Ren Faire 2012

I’ve told you in the past that I love going to the Renaissance Faire. I’m sure some of you thought, “yeah, that’s cool, like going to the county fair.” Nope, not at all. When I do Ren Faire I go all out. I have costumes and accessories and a character all worked out.

Shauna as a fairy

Sometimes I’ve gone as a fairy 

Fantastickal Fairy

but this year our faire was lucky enough to get the Fantastickals to come out and spread their special brand of magic and I didn’t want to upstage them so I stuck with pirate and privateer.

My hubs actually really enjoys faire. When we were first dating I convinced him to go, he was a very good sport and agreed to go in costume with me (once he found out about the eating, drinking and being allowed to carry a weapon all day). Little did he know how cool he would find it. Yes, I found his nerd flag and I made him fly it. It would be a couple of years before we would go again because back then it was way down in San Bernardino and that was a good 3-4 hour drive depending on traffic. Now it’s in Irwindale, still an hour and a half drive, but totally doable in a day. So over the last few years we’ve been putting our costumes together, getting better and better pieces and adding to them until they became pretty darn respectable. I even found an artist in England that did replicas of “Letters of Marque” and he personalized them for us and switching out all the King George stuff for Queen Elizabeth. They’re even bound in leather, so freaking cool! So as long as we have them, we’re privateers, not pirates.

Honorable Mention Winner!

We didn’t get to go last year because we had both lost our day jobs and decided to start our own businesses and it was an expense we just couldn’t justify. This year I wasn’t sure we were gonna be able to go, partly for the expense, and partly because we are both so busy (a blessing). But I entered the photo contest, as I do every year, and managed to get honorable mention in one of the categories and scored some free tickets! Huzzah!

Juanita and BF as first time pirates

So we went one weekend and brought two of our friends who were really excited about the idea of going, though a bit hesitant about dressing in full costume. Luckily, they were good sports about it, took some of our loaner pieces and they looked awesome! That beauteous lady is Juanita, one of my often mentioned beta readers and her boyfriend. Don’t they look great? So proud of them. Oh, and now they’re hooked! They’ve promised to start putting their own costumes together to make it an annual thing with us! Huzzah!

Shauna and Marica

The next weekend I decided we had to have a girl’s day at faire. Ladies, I cannot explain how much fun it is to go to faire with just the girls. I swear in the first ten minutes we must’ve had our pictures taken half a dozen times. 

This time I brought another newbie with us, our new friend Marcia and just look at her! What a natural! 

Juanita and Marcia

And when the men fawned all over my girls (and can you blame them?) the girls were adorable, though I wish I had gotten a picture of Juanita blushing when a lord tried to snatch her away from us!

Shauna and Moonie the Magnifi'cent

We had cider, fried foods, ice cream, caught a few comedy shows (that’s me and Moonie the Magnifi'cent, if you can ever catch his or Broon’s show, I highly recommend it – they both travel with the other faires). 

I got sunburned despite the sunblock. Bought a witch ball. Just a good time all in all.

I highly recommend it. 

Go in costume. It’s worth it.

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The Fishwives Book Club

I am proud to be a nerd. I have always been proud to be a nerd. I have always loved to read. I wanted to get good grades. I go to the Renaissance Faire, in costume! And I have more than one costume. Yeah, I try to be cool, to a point, not everything I do is totally dorky, but I enjoy my nerdiness and I fly my nerd flag with pride. So it should come as no surprise that I have always, always wanted to be in a book club.

It’s always so disappointing to read a great book, or a horrible one, and have no one to talk to about it. Even when you’re browsing the shelves at bookstores, where booklovers and readers come together, people don’t want to talk. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve offered a piece of advice to a wandering teen or answered a question the clerk couldn’t only to get a quirked eyebrow and an awkward silence. My husband tries to read, and he reads a lot more than most of my friends’ husbands, but he’s not going to want to read everything I do and he doesn’t read as fast as I do so I can’t chew his ear off.

Then we moved to our cute little beach cottage in Mid-town Ventura and about two years later we got new neighbors, almost at the exact same time. Luckily all of the men were social little butterflies and they met and became friendly. So I decided to have a bar-b-que to get to know some of our neighbors better. Yeah, very domesticated of me, I know. But as a rule I’m an introvert and, while I can put on the public smile, I prefer to keep to myself. I enjoy throwing parties, but I like to be the hostess because you have so much to do you aren’t really expected to be social. You have to tend to the food, the drinks and move around constantly so you don’t leave anyone out. But this didn’t work out at a bar-b-que. The food is done when it’s done and the drinks are all in an ice chest. Not much to do.

So I had to sit and be social. And I know this is going to be shocking to you, but the men and women split and separated so I felt obligated to be with the girls. Very 1950’s of us. I just kept thinking about I Love Lucy reruns. Anyway. One of the new neighbor couples came over but the girlfriend stayed with the guys. How I envied her. The women that had shown up were moms, one of a toddler and one soon-to-be. I am not a mom. These two ladies just went on and on about kids. I did not have much to add to this conversation. Then the wife of the other new neighbor showed up. This poor girl was eight months pregnant and not in a good mood, but she felt like she had to come and she did not talk about kids, even though she had one and one on the way. I liked her. She was a hairdresser and worked out of her home, two doors down! Score for me.

Then finally, the girlfriend I mentioned wandered over to the henhouse. My husband had told her I was a writer and had just published my first novel. She wanted to talk about books. I was gobsmacked. She wasn’t a baby-maker either, which was why she was hesitant to come over, and really, I couldn’t blame her. It was starting to get late and people wanted to go home so I let everyone know we were ordering the MMA/UFC fight that night and everyone was welcome to come back. And wouldn’t you know it, these two girls wanted to see the fight! What?! Now, unfortunately the preggers of the two couldn’t make it, but the other one did and she didn’t just come because her boyfriend wanted to see the fight. She wanted to see it just as much as I did. Madness, I know.

A week went by and I met preggers for a haircut and color and found out she had all of the same reading tastes as I do. I mentioned that I would love to have a book club because none of my friends read and lo and behold she said she’d love to be in a book club! Later that week the boyfriend and girlfriend neighbors invited us over to watch the girl MMA fights, which we never watched; my new friend and I sat at her kitchen table, eating and drinking wine, talking and laughing for hours and hours. She had read my book and enjoyed it! Of course she was my new favorite person.

Now the three of us are in a book club together. We laugh, talk, eat and drink for hours into the night. We’ve just finished up The Mortal Instrument series, planning to discuss City of Fallen Angels this Friday and it’s been a month since we’ve had a meeting and I tell you, I am going through withdrawals. My book club has become something amazing for me! I have two new girlfriends who share similar interests as I do and who I can talk candidly to. We gossip about our neighborhood, we bitch about our men and we laugh enough to cry. And somewhere in there we talk about books.

So that’s how my book club came to be.

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