Weathering the storm

[offcntr]

I wasn't sure I'd make it to Clayfolk at all. The weather report told of a "bomb cyclone" off the Oregon coast, feeding into and "atmospheric river" over southern Oregon and northern California. I left town after the Club Mud meeting, around 1 pm, and drove into increasing rain, along with ominous LED highway signage warning that I-5 was closed due to blizzard conditions 155 miles ahead. Since I hadn't programmed my GPS yet--I tend to wait until the last leg so it doesn't keep interrupting my podcast with redundant directions--I know I should continue on I-5 south, buddy--I had no idea whether the blizzard was before or after Medford.

As it turned out, I was fine, no snow on any of the passes I traversed, just a lot of rain and a bit of wind, not really noticeable with as heavily loaded a van as I was driving. Got into town around 4:30, found my motel with no problem, and flopped on the bed for a nap. Had supper at a tiny BBQ place in a residential neighborhood where pulled pork and rice, with two sides, garlic bread and water set me back twenty bucks.

I'm working solo this show--Denise had a health issue that cropped up, making it impossible for her to wrestle boxes for restock, so we decided it made more sense for her to stay home with the kitties. She could have come down and stayed in the motel room--it has heat, after all--but that added layers of complication as well. So I call her every night.

Set-up went smoothly. I was down as soon as the building opened at 7 am, had the booth mostly assembled by 11, stocked by 12:30 pm, so I had my lunch, chatted with other potters, and sold a few things off-books to my neighbor's partner and another Clayfolk member who always comes in early to get first looks. (All permitted by our rules--we can buy direct from each other and knock off the 15% show commission.) Stopped at Harry & David to buy some pears and went back to the motel. My friend Carol and her two daughters were setting up her booth, down the aisle, and invited me to join them for supper, so we ate excellent tapas and called it a night.

The past few years, the show has opened at 10 Friday morning, to alleviate the crunch and crowding of our former evening opening. Not sure it hasn't just moved it earlier, it was still an extremely busy morning. I didn't have a work shift until afternoon, so I was meeting with customers and pulling out restock pretty much constantly for three hours. Blew through a lot of dessert plates in the morning, fortunately that slowed down in favor of other items by the afternoon, though I don't know how many I'll have left for Holiday Market next weekend. I'm already out of two patterns of stew mug, and sold my only yarn bowl. Sold a teapot, all sizes of covered casserole, dinner salad and dinner pasta bowls. Looks like it's gonna be another good show.

Sales shift went well, until it didn't. We're using the same Square system with barcode labels that Clayfest did, in fact, can reuse the same labels, so it didn't take long to get into the rhythm. Scan the code, type in the price, peel the sticker, hand the pot to my wrapper, rinse, repeat. Count the items and confirm she has them all, button through the screens until it's time to take the customer's card or cash, receipt, fini. The system for taking cash seemed unnecessarily complicated at Clayfest, but I stumbled upon a shortcut that saved a couple of screens. Business was steady but not rushed, I even had time to draw a few pictures on the wrapping paper, something I do when we get a break.

Then the internet went down. For all of us at once.

Turned out the wifi hotspot we were using was running out of minutes, and when Nina tried to buy more, it kicked us all out of the system. I was completing a cash sale, so my customer could leave, but some of the credit sales were still hanging, and we also had to be sure the sales were recorded, as that's how we make sure everyone gets paid. Took about fifteen minutes to sort everything out, while the line built up again, but we were finally able to restart, reenter any missing sales, and continue.

My wrapper was also my across-the-aisle neighbor, Kelly, and we had great fun together. She's a fan of horrible puns as well, so we committed a few stinkers on each other. "You know why he only bought that tiny toadstool sculpture? Because he doesn't have mush-room for art."

One of my customers used a turn of phrase and inflection that was so amazingly Midwestern that I had to ask if she'd lived in Minnesota or Wisconsin. She had to laugh, because, despite living in three other states, including two decades in California, she still gets called on her accent. Turns out she grew up in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Denise's home town.

Spent about twenty minutes after shift end filling all the empty spots on my shelves, and hung out until closing at 7 pm to turn out my and my neighbors' lights. Found a nice Chinese restaurant and had a $15 plate of garlic chicken and vegetables, came back and called Denise, and turned in early.