The War: Now with Expanded Coverage

[ianuk]

The time leading up to war was absolutely crazy. I'm not sure I have every worked so hard and gotten so little sleep before a war before. Its just crazy. We had all of this extra time but it went poof! Also, I started to come down with some sort of chest cold before we left and I was being dragged down by it as well. The weekend before the war was lots of prep, packing and finishing A&S projects.

Monday I went to work (really dumb of me to do that...making note to never, ever, ever do that again). I was not focused, things were stoopid and I was more tired and sick when I got home. Lame but true. Mel was off to load the trailer and after the boy got to bed I headed out to get photocopies of things, grocery/Target shop for the war. So, that meant I started packing at 10pm for the war. Luckily I had a really good list, I wasn't taking much and I was able to get my class stuff and Clothes packed up in two hours. We slept okay but I kept getting up to make notations and my brain was running so I think I slept a few hours. We got up and got the truck packed up and I got the boys stuff set and the house picked up. One of the things we always try to do is pick up the house and change the sheets before we leave. It just makes coming home that much easier. We made breakfast plans with Ed and Uther and then hit the bank before heading to Joe's.

Had a nice breakfast and then we all loaded up to head to war. The drive was uneventful and little boy was crashed after eating a lot of pancakes for his 3rd breakfast. Got to site and then had a snafu with getting in. Our pre-reg was not showing up and I couldn't find anything for it either. Got on site after filling out more paperwork and talking with the kingdom exchequer and then finally got to our campsite. Ed and company were already laying things out and getting things set up. We got benton settled in the packnplay with the canopy and I attempted to help. I was coughing a lot and felt like crap but we all managed to get things working and setup everyone's tents before the daylight waned. We had a rough night of sleep since little boy was not happy and kept waking up. While I was off teaching in the morning mel figured out he was a bit constipated and we forced him to drink more milk/water and then he was fine. Benton was just not used to having to drink so much and it was hot all war.

I taught my Beads of the North Class and How to Dye Leather on Wednesday and Thursday. The classes went really well and I was happy with the facilities to teach. The hay barn was nice and cool and very well shaded. I managed to have the boy watched over by folks and only thursday did that go a bit awry. Just as I was coming back to camp a large dust devil hit our encampment. Storvarr's tent ridgepole snapped and the canopy of our tent was trying to blow away. Inspecting things later we see that the ridgepole of our tent is sticking out of the canvas because it had gotten setup without the stress relieving ring installed under the canvas and the canopy did not have the back ropes staked in. I had noticed it the day before but you have to take the tent down to fix it. I guess I should have had it fixed. So, we bring the tent down and find 3-5" tears running through the grommet. Well, storvarr happened to have an extra piece of canvas and I had glover's needles, thread and wax and I sat on my bed with the tent in my lap and wander held a parasol to keep the sun off of us while I worked in the patch and then I used crochet cotton to buttonhole stitch the grommet back into place. With the help of other folks we got the tent back to rights and staked down correctly all before Ivan and the guys made it back from outlands prize. By that point I was hot, tired, mad and just a bit grumpy. I got cooled down but was so drained from the exertion of it all I was pretty useless. Mel got back from the tourney and after he got fed and cooled down I got sent off to shop with Wander. I managed to set aside a large grouping of books at Pastiche and then make a purchase for scribe_ari's birthday which you can see here. Got that back to camp and tucked away to be given to her in the morning and then it was going to be nice to have a meal with the household. Ivan got pulled into the commander's meeting and that made the evening a bit long with Benton and me for dinner. Benton was tired and a bit worn out after a hot day and Storvarr had been awesome and watched the boyo for way to long while I taught class and fixed the tent. Long day all around.

Friday dawned early and I got my butt moving and fed and got into armor as quickly as I could manage with getting Benton and mel and us all ready to go. Mel was watching the boy while I was going to fight. We got together and marched to BTY to get into the procession. I marched with Bannthegn Brighed and Mistress Kat as the BTY Bannthegns in residence. The march out to the field was long and by the time we all got to the field we were hot. It was going to be another sticky hot day. Hrafnheim was going to be used as a calvalry unit with TRH Thomas and Ilora with us. We had a lot of fun and Lady Valora and Lord Alystyr and Duke Phelan was running with us too. Wow, what a fun day. Ended up commanding when I could but trying to speak loud enough was hard since my voice kept cracking. Had a time when Ed died and I ran our group around the castle and hit the sallyport to much good effect. So much fun. I ended up having Uther fall on me which kinda sucked as my leg shifted backwards for a time and my ankle finally said it was done. Its been out for weeks and mel had not been able to get it in..well, after I got off the field and was just done. Met Ari on the way back from parking and she was awesome and grabbed my helmet and Odagdai's.

Got a shower after some food provided by the awesome ladies of my house and then got dressed in girl clothes for the first time of the war. I am not at all upset about my new boy clothes and they made fixing a tent a lot easier. Friday night was just a bit crazy...too many things planned on top of each other. I was lucky enough to have Bill reset my heel which then allowed Ivan to reset my foot. That hurt but it was soo much better than it being all jammed up and that got the pressure off my knee that had been being weird for a while and especially after Uther fell on me. I ended up hitting Tatiana's vigil way late and then was back home to bed or maybe that was Thursday night? I don't recall now. I realized that I was not getting enough sleep at all at the war and it wasn't going to get any better.

Saturday dawned with Benton being up and happy. Mel was on the field that day and I hung in camp all day playing with benton and I taught my Rus class since it had to be rescheduled due to the tent issue. It was again hot but I had a nice time chatting with the ladies and sewing on a tunic of benton's. Had an incident with me not getting to Benton in time for him to touch the firepit. It was my fault, like many things at the war, but luckily he didn't touch a part that was hot. The entire camp moved so quick on things even if he had been burnt we'd have had it handled in less than a minute. He was screaming cause I scared him so with my yelling and grabbing him but it was again my fault. Sighs. We were late to grand court because of it and we missed the processionals but little boy was okay. We got him to finally pass out and I was able to hold him during the knightings but my arm was dead by the end. I chatted for just a bit with cecelia_mowebray during court but not enough to really catch up. Ivan won his category for the Wooden box as seen below:


I won my category for my hats (which are not napkins!)


We had quite the crew of folks hanging out around our fire on Saturday night and we went to bed very, very late.

Sunday morning little boy was uber cute and we snuggled with him in bed for a bit. We got the camp started on tearing down and I was able to head back to pick up my books. Unfortunately, they had gotten re-stacked into the stacks and I had to extricate them again but I added a few more. It was my most expensive purchase from them yet but still not their largest order. Got some good stuff though and things that I've never even seen in person.

We got the camp packed up and loaded with just enough time to spare before closing court. The peerages were fun but it was still a long court. By the time that was done, I was so done. Just a long day and a long war. All I wanted was to get home after having a drive thru burger. Mel was not hungry until we turned onto the highway so we stopped at BK on the way and then got home pretty quickly. I got the Benton into a bath while mel unloaded the car and then we sat like lumps for a bit before showers and bed. Benton left a ring around the tub of dirt he was so filthy but that was okay. It felt wonderful to be clean.

So, that was war....