ooh, a piece of candy!

Remember a few entries ago where I said that I kept smelling skunks, but it turned out to be the pot instead?  Well, early this morning I woke up because I was smelling a horrible smell.  At first I thought the wind was at an unfortunate angle from the portajohns (which are SO gross here...seriously, why is this the most expensive show to camp at?  There's NEVER any toilet paper and they only get cleaned on Friday and Monday.)  However, after a few minutes I realized it was real SKUNK smell.  A skunk must have been skunkin' along when it came across someone's dog or cat and SKUNKED it.  The smell was gone when I woke up, so it wasn't a dead skunk at least.  That shit lingers for days and days, and we're all already dealing with the rancid, twice-a-week cleaned portajohn smell.  Seriously, it's horrifying in there.  I had to buy my own toilet paper because it always runs out like, the day after they clean and refill it.  There are only like 3 johns for the entire lower road to use and it gets pretty nasty.

Here's a funny rennie bathroom story:  I'm used to either using the portas or the "flushies", which as the name implies are real toilets.  I only use them when I'm somewhere on site or at the Junque because they're right there, but they have automatic flush so basically I haven't touched a toilet flush knob in a while.  So the other day I was in Starbucks and had to tinkle, and as I was leaving I touched the door handle and thought "Something is wrong..."  and I realized that I'd almost walked out without flushing, because I haven't had to do it in so long!  What a heathen I'm turning into.

Speaking of heathens, I was taking a shower this morning when a small baby child climbed under all the stalls and INTO MY STALL, and stood there staring at me as I backed into the corner, holding my razor and stammering, 'uh....go on...go find mommy....!"  a hand reached under the stall and grabbed the child as a disembodied voice apologized, but the damaged had been done and I was blushing so hard.  Not that it matters but this is the SECOND time a baby has just WALKED into my stall while I was showering (shaving my legs, as a matter of fact...bless you, free showers!)  and all the mom has done is been like, 'nooo, don't do that....' and then the kid did it anyway.  the first mom at least sounded a bit embarrassed, but today she was just laughing 'my daughter is a peeping tom!'  I'm not saying they need to slap their kids around or anything, but some parents just seem reluctant to discipline their kids.  It may have to do with the fact that there are people EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE can see what you're doing.

I was part of a conversation last week where a girl who's been on the road for 10 years made an offhand comment that confirmed my worst nightmare: that people are WATCHING YOU.  No matter what you do, people notice, and I've been trying so hard to tell myself that no one cares what I do or what I'm up to.  I'm sure that no one cares, but they still see.  I like to just appear places on my own terms and have people see me when I want them to, but that's all lost here.  I've been woken up to go take someone on errands, people force me to be social when I was planning on spending the day in bed reading...more often than not, it ends up being a good time, although I had to flee last night because some band was playing about Unconditional Love and Good Trades and I Need A Miracle and Do You Want To Be Free, and there is a LIMIT to the amount of hippie nonsense I can tolerate and I just could.  not.  So I went home and enjoyed my lingering stoned-ness and ate some chips and played angry birds.  And then I woke up to skunk smells and then I took a shower with a tiny peeping tom!

Really though, I'm having an amazing time and am so glad to be here, and really sad that the faire is ending in 5 weeks.  It feels like I've been here forever, whereas in Arizona the time flew by.  I'm going to continue making the most of my time here, though.

Goodbye for now!