crises of a quiet life

This past week was my week "off". The kids weren't skating. The festival hasn't started (although I need to get the kids working on their speech entries). All I had was Sparks/Brownies/Guides and the annual visit from Uncle Grant on the calendar.

Ha.

Woke up Tuesday and realized that it was the 14th. All of my Guiding registration forms had to be in by the 15th. With the long weekend, I had forgotten to pester the parents who hadn't got the forms to me yet...so I had a little panic in the morning and got all of those brought over. I e-mailed the lady in Neepawa that I was supposed to send them to, then I whipped into town, put them in an expresspost and went to vote. I would have been quicker there if I hadn't been stopped by two people to talk about things the Guides were supposed to do and one person to talk to me about festival. Got home to find...that the lady in Neepawa no longer wanted the forms, she wanted them sent to Winnipeg. Argh. More e-mails to try to meet deadlines that won't happen - and you all know me and being late.

Anyway, I thought that Wednesday might be better. A kindergarten day always allows me to get a bit more done. So I started in on the bookkeeping. That wasn't too bad - I wasn't really that behind, but as usual there were a couple of strange transactions that I had never done before. And my accountant wasn't available. I knew I had to run to town again to do book fair - my kids always love to go, and since his mom couldn't get off work early enough to take him, I had Cole too. So, we're at the bookfair for half an hour trying to convince Joelle that she doesn't need every book, and trying to find the right level for Charlotte, and keep three children's hands out of all of the gadgets and things that are available. It was slightly nuts.

After bookfair I still had a few errands to do, so three kids followed me to the post office, the bank (Jo had a little cheque to deposit herself, so I had to go there) and then the co-op. I don't know what it is about the co-op that makes Char believe it is her own private racetrack, but I was absolutely cooked by the time I got out of there after chasing her. And I still had to clean up before Uncle Grant came over to visit that evening. I need to buy more plastic so that I can stack the boxes of things I just hide away...

While Uncle Grant was here, phone rings - festival. They need me to "volunteer" and the day that they have picked I have appointments in Brandon. So I'm not available...and somehow, I was supposed to have given my schedule to a lady I barely know so that she wouldn't have scheduled me that day? I switched off for a day that I would be around, but it sounded like I had royally messed up the volunteer co-ordinator's chart by not being home. That has to be one of my pet peeves - I am always expected to be available because I "stay home".

Thursday was pretty quiet - I didn't get a hold of my sister for her birthday (I tried...), and I just had to plan my Guiding meeting. Hadn't been in too much of a rush - the early part of the year is always the same for Guides, Brownies and Sparks because we have to work on enrolment. We had enrolment scheduled for November 6th. Three weeks away. No rush until I realized that festival would be in the church on the evening of November 6th, and the sounds from our enrolment downstairs would be very unwelcome to the speech participants upstairs. And, we already planned an early meeting for October 30th to allow parents to do pumpkin carving or costume fittings or whatnot - so we didn't want to do a ceremony that night. Which leaves...next week. Panicked phone calls to Guide Shop to get supplies mailed out, and we had a "rehearsal" meeting. Hope that we can pull it all together next week!

And, it rained/snowed last weekend. That made the oats that were supposed to start moving on Tuesday have had to start moving Friday. Which meant that Dale couldn't take his truck in for its regularly scheduled oil change and checkup. So I had that to do. And since I would be in Shoal Lake, I got to pick up trophies for festival, distribute programs for festival, deposit skating fundraising money, pick up tickets at the bus station for skating, enquire about some "old style" cheques that we're still using on a little used figure skating account, check in with our accountant on the obscure transactions that I have to bookkeep and follow up with half of the skating parents while getting my groceries. Oh, and I had to pay big bills (October 31st is not just halloween, it is the due date for a lot of our inputs and services) and pick up wood for shelves for the canning room.

After school...the dreaded "lice" note - they're in the school again. And, after a quick check of Jo, I started on Char. Who still suffers from Cradle Cap. She's five and a half. And she has a raging case of the flakies right now...so I spent an hour of scrubbing with special shampoo and conditioner and picking away at the poor child's scalp to try to reduce the breeding space for little bugs.

And then there were panicked phone calls and e-mails from the moms of our competitive skaters that their kids hadn't been registered with Skate Canada. Since I thought that had been done in August, and these girls couldn't compete in any competitions without being registered, I spent the next two hours trying to figure out what the heck happened there. That's the president's job, I know, but she was at another meeting and it needed to get done. Turned out that while everything had been set up to register everyone online, the "submit" button hadn't been pushed. I couldn't figure out why we hadn't got a bill yet for registrations - that's because the invoice prints after you press "submit". So now I have another expresspost to do to get the cheque to Ottawa to make sure these kids get registered pronto. Ugh.

I'm not sure if things will be better when we're into the full swing of things - but maybe I'll be more prepared for all of the little minor crises that make my life interesting. In the meantime, we're off to the lake today to close up the place - kind of sad, because it won't be warm enough to be out there, but kind of relieved - soon the snow will fly and this transition will be over.