Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Week 44 - Book Sale Week

What a week! It was the week of the library book sale, which meant I was busy every night, but then work was a mess too. But all I had to do was make it through until Thursday night and then I’d be off.

Monday was not a pretty day. I hadn’t slept well and so was tired going into the week and had a huge to do list for the book sale plus a lot of work deadlines. I was fighting tears from the time I got up and then I got a call from Nancy saying the kitten she was fostering (pathetic picture from last week’s blog) wasn’t doing well. I made a few calls and now had to face picking the kitten up the following morning, taking her to the vet and getting to work late. It was the last straw, leaving me in tears at my desk. But then the phone rang and Belinda, bless her soul, said she was going to send her son up to Cedar Bluffs (an hour north of Lincoln) to pick the kitten up that day. I was so relieved, like a huge weight had been lifted. I made it through the day and made phone calls from the car on the way home, filling the last of my volunteer slots just as I reached Wahoo. That meant I could knit that night, which felt like a joy after the day I’d had. I did duck into the meeting room to talk to Connie, the other co-chair of the book sale, before I left. Things were looking up.

Work on Tuesday flew by, helped by the fact that I taught all afternoon. I had lunch with Dodie, early because Thursday, our usual day, was a food day. Then I swam after work and went to the library for an hour of sorting before heading home. Unfortunately when you don’t let cats out until after 8:00 pm, they don’t come in right away. With my gun toting, lunatic neighbor, I could not sleep until the cats came in, which was near midnight. And yes, I was outside in my nightie calling the cats on and off for two hours. I am the cat lady. Damn!

I started Wednesday doing the last picking up for the cleaning lady to come and then was busy at work, prepping for allocations which had to be done before the end of the month and I was taking the last two days off. The fact that I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and my thumb was bothering me again didn’t help. But I went directly to the library after work and spent two hours doing the final prep for the sale, only leaving when they turned the lights out. I went home and sat like a zombie. Go figure. I had bought two pumpkin cheesecakes at The Warehouse so was all set for the next day’s food day.

I prepped the workers’ comp and unemployment allocations first thing but no one was available to approve them before noon so they weren’t getting processed. Crap! I grabbed a plate of food from food day and worked through lunch. I had to train all afternoon again so I was really under the gun. Then the grad health and tuition allocations weren’t tying. I was desperately trying to figure out why while fielding IM’s and calls on locked cost objects from the allocations that were finally being run. I slammed through training and dug right back into grad health and tuition. Only after checking all my queries did I call the programmer to find out a student had dropped out of the file, which meant all my numbers would change when he was added back. I called the library to tell them I wouldn’t make it for the preview sale at 5:30 and finally gave up at 5:20 and left. I hadn’t finished and had been a bitch on wheels all afternoon as the stress mounted. All that and then Nora was going to be stuck figuring them out anyway. Oh well. I got the library just after 6:00 and there were half as many people there as normal. I was bummed, hungry and cranky. We only made half what we usually do at the preview sale and I went home disheartened. But I didn’t have to get up before dawn the next day. At least there was that.

I slept like a rock that night then made a nice breakfast and lingered over coffee while chatting with Carolyn before heading to the library for 9:30 on Friday. Working the morning shift was fun. Besides helping people find books (always fun), one of the Friends brought her daughters and the older one was a peach. I worked the check out table with her, teaching her to make change and count back. She was such a cutie. We also did really well and some of the people, including some book sellers, who usual came to the preview came that morning instead. By the time I left just before 1:00, we’d made enough money that I could call the sale a success. Earlier in the week, I had bribed my knitting friend Donna to work with me by offering to treat her for lunch but when I didn’t need her, I still said I’d buy lunch. We met at the Mexican restaurant and had a wonderful lunch – good food and lots of catching up since she hadn’t been to knitting all summer. Then I went home for tea and knitting in the sun. I was so full from lunch that I skipped dinner and despite planning to go to bed early, I stayed up and dyed some yarn with Kool Aid, going to bed late but happy. It had been a wonderful day.

I was back at the library Saturday for the morning shift and then when the sale was officially over at noon, worked with Connie to restock the Friends’ book shop. We worked right through and were done by 2:30. I was starving and tired but just went home for tea and toast, determined not to eat a late lunch and ruin my dinner. I had plans for roasted pork tenderloin with fruit chutney, which I made and enjoyed immensely. I watched a DVD of Weeds and went to bed early. It was another nice day, all the better because the book sale was over .

Sunday was catch up day. The sun was blazing and I had lots to do but just having a normal day felt so good that I was looking forward chores. I ended up spending quite a bit of time outside, repotting my geraniums and lantana to bring inside because a frost was due that night and doing some fall clean up. I did get my inside chores done too and was poised to have another nice day off on Monday and planned to cook a ton. It felt so good to have the book sale done and be looking forward to a much easier month that I went to bed feeling fabulous ready for Halloween and a calm November. Like I said, what a week!

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