Woes of A Blacksmith’s Apprentice

Written on Wednesday, Jan. 25th, 2012. Sherwood Forest, TX.

We’re here. I love the faire, love our campsite, but I could scream and pull my hair out! We have no forge. It’s back in Toon Town, waiting for us to load it up on the trailer and drag it up here. Why? Because I got tired of procrastinating and waiting on procrastinators.

We have a tow hitch we’ve lugged around the country for almost a year now and haven’t put it on yet because we had no good reason to. I just bought it because I figured it’d come in useful. Well, it could have come in extremely useful in the move here to Sherwood, as Ryan had to bring his pop-up. Seeing as he’s only one guy with one truck, we offered to tow his pop-up if he helped us put the tow hitch on. Then, we’d carry the pop-up and he’d tow the shop trailer.

We had our van packed up and ready to go by noon, and I even helped Lenore with dishes and took time to clean both the cooler and the camp stove (*shudders*). We were ready and available to help Ryan pack up the shop. Yet, he’s over there with his pop-up hooked up to his truck, dinkin’ around with the lights. The thing had no turn signals, yet that wasn’t greatly necessary considering we’d all be going in a caravan with the vehicle with working blinkers following up the rear, not to mention we’d be going slowly on rural highways.

We waited around until 2am, and when the shop still lay untouched, we caved and decided to stop waiting around and left. Now, I would have gladly taken the shop trailer, but considering our van is merely a 6-cylinder engine with a sketchy transmission, neither of us were willing to risk stranding ourselves and the shop in the middle of rural Texas.

Perhaps this was a rash decision. I want to be considerate and courteous. Yet, my tolerance for all the ADD – starting with my own – is at it’s end. I’m done running in fast circles getting a whole lot of nothing done and waiting on folks who do the same. It’s not like everyone is consciously doing this – it just seemed to be the trend among the Rennies for the last four months. End of a long and chaotic season, I suppose.

Now we have to come up with the money to get the shop up here. Ryan has the gas to get down, but not to get back up. We have 16 days (from the writing of this) before the show starts and we make any money and if we don’t at least have the shop to be productive in, it’ll drive us mad – exactly like how Ryan’s 16 days working fireworks without a shower or easy access to food and cigarettes drove him nuts. (Boy was a right mess when he made it back to camp!)

Oh, did I mention we’re broke? Yeah, didn’t really check our spending this winter… Well, not like we should have. I’ve got some pieces to work a few pipes or other things out of. Perhaps I can make enough this week to get our shop up here.

Peace.