Are You Goin to Scarborough Faire?

I'm not, but that's because I already went! Far out. My weekend, so far, has been full of interesting experiences--some of which I would love to repeat, and some of which I'm heartily glad are over.

First of all, I drove down to Waxahachie, a happenin' little town south of DFW. What was happenin' about it? Well, definitely not food. They had about a Sonic, a Taco Casa, and a Subway. But to their credit, they have a really great community theatre. That's where we went Friday night, to see "Once Upon a Mattress," which had a rocky start, but as soon as the princess came on the scene, I knew it would be a winner. It was! Everyone knows I'm a sucker for fairytale retellings, and this one could go right at the top of my list for those of the comic variety. The songs were cute, the costumes fair to middling, the singing for the most part rather good, and the choreography was, while not stellar, not drawing any negative attention to itself. I might have wished for a less rickety bench, especially considering the price of admission, but you can't have everything. All in all, highly enjoyable. I would do it again.

However, the fun pretty much ended there. We drove to a motel to stay the night, and in spite of a GPS, got lost multiple times. When we finally found it, we entered the back way, and boy, was it a shady place to arrive at nearly 11:00 at night. The room smelt of cat litter and mildew, and when we asked the person at the desk if there was a different room available, he showed us one that smelt of cat litter, mildew, and cigarettes. Ew. We cranked up the air conditioning and opened the window (but not for long), and that seemed to help a little. Things would have been just fine, even with all the noise associated with being located right next to I35E, except for the random banging on our door, accompanied by angry voices, that occurred around 1:30 in the morning. Yikes! D and I were so scared we hardly slept the rest of the night.

It was fun in the morning to have no remorse about jumping on the beds, and we got some seriously chic photos of us flying through the air.

And on to the Faire. The Faire was good. We started by watching a parade, in which the participants ragged on the by-standers for their lack of enthusiasm. I was too busy thinking about the metalwork roses I had just seen in a shop. We then wandered around a little, saw a little too much skin with some people's costumes, and settled ourselves in a little theatre to watch the Knife-throwing show. I think the climax would have been good, but the build-up was a little tedious, and we left early so as not to miss the jousting show. I had been informed, on good authority, that one must not miss the jousting.

I can't say too much about it. I couldn't hear the announcer very well, so a lot of what was going on was confusing. It was good. Medieval Times was better, though.

Then we found the book booth! D and I, being hard-core about books, were delighted with this find. The books, of course, were ridiculously out of our price range, but nice to look at all the same. I really enjoyed playing around with quills and ink. It's surprisingly difficult to do pretty, curvy letters with a quill if you're not used to holding one. I did better with the glass pen.

We passed by all kinds of fun shops and booths. I wanted to try out a hammock, but there was no way I could ever afford one, so I didn't want to put myself forward. We looked at wind chimes, which I loved; I got some inappropriate attention from a pirate who wanted to commit me to come see his show later that day (no, thanks, dude, and stop making lewd noises and getting all up in my face). We saw an acrobatics show involving ladders and tables a very ugly baby doll, as well as lots of jokes (some of which were quite funny).

Then, oh, then! We happened upon the very tail end of the performance of a man who makes music with water glasses! It was so great that if I hadn't left my wallet in the car, I probably would have bought one of his CDs. It's just as well I didn't, because stuff like that doesn't ever seem to be as enjoyable at home as it is when you're sitting outside on a wooden bench on May Day.

We watched a glass-blowing demonstration. That took a while, but he made a vase from start to finish. I liked it a lot. Then we went to the 'Hey, Nunny, nunny" show--which was two "nuns" doing a stand-up comedy routine that involved a lot of crude humor. Didn't stay long at that one.

And then it was over, and we went outside and got Sir Edward to take a picture of us all jumping off a brick wall.

I probably won't go again any time soon, but that sure was fun. I wonder if I'll be sunburned tomorrow.