Despondent Over Dumplings and the Sixth Market

I don’t know if it is because it was a long hot weekend, but we’ve reached the juncture in our dumpling endeavor when we are starting to feel despondent over the whole affair. Once again, we’re asking the big question, why exactly are we doing this?

With all that’s going on with the kid’s camps and R’s work, not to mention my efforts to start my glorious freelance writing career, the dumplings just take up too much of our time and more importantly, our thoughts. We thought one market a week would be more manageable, which it is, but it’s still a drag. It baffles me how we pulled it off last year.

Plus, for whatever reason, not that there is one, but the weather is out to get us. Every Wednesday, almost without fail, the weather turns lousy, usually peaking in heat or bringing a storm. Someone is trying to tell us something.

This Wed was once again complicated by A’s camp, which ended during the market. Last week I asked CH to help out, and it worked out beautifully, but this week we had to search for another option. Enter HH. She said she’d be glad to have the kids over, and again, I made supper for them. The kids were actually excited to be hanging with their buddies, and they have a pool.

And was it ever hot. It was slated to be over 90 degrees, with possible thunder showers. It’s the heat that really gets to me, especially when you’re cooking dumplings. It’s a complete drag. To make matters worse, the market was incredibly slow. There were no people out there, and we sat around with all these dumplings to sell. At some point, we decided to stop cooking them and try to sell what we’d made in order to minimize our losses.

By the time 5:30 rolled around, the dark clouds started to roll in. I welcomed the break in the hot sun, but as the clouds approached, it became clear that something bad was on the way. Sure enough, the storm arrived, and it was nasty. Tents were getting blown away, and the rain came down in sheets. Fortunately, we could see the tempest brewing and started packing up our tent. The wind made it challenging because we had to hold the tent down, but during the lulls we managed to break it all down and load everything into our cars.

Some people were not as lucky, and I think one or two vendors lost their tent. Once all of our stuff was stowed away, I felt much better, but some people really needed help. I just want to note that once things got ugly, people came out in droves to help, and it was a nice sense of community out there. We helped where we could, and even stayed behind to help the popcorn guys. They have an incredibly involved operation, and it got soaked with the rain and wind.

I felt bad for them, but again, people came out to help and it was a nice to see. Plus, we squeaked through relatively unscathed. For all it’s worth, we got to cut out of the market an hour early. Hey, I’ll take it, even though sales were lousy.

Also, we have lots of dumplings left over, so that means less work for the coming week. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Viktors Kozers and Sebastian Danon for the pics.