Highland Games; Up and Down Day"

 "If you do not admit kindness from others, you cannot be too surprised when they fail to offer any."
That was just a quote from a book I'm reading (Encyclopedia of Fairies) that struck me.  I think it's because one of the hardest things I find to do is accept help from anyone.  The absolute hardest thing is to ask for it.  I need to upack this thought.

Yesterday was an up-and-down day.  It started with that story that I posted yesterday showing up in my FaceBook feed.  A friend made a comment two years ago when I first posted it; Kim, who stayed with Bob for two days while I came home to check on things and try to wrap my head around the idea that we were fighting a losing battle.  She said that the last conversation she had with him was about me, that I was his everything.

Then I went to the Highland Games.  I was definitely not looking forward to driving there.  I remember it being a hard drive last year.  Well, last year I was going very early to get the booth set up before they opened the gates to the public.  I was on the road at 6:30 a.m., in the dark and the rain.  This year - 10 a.m. and clear and sunny and it wasn't that bad of a drive. Surprise, surprise.

My demonstration was to be at the Heritage Stage; I was the 6th demonstration of the day, so I figured there would be enough people there to make my demo worthwhile and get people to participate.  Well . . . the first five people bailed.  So there had been nothing going on in that area all day, and hence no visitors there.  One of my coworkers came by, and a couple of people who had seen it in the program - but that was it.  So I grabbed the microphone and harangued random passers-by until I had enough people to do it.  So there was only about 8 of us, but we had fun.

Later, I got a meat pie and sat in the sun and enjoyed my lunch and the live music.  But I couldn't help but notice that in all the crowds, I appeared to be the only person that had come by myself.

There were a lot of vendors there, and I treated myself to a new shawl pin (or hair pin)

There was that part of my mind that knew I could get it for about a third of the price on Amazon or Temu - but I had a friendly chat with the vendor, and she's out there trying to make a living.  It's a problem so many people are having now - people are seeing something, decide that they like it - and then go order it.  Later, they complain when the brick-and-mortar stores go out of business and they can't see thing things first any more.

So I watched some games, had my meat pie, enjoyed the music, wandered the vendors, and eventually came home.  I laughed a little at the dinner that I fixed - one of my "fix it in 10 minute dinners," this time some sauteed mixed greens and sesame crusted ahi tuna steak (a special from Aldi) on a bed of brown rice.

Then I got a text from Suzie that Hank the armadillo (the one napping in front of the space heater a couple of posts ago) had died.  He's been having some problems for awhile (which was why he was living in the kitchen) and she had even taken him home with her.  He was just such a goofy little guy; I loved holding his scrambled egg (his favorite food) in my curled up hand so that he would get excited and try to get his nose stuck in there.  And we all enjoyed having him run around the kitchen while we worked.

So an up-and-down day yesterday.  Today I had planned on finishing cutting down that area of underbrush that I've been working on, and then lighting a fire (yard waste and a lot of wood trash from the barn).  But it was pouring down rain today (I really feel sorry for the organizers of the Highland Games - that's two years in a row that one of the days has been rained out).   There are plenty of things that I could do in the house, and I could have worked on the barn.  But somehow staying in my pajamas and cocooning with the cats seemed like a better idea.  I can get back to it tomorrow.