Oh, sweet raisin danish, there is not a single inch of my body that doesn't hurt right now. It's a little flashback to what life was like before I started treatment this year. Any day I want to complain about having to take 15 or so pills every single day of my life, I can think about how it feels to forget the morning set, and then go do pretty much anything. Once upon a time, I made a habit of sewing clothes. I rarely used patterns. Instead I spread fabric out on the largest open surface (the floor) and I sat next to it for hours designing free-form shapes on the fabric from which three dimensional works of art would appear. I always felt a hundred years old after one of those floor sessions, even while I was in my twenties and thirties. My hips and legs would hurt, my back would ache, and my arms would be sore and weak. Obviously now I understand why sitting on the floor was so particularly rough on me, but back then I had to listen to all sorts of people tell me I just needed to toughen up and do it more to train myself, or some such nonsense. Between the three days this week that I've been doing floor work, making the vinyl signs for the pie throw down tomorrow, I have reminded myself one of the biggest reasons I gave up sewing. It freaking hurts.
I'm really not sure anyone actually saw the sign I had done for tonight, the one for ticket sales and check-in. The check-in part is for tomorrow, but it seemed convenient to have it all on one sign. It was hanging in the back of our tent for the Festival on Main all night, and I don't think anyone looked that far back. They were too distracted by the activities in the front. One of our committee leaders brought two copies of the pie in the face game, the one where you put your face in a cutout, chin on a platform, and turn a handle a varying number of clicks until the lever springs and throws whipped cream in your face. I'm pretty sure we had at least a third of the youth population in town come through to try it out. It was quite popular. It was a great lure to bring over families so we could tell them about the activities tomorrow. Unfortunately, for the scores of people who were interested and said they wanted to do it, maybe twenty went ahead and bought their tickets tonight from me. Maybe the other folks sold more with cash that I didn't see, but that's as many times as I scanned cards on the Square for my phone. And most of those were the discounted kids' tickets. I had better see a lot of the folks who swore they'd come tomorrow turn back up in the morning. Otherwise we are going to be a couple hundred shy of the world record we claimed to be breaking. (Again, just randomly throwing out numbers. I have no idea how many tickets are sold overall.) We know for sure that we've made our costs back, and are operating in the black, but I don't know if we will hit the fundraising goal for youth programs that we set.
The chaos of the street festival was every bit as overwhelming to me as these things always are. It's all well and good to see the crowds go by, with people in costumes and kids playing with the little lighted toys that always come out for these events. But when I am responsible for trying to hail passers-by and convince them to part with money, it's incredibly exhausting. I was at our booth for five hours, with my happy, approachable face on, and it wore me out. And I have to be up super early tomorrow to pick up food for my volunteers and be there before they show up. And somewhere before bedtime I have to put the finishing touches on the kids' team trophy and clear coat it and the adult one, and finish coloring in one more sign. Ouch. At least once I got home I took a whole day's worth of pills at once. Is it too late to expect them to help?
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