THE TROUBLE WITH MOTHER NATURE

When my son was one he quit eating meat.
Rather than get into one of those no-win power struggles with him, I looked for alternate sources of protein. Peanut Butter. Cheese. Stuff like that.

Peanut butter is full of sugar, which makes it really yummy. Cheese is often not cheese but "processed cheese food". Yuk. So I joined the new and innovative South Suburban Food Co-op.

Every week I called people and got their orders. In turn, I had access to high quality organic and locally grown produce. It was great. And then the kids got bigger,and I went to work, and they went to school, and all their lives, and my husband and I went on with ours and somehow, the food co-op dropped out of our lives for a really, really, really long time. I knew they were still around.

And then, they moved into a storefront around the corner from the Gallery where I play around, and BINGO they were back in my life.

(I'm getting to the point, honest.)

So I went in a couple of times but they're really pricey unless you belong and if you belong you have to donate time and I know how that goes because the Gallery is a co-op and I can print on three fingers the names of the people who actually CONTRIBUTE time without being dragged screaming and crying into the building.

But you know..... I just kinda....went in one day to get some crackers because I was at the Gallery and felt sick, and....I joined the Food Co-op.
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photo by Bradley Cross

This is the Ann Arbor Art Fair some year recently. Maybe last year. I did not go but the photo will explain to you WHY I did not go, why I no longer participate in outdoor festivities involving tents, art, food or me.

I have lost, over the years that I was doing art fairs, 4 tents. One did not belong to me, but had been loaned to me and it was totally destroyed one night when the water from a tornadic storm piled up in the top and collapsed the tent, crushing the aluminum legs like someone had stepped on a spider.

One tent blew away in Evanston, Illinois.

One tent had a hole ripped in the apex of the roof by a "freak" wind.

One just gave up, like I did.

One art fair I did in May in Illinois I nearly froze to death. It rained all day and the wind blew, and my daughter's car got a flat. My daughter has no temper at all, she is almost impossible to annoy to the point of real, serious anger, but she slogged back through that cold and watery parking lot swearing like a sailor, mad as I have ever seen her, having discovered her flat tire.

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Ok. So today I got up at 4, had the dogs fed by 5, settled in again by 6. Took a shower, thought I'd ride my bike to the Farmer's Market and put in my 5 hours for the month.

Then I looked at the sky.

Ok, so I don't ride the bike.

Look at the above photo again. That is pretty much what the day was like, sitting outside under a tent with no walls in the pouring rain with the wind coming from my back, soaked feet and no socks. Maybe 3 people stopped who didn't already belong to the Food Co-op. All we were supposed to do was offer a sample (they all got soggy) a brochure (limp and spottled with rain) and directions to the actual storefront (down the street and around the corner).

By 10:30 I was terminally cold. My core Temp had probably dropped to about 32 degrees. My feet (my fault I know, shoulda wore my Muck Boots) were blocks of ice. The back of my neck was stiff, sore, cold, annoyed....I  had to pee desperately, the rain working with my BP meds to make me suddenly....nevermind.

I was the only one there who had ever sat out like this before. The others were neophytes at what weather can do to you when you are sitting still.  They were unaware, originally, that they needed weights on the tent, altho we really didn't as it turned out.

I kept thinking

Didn't I quit doing this for just this reason???

We hauled stuff back at 10:45. A solid meal, two glasses of wine, socks and fuzzy slippers later, I am starting to warm up.

Ask me how soon I am doing this again....