Forecasting Intermittent Silence

It’s been one of those weekends. I have nobody to blame the predicament I am in, other than myself. I am the one who said yes to way too many people, so now I spend every waking moment sorting through tasks in my head, trying to work as efficiently as possible, working out in my spare time to quell the anxiety, and pushing forward to mid-March. I just have to make it to mid-March.

I didn’t know I would get a job. Last year, all I knew is I would have three kids in school. How ever will I occupy my time, I thought. So as people would ask me to help them with their organizations, I said, “sure!”

On my plate now I have the following, and I am blogging it as it is easier to purge from my brain:

Treasurer of our Home and School Board which was a big job before, but with two hurricanes has turned into a bigger job.

The big School fundraiser, which is a carnival, complete with carnies and rides… which means I will be at the school running the money for 3 full days the last weekend in January. It is big preparation too… it is running me ragged.

2nd grade 1st Holy Communion: every year the 2nd grade makes a quilt and since I quilt, I signed up in August to help put it together. I am prepping the fabric and the letter to the parents now and I have someone helping me on Tuesday with some last minute things… the Quilt is due by 2nd week in March.

I’m in a group that does a lot of work for Veterans and every year they have a big Fashion show. As I’ve been president of this group as well as run the big fashion show (where we get between 175 and 225 women in attendance), I am considered a wealth of knowledge and I volunteered to help obtain models, music, and do the seating… oh… and by the way, I am modeling too. Every year I do the seating as I’m one of the few computer literate people, so this is something I always do. Every year I get the music as I think music is essential. (I’m getting us a violinist this year!) The fashion show is 1st week in March. So I’m taking reservations, dealing with money, calling models, and musicians.

I was asked last year to take the Treasury job for a small group of women I’m involved with and said yes. It isn’t a big job, but they decided to hold a meeting in mid-Feb, with big national speakers, which means everyone is sending money to me for their reservations. And God forbid should they all make their checks out to the proper organization… which means more phone calls.

And the big thing stressing me out, is 2 years ago I was asked to chair a cocktail party for a local/national philanthropy and since I knew my kids would be in school, I said yes. It is the 2nd weekend of March and I’m having to deal with a f---ed up invitation list… it has been messed up for years, seriously hurting their membership, and I’ve spent literally hours computerizing their files and getting their invite lists accurate. I’ve been having to deal with printers, caterers, valets, as well as the big organization we fall under… and trust me, I am not impressed with their organization skills or competency. It makes my job more difficult.

If I had known I was going to be working, I would not have said yes to half of this. My thought was I would stay busy with them in school and when they were home, it would be a non-event, but that is NOT what has happened, so I need to make it to Mid-March where I can then jettison a lot of this stuff…

So… that is what I’ve been doing all weekend. Organizing. Creating databases. Printing labels. Making phone calls. Pressing fabric and cutting quilt stencils. Calling for names of musicians. Calling for models. Running like crazy and trying to stay sane.