wednesday 3 o'clock: block island .... being there part II

as my last posting said, there were a lot of stories to share about my Block Island

experiences.

the first thing i should say, is that i had perfect housing in spite of my panicking about its coverage.

i stayed with anne and pam(and maddie).

we shared a son-in-law apt. in the basement of a local couple's home.

their son and family share that space when they are visiting. it gives them freedom and space all at the same time to enjoy their parents, as well as some privacy.

the woman of the couple once ran the art show that i participated in. she had handed it off to anne, so that it would keep on going. anne found it such a great show, she asked to take it over. in ironing out the details, anne and reba became so friendly, that reba offered her son-in-law apartment to anne as lodging.

anne thusly inherited pam, maddie and me.

another artisan, jay, and his wife and kids were without hotel space for saturday night.

anne found out about this, and told him that i still had uncancellable reservations.

i gave my room over to jay and his family, he paid me the deposit back, had an incredibly nice room and full breakfast for his family for the same amount i would have paid for just me.

i think this worked out really well.

and it felt really swell to be able to shuffle arrangements around once we were there to suit more people than originally were covered.

for the same money or less.

yahoo.

as promised a small story about how there was a short glitch setting up for the show.

we participants, arrived mostly on friday and set up the bones of our spaces.

for the most part, the only thing to do saturday morning was to put out the sellable inventory.

naturally, mr. murphy and his laws were in play.

anne got a phone call at 6:40 a.m.

i had fallen to sleep around 3 a.m.

i was resistant to clear thinking at first... because i thought i heard anne say:

"nine tents blew over?"

i swear i heard that and it swept some cobwebs out of my sleep deprived attic.

in fact, it was only her tent that was off it's rockers.

she and i flew in our respective batmobiles to the churchyard where we were all set up.

only anne's tent was out in the street.

all the others were still intact and in place.

although pam's tables were all lined up in the parking area.

someone else unwittingly had their two tables added to the conga line of furnishings.

many of the artists were sure that the wind had come and taken its toll on things.

i immediately knew in the pit of my stomach what had happened.

as i live with teen aged critters.

and i always try to stay ahead of what hi-jinx they can get into.

the friday night before things had gotten into swing, there was a scary movie playing at the theater in town. it is located diagonally across the street from the place where we were set-up. and the movies did not start for another hour.

put kids with a lot of energy, time to burn, an adult telling them to move away from our tents, and extra hormonal chest poundings...

well, i just knew that the kids moved some things around.

it had to be, since i could not imagine that the tent top from one vendor landed all folded up under another vendor's tent.

nor could i figure out how a folding metal table moved up hill and to the right by about 100 feet. i know off shore breezes can be strong sometimes, yet the choices of pieces to be moved around seemed somewhat specific.

it didn't seem like malice was involved... just unspent energy.

nothing was broken, just moved around.

so 7 a.m. came earlier than i wanted that morning.

my tent looked nice and clean and white to me.

this is not at all how my regular life looks.

in fact all things in my house have too much dog hair sculpted over them.

(from my non-shedding breed dog. laugh track inserted here.)

and i had guests.

shellie was one of the more memorable folks, since she stayed an hour or so, played dress-up and we took pics of her in various pieces of my floral entourage.

she was such a giggly happy gal.

her boss had sent her for an overnight visit, since life was busy giving her some hard knocks recently.