Blogorama Chapter 1: Who is that Crazy Lady?

Who is that woman? I mean, Look at her!  She has straggly hair, food on her shirt and bags under her eyes.  She looks like she's been wearing the same clothing for days in a row.  I bet if you asked her, she wouldn't have any idea what day it is today.  I bet she smells bad.  Gross. Oh, wait a second.  That's me.

Can I just tell you what an insane couple of weeks I've had?  I don't think you're going to care much, but I would like to say that I am impressed with myself for surviving.  I am tempted to tell you every last thing I've done but it won't sound like it was very difficult or exhausting at all and you won't feel bad for me.

Okay, a brief rundown.  First off, my friends Adam and Angie are getting married, and I'm so happy for them. Angie needed a shower - every bride does and we love our friend, so I threw one together.  Only....because they are both long time ward members and they both have lots of family and other people who love them, we decided that about 100 people needed to be invited.  So that was a bit of a bugger to plan and carry out and organize.  Menu, gifts, centerpieces, food assignments....whew!  Glad I had some wonderful friends to help.

That fell two days before our school's Teacher Appreciation Week.  I'm the volunteer coordinator for the PTA (I hate to say this but I recommend avoiding this job if you can, though I also advocate volunteering at your school.)  So I was in charge of instructing all the class room parents on carrying out a little appreciation for the teachers.  But then the PTA itself does a big song-and-dance for the teachers - catering lunches, breakfasts, snacks, bringing gifts, holding raffles, that kind of thing.  And I did all of that too.  After a weekend with family in town (fun - will blog in a later chapter) the next week (the one we're just ending) was the book fair, for which I had to find all the volunteers as well as plan and carry out two more meals for the teachers because this week was also parent-teacher conferences and the PTA always does meals on those days.  I was feeling bad for asking all the parents for so much help over the two-week stretch so I just asked the PTA if I could please provide the main course for the two meals and just ask for sides; usually we ask for parents to plan carry out the entirety of the meals. But they had been asked for a lot (believe me, some of them let me know) and so I just wanted to do it myself.  And it is never as simple as it seems.

My brother introduced me to a phrase that I think describes my life more often than not: Project Creep.  A project (or a meal or a sunday school lesson or a Christmas card or whatever) starts out as one small simple idea and slowly gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you find yourself at 4:55 running out the door balancing two crockpots on your hips while yelling at your kids to be nice for five minutes while you just take this little entire carload of dinner/servingwear/more dinner to the school.  And that happened I think five times in 10 days.  I'm nuts.  And weird, part of me just LOVES feeding a crowd.  But I always end up in a serious pinch when I'm trying to pull it off.

Well, that was WAY beyond "just a brief rundown."  I just had to get down what I've been up to for the past MONTH.

I have many more Blogorama Chapters to write seeing as how life did not seem to slow down during my weeks of planning and carrying out.  I have to say, I have a few friends in the neighborhood who have affectionately dubbed me "The Cruise Director" because I'm always pulling things together.  I think it's a blessing and a curse...or just a really bad habit.

Thankfully there are no photos of me during this time period.  It's for the best, really.  Okay, here are some shower pictures: