I Have No Clue What I'm Doing!

Short update: vaca was awesome. Any time that you spend with a ridiculously adorable 2-year old girl and holding/rocking/cuddling with a 8-week old baby is some QT. Not to mention hanging with my bro, SIL, and even my mom joined the fun! I also spent a good amount of time at the beach, mostly just sitting. Not. Doing. Anything. It was great! I really miss and love my family, and being "alone" in Austin gets to me sometimes, so the lil' reunion was fun. Check pics on Facebook.

So I returned to work yesterday, all charged up and ready to go! My energy soon dissipated when I saw the enormous amount of tasks ahead of me in addition to my supervisor taking leave for a family issue, leaving a bit more responsibility to me. One of these tasks is to coordinate the Start! Heart Walk put on as a fundraiser by the American Heart Association, which we, as Cardiac Rehab, are heavily involved in. I have been designated by inheritance as the Company Leader. As in THE WHOLE HOSPITAL. As in COORDINATE YOUR COMPANY'S INVOLVEMENT. ALL OF IT. Now, I must say I'm not doing this ALL by myself, I have some minions that are working with me, but really I am doing quite a lot of it alone. Did I mention I've never done this before? Not only never done this walk before, but never ever coordinated any kind of corporate fundraising effort at all. I have zilch experience encouraging and being creative with slogans, fundraising ideas, and ways to basically get people's money.

But I'm the Company Leader.

It brought me back to when I worked at Camp Eagle and had the bright idea of our staff shirt slogan to be "We don't know what we're doing!" Because in ministry, really, you don't know what you're doing. Sure you're doing SOMETHING, but it's God who really works in the lives around you. The administration nixed the slogan idea because they thought parents would take it literally. :)

And then I thought about how when I was younger I was always amazed that adults with jobs seemed like they knew exactly what they were doing all the time. It didn't take long into my college career to learn that most adults (besides the brainiacs and doctors) have a working, foundational knowledge of what they're doing and trained to do, but there are still holes in their knowledge and they DON'T know EVERYTHING.

So even though I have no clue what I'm doing, I'm going to pretend like I do and ask lots of questions. I'm going to delegate, probably in the form of telling someone to do something I've never done before and actually don't know how to do. And I'm going to take tedious notes so that next year I can adamantly say.... I still don't know what I'm doing. :)

The Pre-Pack

The weekend was wonderful - I went out to Camp Eagle to help out. One of the events was a 100th Birthday Party Weekend for Grandma Grace. Oh, let me tell you about Grandma Grace. My first summer I was introduced to her by my boss as not only at the ripe old age of 94 and our director's grandmother, but an amazing prayer warrior. Already I felt an awe of her faith for the willingness to pray for Camp Eagle and it's staff. This weekend even furthered my admiration. There was at least 150 people gathered together to celebrate a century of this amazing, godly woman, and at times it brought me to tears, especially when she prayed over her family. One major highlight was the cake - and I'm sorry I don't have pictures - but it was gargantuan! It could've fed at least 500 people! It was somewhere around 4 feet by 4 feet. Each family member decorated an edible "quilt square" that was then "stitched" together to form a giant family quilt (Grandma Grace loves quilting) which was the cake. It was ridiculous. Ridiculous!

I stayed a bit longer on Sunday and didn't get home until late because I didn't feel the need to get back to rest up for another week of work. Why, you say? Because I'm stinking GOING ON VACATION!!!!! I leave Wednesday to see these two little squirts:



Which brings me to the Pre-Pack. The Pre-Pack is a time-honored tradition that reduces stress, relieves anxiety, and allows time to plan for a vacation. Approximately 2 days before I take off on a trip (or more if I'm really excited), I make The List. The List outlines what outfits I'm planning for the airport days, clothing amounts, accessories, and any other extras that are special to the particular trip (camera, gifts for nieces, etc.). I then lay out all that I have clean on my bed and take stock. What am I missing? All those items go on a sticky note. If laundry needs to be done, that's the day to do it so I'm not waiting on the dryer the night before I leave. The day before I leave I glance at my sticky note and see what's missing again and what I can contribute. The time between the Pre-Pack and the Departure allows me to remember extra things I want to bring or might have forgotten if I was rushed to pack, thus relieving the stress and anxiety of travel.

You might have just read the above paragraph and decided that I am over-organized and anal. Thank you. It has served me well. :)

Here's to Marco Island in 2 days!

This week was quite the crazy one. I am realizing the effects a full-time job is having on my life, such as need for evening activities that end before my bedtime, fluctuating energy levels (turns out this is DIRECTLY proportional to sleep habits, who knew?), and definite need for a planner in three places to keep everything straight: home Mac, work computer, and my Blackberry. Fortunately, the above changes haven't made me a complete robot! I was kind of afraid my life would get really predictable once all I did was wake up, get ready, go to work, exercise, come home, crash, repeat.

I've had a few weekends that were empty, meaning no big event planned, and that has helped me get caught up on random projects I've been putting off. The kind of projects you think, "Wouldn't that be cool to...?" I've backed up my computer (Mac), which actually took awhile because it was originally formatted for a PC. I'm now in the process of scanning ALL my scrapbooks and uploading them to a website where I can print extras if I or others in my family/friend realm desire to. This will be most useful in replicating my Grandma May's heritage scrapbook I put together last spring.

This week was a little frenzied for several reasons. I usually think of myself as a planner, but somehow since having a full-time job, I've swayed towards the spontaneous side more than I use to. An unplanned sand volleyball game here, pub visit at 10 pm there, and before I knew it I was super drained and forgot to put on makeup on Thursday! :) I realized it after a couple hours at work and fortunately, no one noticed. Another fun, odd, thing that happened this week was the Target shelf fiasco. Let me explain.

Here is my recently-purchased-online shelf.

I purchased it online last Saturday, received a confirmation email with tracking number the next day, and eagerly awaited my new shelf's arrival! This was just not any shelf. This shelf would hold my scanner, new printer/scanner/copier, extra paper, and external hard drive. Currently these items are unattractively sitting on my floor next to my desk. (Why do you need 2 scanners?, you ask. My dad bought me one last summer that's a bit bigger than normal ones so I can scan my scrapbook pages. I went to buy a normal, inkjet printer from Best Buy and the cheapest one they had was $70 vs. the one I bought which was on clearance for $50. So there.)

I checked my tracking number on Wednesday and, lo and behold, it said "delivered" except the town it was delivered to was Red River, OH. Hmmm. I called Target at about noon on Thursday, and after confirming that the shelf indeed was delivered there and NOT to Austin, TX, they sent another one. Thursday evening I got home and bam, there was a box on my step! The shelf! Now I'm confused. Were they super quick or is this some phantom shelf? I'm not certain, but my thinking is that they got the tracking numbers mixed up for someone who bought the same shelf around the same time. So now I have 2 shelves. Don't worry, I'm taking the second one back!

Ok, so I admit that wasn't a super-exciting story, but that's all I've got today. At least my desk-side organization is more aesthetic and functional!