Rabbitch

Oh bless you. The ten of you who are still reading. You've been reading and hoping, just waiting for this post, haven't you?

And it's not going to be nearly as titillating as you'd like.

I guess about five years ago -- whenever the first Sock Summit was -- I decided that I'd be all brave and do the cross-border vending thingie. Being a vendor in general is hard. Doing shows, standing on concrete and dealing with people for ten hours in a row? It's utter hell. But I love it, even if I have to take ibuprofen and ice my bad knee for hours afterwards.

My friend Barb Brown from Wild Geese Fibres and I decided to do this together. My car was dead at the time, so my father picked me up and drove me out to Abbotsford at half-past-sparrowfart where I met up with Barb. We loaded my crap into her car and drove and drove and drove for fucking ever and finally got to Portland. We booked into a pretty nice place, I think it was called La Quinta or something. Anyhow, we settled in and then the next day we did setup which in itself is hellish.

The next day we vended like hell all day. It was my first time out in public after having had my major crash and burn and I had cut off all of my hair, was skinnier than hell and was seriously shaky about being out but I just did it. It was horrifying being out in public. I was so glad I did it, though. I'm known for being a bit of a pottymouth, and there was this older lady who came up to my booth. She was using a walker and was in a nice pink suit. She told me that she was a widow, and she read my blog all the time and she'd come to the show specifically hoping to meet me. I apologized for being a pottymouth and she said no, that's why she liked reading my blog; because I just sang out whatever I needed to say. It made my day. It truly made my life. I needed to hear that sort of thing, so hard.

By the end of the day we were both completely punchy. Most vendors, unless they are sane, work their booths alone and are lucky if they get time for a bathroom break. We don't usually eat much. We need keepers. Alas, keepers cost money and these things don't usually make us enough money to hire a keeper, so unless we remember to bring a granola bar or two, we end the day in total exhaustion. We went back to the hotel room and I said ok, I'm in Portland and my favourite brewery in the world is here. I adore Widmer's and I refuse to leave Portland without getting some Hefewiezen. So we linked arms and marched down the street singing. Yes, singing. I was singing "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, I drink all night and I knit all day. I put on ladies clothing, suspenders and a bra, and then put on mittens, made out of alpaCAH!"

It was sort of mad. People gave us a wide berth.

We finally got back to the hotel, with the beer, and we realized that we had to eat or die, so we went to Denny's. We were reading the menu, which isn't like the Denny's here. Everything had the option to have grits on the side. Being Canadian, we had never had grits. We asked the server what grits were like and how one ate them, and the server said "I will bring you a sample". So we got a bowl of grits. We tried it with salt and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with pepper and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with butter. Still DISGUSTING. Then I think we tried it with cheese and likely with honey and jam and ketchup and who knows what the hell. It was all disgusting. But before we knew it we'd eaten the entire thing. We likely would have eaten the tablecloth at that point, had there been one. Fortunately our food that we had ordered showed up at about that point.

Barb said "what a nice young man." I said "what young man?" She said "our waiter, he's lovely, he looks a lot like my nephew." I said "Um. Our waiter has breasts and he is named Beth, according to his name tag." She was sort of gobsmacked.

And then there was much hilarity and eating of food.

When we went back to our hotel we went out to have a smoke and the nice young couple from Ontario who had come all that way with their yarn (and I wish I could remember the name of their company because their stuff is good and I'd like to link them but I'll do it later) were sitting by the pool. I announced to them that I had just lost my grits virginity. The husband of that duo said "but there are so many to lose, there will be more" and I said that no. That was my one last one to lose, and I had been saving it for a special occasion. I was just sorry it had been so awful, and that it had been at Denny's.

There. And now you know.