The Annual (or should I say, Stannual) Collage:
The gerbil smell of the car as we swooped and swarmed towards the easternmost mainland point on Nova Scotia. Warm nights blending into scorching, sweaty, unbelievable days that left me bitten and burnt and uncomfortable but ultimately satisfied. A tent filled with stuff that stayed dry, and the rattling sound of two boys snoring at once. Waking on Saturday night/Sunday morning with a vicious leg cramp from climbing the hill for 2 days, biting back the scream and hearing the security guards break up the Idiot Sing Along at the next camp cluster (really, how many verses can you sing of "My Dingaling" without getting sick of yourself?), realizing as they settled down that the pain of my burn & bites & infection would keep me wakeful for a long time. Waddling around in the morning, cursing a God who would make a pregnant camping lady walk to the top of a steep hill to pee first thing, and unable to manage anything faster than an elderly shuffle despite the fear of wetting my pants. Food that we ate, sometimes, and the addictive Lion's Club fish and chips that tempted like Lucifer and went down like a miracle. Metered showers that rattled between hot and cold unpredictably, and my inevitable conclusion that even a second of scorching water on my ridiculously sunburnt body would make me split open like an overcooked sausage (so I stood outside the shower and rinsed in bursts). A campsite of real, honest to goodness adults that stayed quiet in the mornings and nights and left behind not a scrap of garbage as far as the eye could see. Blackfies out for a pound of flesh, and none too choosy about the blood shed on the way. All too brief glimpses of Acadia alumni Kris & Sue, and Stan who was always too happily busy to say more than 4 words at a time. The increased importance of my yellow sarong as skirt & sunshield, not to mention impromptu reference to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Magnetic Phil (a.k.a. the Boy) and Scotty Propane (a.k.a. Dirk) drinking beer, play-fighting for dominance, and all too often running ahead when my pregnant waddle was too slow for their boundless curiosity.
Mr. Congeniality with his own stage gig. A band of Billys that managed to upstage the Arrogant Worms again and again, in the most joyful musical fashion imaginable. A young pierced, tattooed son of namesake Stan starting off his first set in the humour workshop with the surprisingly charming "Lunchlady Land." Laughing derisively as Murray Maclaughlin dove into "Straw Hats & Old Dirty Hankies" for the second time in 3 hours. Two beautiful young sisters from Mabou parachuted in to fill a sudden line-up hole on Sunday, who filled the tent with reels and impromptu step dancing. Banjo wars. "Northwest Passage," sung by the same tattooed son and hundreds of others, which seemed to raise the dead and certainly called me out of a nap on the far side of the grounds. A very surly Swamperella, continually arguing with the sound guy. Dirk, completely undone with a song about taking off and hoping your family will catch up eventually. A love song from a Scottish folkie that made me swoony & glowy.
Seeing the tattooed son rock out to a pair of headphones, and when investigating saw that it was his own earlier performance that he was so taken with and eager to share. Running - actually running - back to Tenty with three pieces of news labeled good, better & best: I had fries to share; I had met Nathan Rogers, who had thought about singing "Medium Pace" instead of "Lunchlady Land"; a college radio guy had booted "Northwest Passage" and had agreed to send me a copy.
"I love community radio. I love community radio. Did I mention that I love community radio?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. What do you love?"
"Dirty sex. [lecherous wink] Naked, dirty sex in a field with animals... 'bovine' rhymes with 'so fine.'"
- the son of namesake Stan and myself, in conversation.
"Our love is like new car smell." "Garnet's Home-made Beer." "Drag Queens & Limousines."
Now all I have is an atrocious watch tan and a yellow plastic armband that I refuse to remove. All together now, so they can hear you in Canso: God Bless StanFest!
Weirdness. We got home about 5 hours ago, pushing our way down grey highways coated with sullen Toronto rain. When we fell asleep in our dearly beloved bed for a much-needed nap, the rain got so bad that our open windowsills were soaked. The chill wind woke me out of the first sleep I've had outside the car in 24 hours. Dude! I just spent 10 days on the road, and the only time we saw rain was in Ontario and Quebec. Yep, you read that right - not a single drop of rain in the effing Maritimes. We have never been at Stanfest without being soaked to the skin at least a few times in the weekend - this time I got a really really brutal sunburn (I kept thinking, It's Canso; how hot can it get?? Well, pretty fucking hot as it turns out.)
Anyway, there'll be more of that when I transcribe my trip journal. I did get the first three days completely chronicled; then I got sunburn and about a hundred mosquito bites and a raging yeast infection that felt like a miscarriage to my untutored mind (on a Sunday, when all the drugstores were closed; we ended up in a hospital where they had run out of supplies) and a really vicious leg cramp, so the writing kind of went to hell. Our post-festival time at Sister Silver's in the Annapolis Valley was a calm blue ocean, although I never quite recovered enough to take pen in hand. Oh well. I'm on vacation now! (She laughs hollowly.) I can do this. I can rebuild 5 days. My pride demands it.
On our return journey we did the unthinkable - we drove it all in a single stretch. Everytime we get in the car, we flirt with the idea of putting the hammer down & just givin'er until we get there. But usually by 10 p.m. I can barely sit still with the aches & pains of car travel, so we stop for the night. The trick has always been to find camp sites & hostels along the way so we can avoid the $80+ motel fees for 6 hours of uneasy sleep.
This trip I discovered my new best friend in Guysboro County: Dramamine. As we left the festival, I was feeling decidedly nauseous (along with itchy, burnt, itchy, sore & tired). It's something about the swooping, turning roads in Guysboro; they've always made me green & cranky. We stopped at the first drug store out of Canso so I could load up with pads and salves and ointments and such, and I decided to ask the pharmacist if I were allowed to take anything medicinal while the Sprout was gyroscoping in my belly. She looked it up, said yes, and I immediately took one tiny pill that knocked me out till Antigonish.
It was this bottle of pills that made it possible for us to ignore my twitchiness and drive through the night in Quebec. I slept 3 hours while the Boy drove to Montreal, and woke up terrified. Trust me, there is nothing more terrifying than waking up out of a thin sleep to hear your burly male protector say, 'I'll be right back!' as he bolts out of the car which is now parked behind a deserted warehouse at 1 in the fucking morning. In Montreal, a strange and somewhat threatening city.
At 2 am I made him promise to stop just inside the Ontario border, and the 2 of us slept in a Shell parking lot for 4 1/2 hours. I took the wheel for the next hour, but stopped when I could barely keep my eyes open. The Boy drove the rest of the way home, and we landed at 11:30 Atlantic time. Amazing stuff, but it'll take me days to recover.
And now I find a message from the hospital on the answering machine, telling me to call back right away because the ultrasound scan was bad. Shit. Calling back, I was able to find out that they couldn't see the Sprout's kidneys. Again: shit. What does that mean? Good thing we subjected ourselves to the indignity of sleeping upright; I would've been unable to return the call for days if we'd stuck to the original schedule.
Speaking of which, here's the Sprout! Kidneys and all...
Booty Call: Day 126 - Length: 16 cm crown to rump (25 cm or 9 3/4 inches head to toe). Weight: 300 gm or 10 oz.