Not The Easierest Thing To Do

Yes, a coworker of mine actually used the word "easierest". The exact sentence was "Yeah, I think that would be the easierest thing to do." And she was serious, she wasn't trying to be silly and use crazy non-existent words like guesstimate, or fantastical either.

So the last couple days have been crazy. As I've mentioned I am the chair person for the Sub for Santa project here at work. When I agreed to do this, I didn't really stop and consider what an undertaking it would be. And when I started in on I began to understand just what I signed up for. Now that I'm up to my eyeballs in the darn thing I'm confident I would have chosen (hmm, what's a drastic metaphore to show my frustration?) to have my toenails plucked clean off before raising my hand and cheerfully offering my services.

Ok, ok I know what you're thinking: "Your toenails Bre, really? That's not only disgusting, but it can't be all that bad." All right, you caught me- the pain of a detoenailing probably wouldn't compare, but I maintain it's not far behind.

Thankfully I have some pretty awesome coworkers, and when I say "some" mostly I just mean Amy. Seriously, what a doll. Her and my FSE (Favorite Sister Ever) pulled through in crunch time to help me stuff packets and get everything all together. Amy has helped me a great deal yesterday and today and even taking some stuff off my shoulders all together. I had told her I would write a haiku in her honor and was totally kidding at the time, but it's starting to feel like a good idea . . .

Amy Makes My Life Easierest

You're so organized
You don't forget the gift cards
With nice handwriting

I think that pulled together nicely, 5 syllables isn't much to work with.

So, I handed out all the packets with the names, money, gift ideas and instructions and thought I was out of the woods. Then the onslaught of emails came in from everyone with additional questions and problems with their packets that weren't really problems at all if they had bothered to read the instructions.

Oh well. At this point all I can say is meh. I'm already past my fear of public failure, and i'm fastening my seatbelt for all the stress and problems I forsee coming with the delivery of the gifts.

And what it all comes down to is I'm proud to be part of such a wonderful company that is able to help out all these kids. We're sponsoring 142 kids, and the company is not only providing the money for each child, but we're giving $50 Maceys gift cards to each family to buy their Christmas dinner with. That's a lot of money when you think about it. I didn't have to think about it- I got to hold it all in cash with my grubby little hands. My hands weren't grubby until after handling all that money, just to clarify.

Originally I was told we were only going to sponsor 100 kids, but I pushed and prodded until the committee chair person said I could two more names. TWO? Seriously? So I prodded more, and a little more until he said I would add five more families. So I asked United Way for five HUGE families, and the United Rep said that she would be able to work of a specific child number that I wanted. I thought about it for a second, and tried to decide what I could pull off, did the math real quick and told her 42. Hee hee hee. I then emailed the chair person and said I hope you're ok with it 'cause I already did it! Luckily he was.