So I’ve had a busy week. I keep thinking about blogging, and then I don’t.
But here I am, back and totally exhausted. Tonight was the church service auction, of which Cindy and I were co-chairs. We did pretty darn well, raising over $10,000 for the church, which is pretty awesome, if you ask me. It was such a comedy getting it all together though.
I got to the church today at around 2 pm with a load of stuff from the Acme. I did the drop off of sodas/mixers/snacks and picked up a check from the office for $800 (to pay the caterer, the food was awesome btw, Zorba’s on Fairmount, they did an amazing job). I then ran down to Jen’s house (because she’s on the board and has power to sign) got her signature on the check so that the caterer would actually accept it as legal tender and went back up the church.
When I got there I was informed of a “debaucle” that had occured the night before. It seems that the group that had rented the church basement was supposed to set up our tables and chairs after their event was over. Did they do it? No. But because the church administrator doesn’t like us, he did not ask the sextons to set our stuff up. So, while the sexton on duty watered the garden and pulled some weeds (while hanging around and smoking a cigarette) I got to wrestle about fifteen tables out of the closet and set up the room. (Talk about an aerobic workout, my run this morning was completely unnecessary)!
Around 4 pm volunteers started to show up and suddenly the room began to take shape. The problem with volunteers is that when they don’t like a job, they just walk away from it half done and then ten minutes later walk back up to me and ask for another job, while the original job I gave them languishes. There are two men at the church who are extremely socially awkward (as my mother would say, quoting some Adam Sandler movie, “They ain’t got what we call the social skills”), but keep showing up, because we’re nice to them (we’re Unitarians and have to be nice to everyone).
They came tonight to “help” but trying to think of jobs to give them was harder than it was to do the work ourselves! There were ten tables set up for people to eat at and we wanted to put bowls of peanuts on the tables for people to munch before dinner was ready. We gave this job to these two gentlemen, thinking that it wouldn’t be hard for them to fill up the ten bowls with nuts. Anthony started filling the bowls, but did so two peanuts at a time. His exact pattern was two peanuts in each bowl and then three peanuts in his mouth. George just wandered away, and when I looked again, he was examining the silent auction items with great interest. Half an hour later, the bowls still weren’t filled. It was a little crazy making, and yet completely humorous. Finally Cindy asked Ingrid’s new boyfriend (and such a trooper) Nathan to “manage” our nut bowl fillers and the job finally got done.
For me the best part of the evening was when I got to be the auctioneer. There’s really nothing I love more (other than my mommy and my blankie) than getting to talk in front of a group of people. Don’t ask me why, but I just get a kick out of it. There are some who shun the limelight, but for me I say, bring it on! I do love me a microphone and a captive audience!
Anyway, I think that’s all I can say about the auction at the moment. I do have lots of things that have been floating around my head that I’d like to write, I’ll see if I can’t capture a couple of them tomorrow!