smoldering rage cumulating in a dramatic flounce of some sort.

They will be there the first day, which is normally a light one, just one or two tents in camp and few in the event at all. So will I since I am the camp master for the household camp. They know only a handful of people from our baronial group, who will likely be camping in a spot too far away from him to be able to visit. Which means that I anticipate he will be sitting in my kitchen nearly full time, talking.

I understand his loneliness and his need to connect with people, to feel validated and worthy. And I can usually support that with an open ear for an hour or so. But after that I begin to want to run away... too introverted, I guess, because I end up exhausted after interacting with him.

I have no idea how to reduce the amount of time I'll be, well, subjected to his self-focused verbosity. The last time I tried to change the subject to something more up-to-date and general he went into a pet and "quit" the SCA within a half hour of walking away. That's on him, I know, and not my problem. And to be far he was going through a difficult drug withdrawal as they were experimenting with various types to try to alleviate his pain.

But how - especially as a Peer - do I create an open dining area such as I've had in the past inside our tent and at the same time divert him from spending all of his time sitting there monopolizing the conversation with bragging and 'instructing'? Politely? Got any useful phrases or actions you could suggest? I don't want to hurt his feelings or make him feel unwelcome but at the same time, I will be basically chained to my kitchen - by design - and that means I am a sitting duck.

I'm guessing that this is a time-worn problem so there has to be some coping skills in history somewhere, yes? "Garrulous old man you can't escape" has got to be fairly common in village/castle/town life?

[Edit] In the manner of things, once I'd typed this and left it to try to sleep I thought of a couple of strategies. One would be to simply be honest with the man and tell him that I am far more introverted than I appear and that I need quiet to balance out the socializing that will come at each meal. If he can be quiet around me, I could deal with him always being in the dining area. And, since our tent is divided in half with the front half the 'dining/hosting area' and the other a kitchen on one end and our sleeping area in the back, I can just pull the curtain between the kitchen and the dining area (the sleeping area's curtain is always closed) and say that I am going to rest. That I'd be doing so by sitting in a chair stitching on something is beside the point. Additionally, I plan on offering our little collapsible wagon to him & his wife so they can tote their chairs and beverages with them and send them out to visit the nearby 'village' (artisan's row), merchant area, and even the archery range. I only need that wagon once or twice a day to fetch refilled water jugs.

I'm avoiding working on a scroll - the paper I chose for the thing (Bristol) is very thick so my light-board isn't working well. I'm not an artist, can't draw worth a darn, so need the silly light-board in order to get anything done. But it is so dim on the other side of that Bristol paper that I actually took my glasses off and had my face hovering a few inches above the surface so I could squint enough to see the images shining behind. I have the bottom edge design traced out and am only needing to draft in the left edge patterning and then - OMG - do the text. Which, btw, will be traced with an extra-fine Sharpie pen and not callig'd. This is because I "wrote a cheque from an empty account". I haven't had a chance to practice any calligraphy and being a leftie means that it takes me a bit longer to get up to speed. The two scrolls are due this Saturday morning. I shouldn't have volunteered to do them but I got my time sense confused and thought I had an extra week to get them done after the camping event.

My meal plan was successful as far as the diners went. I was unhappy with the level of disorganization that I had and grateful that I had a 'memos' app on my phone so I could make a list for myself in the middle of the night, that being when solutions to problems seem to become clear and elegant. If I'd waited until morning they'd be lost forever. The biggest difficulty was my own lack of ease in getting things done. This would have been alleviated had I asked for a kitchen helper every day instead of trying to do it all myself and if I'd stored the dry goods in bins sorted by meals. Asking someone to lay out the items in a small 'breakfast' bin while I started the hot water on the stove would be such a step up from my own rooting around in a giant bin pulling out boxes and jars while folks hovered in the public area waiting for their coffee and oatmeal and the unneeded items had to be placed on any convenient surface while I found the breakfast or lunch items.

I learned that my 'food restriction' person had given me, as we suspected, a list of foods that were a blend of dangerous-to-her ones and personal dislikes. As she said on Friday when I mentioned that I might just end up scrambling everyone's eggs on Saturday, " I don't DO scrambled eggs!" I bit back the reactive "Then you can just eat oatmeal if you are lucky, b*tch" thought that immediately crossed my mind. (I was in pain and very cold, it being a little over 40 degrees, so grumpy.) Later in the day she mentioned that she had been through a three-month elimination diet with no appreciable results so I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she may not actually know what is causing her intestinal discomfort. I imagine it must be quite frustrating to find that some foods create dire effects one day and yet not on different one, with no medical explanation of why or the common factor. Nonetheless, she will not be on my meal plan next year.

Oh, did I mention that I am already planning on doing it again next year? I did enjoy it even through the frustrations of my disorganization. It's been years since I've cooked a meal plan for more than four people. Probably a full decade, actually. And I ended up with 5 more people on it by Friday - the head of a household who'd asked after the plan just 12 hours before I was due to leave home told his shire members that they were on it. Which I learned after they arrived two-by-two from out-of-kingdom. But with the help of a person swinging by the grocery store after their trip to Lowe's, we had plenty for everyone. They loved the chawettes, they loved the lumpia, and they adored the SOS. Which made me giggle - of all things boring SOS seems to be the one that people greet with raised eyebrows and then come back to the kitchen sniffing hopefully for seconds.

It was cold at night. Just barely above freezing. We slept warm though, and shared Bossman's air mattress instead of setting up our normal two beds. I had expected that the arrangement wouldn't work - he normally sleeps catty-corner on the mattress so he can fit. But instead we fitted together just fine. I guess old habits are not ever lost. :) The mattress was difficult for me on the days he wasn't there as I could barely get off of the thing but once he got on site I was fine so long as he was in the bed while I was exiting. I needed that extra firmness to push off from! Before we left home we went to a secondhand store and bought a couple of quilted bedspreads to take with us for the bed. I'd meant to buy only one but there were two that matched and he wanted both of them. So after two thin wool blankets were laid down one quilt (King sized!) followed, then our down comforter, then the other matching quilt. They were large enough that I could tuck the ends and the foot-level bits of the sides under the mattress, which effectively kept the blankets from sliding off the mattress during the night. Those things are not designed for tucking in one's bedding. The plan was to return the quilts to the store as donations, effectively 'renting' them for the duration of the event (a whole $14us!) and keeping us from having to find new storage space for them, but he likes the ugly things so now they are packed into a vacuum-sealed bag and put away on top of the camping gear for next Pennsic.

We had brought a small but powerful propane heater with us. We never needed to use it. We did finally figure out that it was useful on Sunday morning for the gathering area while folks had their breakfast and coffee/tea though. It was nice to have that hot air blowing on us.

The Great Dark Horde camp had six brothers camping in it and eight chagua. We had a couple of Brothers have to cancel plans, durn it. I made twelve new sheet walls for the camp to go with the six I'd already made - there were no more than that there. No one else made or brought any. Luckily for my morale, I had only expected one more wall to show up, as I knew that most of thems who made walls were not going to be able to attend. I just bought more sheets to launder and cut into new walls. Hopefully if I do a set of two sheets every payday we'll have enough by next WoW. Friends of ours who live in Clarksville are going to let us store the household's camping supplies (sheetwalls and poles. Maybe a fire bowl) at their place so we can have them consolidated. Having each of us store and bring a personal set of supplies was good in theory but rotten in practice. Next week, after our Baronial Investiture event is over I shall start painting designs on the walls with the help of some of my khanate members. That will be fun.

Got this on a Facebook link and transcribed it. Finally tried it out tonight with hamburger steaks. It wasn't bad. The potato slices were a bit underdone but not enough to bother me. I found that I couldn't fit all of the veggies into the pan so have half of them left over for sautéing later on. I think the problem was that I cut each vegetable down the middle to make half-circles for layering, when I probably should have just cut a slight edge and then sliced them as 'almost circles'. They looked a little sad in the pan, so short. The calorie counts, btw, are based on using all of the veggies so I guess my (later on) sautéed ones will be "free".



Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 1 hour
Total counts: 43g carb/38g protein/674calories
Serves: 6 - or one veggie eater and one not-so-veggie eater

Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil (doing without the oil loses 120 calories – which I did)
1 medium yellow onion
1 tsp minced garlic
1 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow squash
1 medium potato
1 medium tomato
1 tsp dried thyme
to taste salt & pepper
1 cup shredded Italian cheese

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Finely dice the onion and mince the garlic. Sauté both in a skillet with olive oil until softened (about five minutes).
While the onion and garlic are sautéing, thinly slice the rest of the vegetables.
Spray the inside of an 8×8 square or round baking dish with non-stick spray. Spread the softened onion and garlic in the bottom of the dish. Place the thinly sliced vegetables in the baking dish vertically, in an alternating pattern. Sprinkle generously with salt, pepper, and thyme.
Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, top with cheese and bake for another 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown.