Update #2: The Silent Auction Wins

A few weeks ago we went to a fundraiser at the local community center. I think I've mentioned in the past that I have never actually paid to go to these fundraisers, but there's a board member who always pays for my tickets. Well, that happened AGAIN. Now that I not underemployed anymore, I can actually probably afford to pay for my own tickets, but this year I just forgot to buy them (I am overwhelmed by other things, as you can probably guess) and she emailed me that she put our names down for tickets. I am grateful to her, but I really need to start paying my own way.

ANYWAY, because of this, I felt obligated to actually donate money while I was there and one of the things I sort of went crazy on was the silent auction. 

I won two items. 

1) A monthly scone subscription! Every month I get three scones from a local bakery delivered to a small business just down the street. I get to choose the flavors and then just go pick them up. HOW FUN. My first order came in while I was in Michigan, so Dr. BB picked them up for me and I had a scone for breakfast for three days when I came back!

Blueberry lemon in November!

2) A decorative, handmade plate. Do I need this plate? No. Do I have any way to display this plate? No. Did I bid on it thinking someone would certainly outbid me? Yes. 

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Have you ever won a silent auction item? Did you ever win when you thought someone else would bid higher than you?

October Weekend Fun

It was a bit of a crazy weekend for me and since I rarely do anything more exciting than walk my dog counterclockwise around the block, I am going to document it here.

On Saturday, I met up with Anne at a little store that sells locally-made art. They also do classes and have a time when you can glaze pre-made ceramics and then come back a few weeks later after the ceramics have been through the kiln. So in spirit of Anne and NGS doing arts and crafts projects we are definitely not talented enough to do (I shouldn't speak for Anne - I am DEFINITELY not talented enough), we painted some stuff. When we get them back from the kiln, I'll show everyone a before and after photo. CLIFFHANGER.

Actually, it is sort of a cliffhanger even for the two of us because the colors we painted things did not look anything like the colors presented on the sample color sheet, so who knows? 

(Also, a woman who volunteers at the community center was working at this place. I said hello, briefly introduced her to Anne, and then forgot this encounter took place. This is FORESHADOWING for later that evening.)

BUT! Because I am who I am, I also purchased a bunch of postcards and greeting cards.

Right now is peak greeting card season for me. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They're all coming right in a row. But come January (February is Valentine's Day, March is St. Patrick's Day) and April, some of you might get some fun surprises in your mailboxes!! 

Then Anne and I ate lunch (I ate enough for five people, Anne took three bites and packed up the rest to take home), wrote out a few postcards, and we agreed we'd meet for coffee when we came to pick up our works of art. 

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I stopped at Walgreen's to buy body scrub and Halloween greeting cards for the niblings. 

I walked the dog; it rained.

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THEN! It was time for the big fundraiser at the community center. I did not splurge for a ticket to the event ($100 a person!), but one of the board members asked me if I would sit at her table, so I said yes. She has asked me to be at her table for the last several years, so I imagine I'm just her favorite person/the only not rich person she knows in town. Ha!

Anyway, there was a silent auction to start the event (I had a Moscow mule mocktail) and most of the baskets were way out of this lady's price range or were alcohol-related in nature, so I found myself putting down the minimum opening bid on a stack of greeting cards and stickers made by a local artist that had been donated by the lady who Anne and I had talked to at the art store earlier in the day. I felt pretty smug as I put my auction number on the sheet - I have now bid in the silent auction and SURELY SOMEONE ELSE WILL OUTBID ME. My fundraising duty is done.

(I did donate some money for the fund the need auction. I'm not a monster. The building is an old historical place and it needs about $100,000 in exterior work done. I raised my paddle and donated a tiny bit. I also bid on a piece of pottery in live auction, but my bid was pretty nearly tripled. I can't hang with these people.)

You know what happened, right? I won those cards.

Those animals on top are wearing HATS. HATS!!

My husband nearly murdered me when I walked in the door carrying MORE GREETING CARDS. 

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Sunday was less fun. I bathed the dog and did her nails. I laundered and vacuumed. I wrote blog posts and froze my toes off. I wore sandals and my heated vest when I walked the dog. I want you to just imagine for a second how disappointed my husband looked when he saw my dog-walking outfit.

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How was your weekend? Did you buy any greeting cards? 

End of an Era

That's it, friends. On Tuesday night I had my last board meeting at the community center. I started at five on the nose and finished at 6 on the nose. I started the annual meeting right afterwards and we were done by 6:05. And that was the last time my name will be in the meeting minutes!

We had a potluck dinner afterwards (I brought a charcuterie board from Costco and some stuffed mini peppers as appetizers and some desserts from Costco) and one of the other lovely board members gave me a present that was so lovely and perfect. It turns out that she has been reading my blog and it made me feel like all my work there was valued, if only by one person. 

That scarf is so soft and I think it might become my regular winter scarf!

Meanwhile, even though Wednesday I still sent seven emails and made a phone call re: community center business and I went to the community center for a fitness class after work, I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. No more stressing out over board meetings, staffing, and squabbles among board members. No more phone calls taking up hours of my evening while I soothe hurt feelings. None of it! I can just go enjoy events at the community center. 

See that little tree? It's our tree! When we were first married, this was our tree. I mean, it was our tree until we moved into our house in 2017. They asked if anyone had a small tree for an event at the community center and I said we had one in the basement that hadn't been used in years. Yay for it getting used! (I did not provide the colored lights. White lights 4LYFE.)

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The tale of my volunteering position is sort of boring, but I joined the board because I love the mission of the community center and I was (sort of) coerced into a leadership role I was unqualified for, but no one else would do. Then things started to go wrong, some of which was out of my control, some of which was. In July of this year, I posted about how stressed the whole volunteer role was making me and all you dear readers suggested that I stop doing the role. I mulled over your advice and the next month I told everyone I was going to step down at the end of the year. I immediately felt good about that decision, but then everything fell apart again.

Both staff members quit almost immediately after I posted in August. And I was still technically in charge until the end of the year. I had the support of the board, but I really felt like it was a problem and situation of my own making. I was trying to run office hours, staff events, interview people for the positions, and I just felt like I was actually making things WORSE rather than better. Eventually we did hire someone for both staff positions, but then one of them quit after only three weeks.  So, yeah. There was a lot going on. (Anyone in Wisconsin want a part-time job during school hours? *sigh*)

Three months ago, I wrote a post in which I listed all of the things that were stressing me, including the volunteer situation and my long-term unemployment. And now both of those things are fixed! The volunteer gig is no more. I have a job! I wake up in the morning, excited to do the things and live the life. 

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But, hey, think of all the skills I learned while I was at that volunteer gig. Running a meeting. Hosting events. Sending awkward emails. Soothing hurt feelings. Supervising professionals. Organizing events. Strategic planning. Hiring. 

And I didn't burn any bridges. I left on good terms and everyone knows they can still reach out to me with questions. I will be attending as many events as I can over there and am hoping that there will still be occasional opportunities for me to volunteer. But isn't it a relief that none of the staffing issues are my problem anymore?!

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Have you had anything stressful taken off your plate recently? Tell me all about it!

10.8 Art - Minty!

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined themed chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighth day of the month is "Art."

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You know how when you say the same word over and over again, it starts to sound like gibberish? Wider. Wider. Wi-der. Wiiii-der. Wider. Wideeeer. Wider. What does it even mean?  

That is how it's starting to feel for me with these prompts. I take photos every day because I know I have to post something every day and as I'm scrolling through my photo gallery on the phone, I start to wonder is this photo of a barrel with New York written on it art? Is a photo of my dog with her tongue hanging out art? Can I upload a photo of a package I mailed and call it art? Is this grasshopper art? Isn't every photo art because I created it? 

And that's where we are in month ten, friends. 

I recently had a pity party for myself and asked you all for some tough love. Most of you were too sympathetic by half and no one told me to put on my big girl pants, which was honestly what I expected.  You are all very nice and kind and it made me tear up to hear everyone being so gentle with me. But some of you did tell me that if volunteering was stressing me out, I should stop doing it and find something that will be fun and less stressful. So I was at a meeting with the executive committee at the community center and I told them all that I would be resigning at the end of the year when my term is up and they need to figure out how to replace me. 

I already feel better.

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Is this grasshopper art? 

9.22 Safety - Pie Day!

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-first day of the month is "Safety."

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Yesterday the community center where I volunteer had a big fundraiser. As part of the event, there was a pie auction. I said I'd bake a blueberry pie to donate.  

So Thursday I spent a gazillion hours making dough, chilling dough, rolling dough, chilling dough again, and you get the idea.  The end result wasn't pretty (I mean, have you all ever made gluten-free dough?), but it seemed good enough.

I did a brief poll of my mother and sister and they said that the leakage just showed that it was truly homemade, so that was that. I left it to cool, wrapped it in foil to bring over to the community center the following morning, and went to bed.

But when we woke up yesterday morning, SOMEONE had undone the foil, nibbled the edge of the crust, and left a paw-sized whole in the middle of the pie where she had stepped on it.  I don't want to out this culprit, but she might resemble this:

Because it seemed unsafe to donate a pie that had been molested by a creature that buries its own feces, I went to the local farm stand, bought a blueberry pie, and donated that one. 

What's the latest frustration in your house?

1.3 Direction - One Fewer Worry

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a post on a pre-determined theme we chose from a random noun generator. The theme for the third day of the month is "Direction."

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I'm on the board of directors at a local community center. It is a stressful gig for me and I desperately want to no longer be on the board, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.  Anyway, our very much beloved executive director put in her resignation earlier this year and gave us lots of notice and we still were having a lot of trouble finding someone. There are reasons for this, but basically we pay crap and offer no benefits.  

We have made two offers in the past month or so and the offers have been declined. So we made another offer last week and I really just assumed we'd get the same result. We did not. She accepted! She's a local who's returning to the area after a decade away, she knows lots about running organizations with small staffs, and I think it will be a great fit. Yay!  I'm excited to see how the organization moves forward under new leadership and to see what direction it will go.  

Onwards and upwards. 

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To see what Bestest Friend has to say about Direction, check out her blog Too Legit To Quit.

Questions for Potential Suitors

1) What's your name? 2) Do you have children? 3) Do you have any STDs? 4) Do you like cats? 5) Do you like dogs? 6) Do you have pets? 7) What do you do for a living? (Yes, this comes AFTER asking about pets.) 8) How old are you? 9) Have you ever killed anyone? 10) Have you ever sodomized or raped a child? 11) Have you ever thought about sodomizing or raping a child? 12) Have you ever been convicted of a felony? These last four questions came out of court today. One woman was dating a man for several months before someone told her that he had murdered someone. When she confronted him, he admitted he had killed someone in a bar fight. Only, it turns out that he had really killed some woman he was intimately involved with. Hence, question #9. (He was charged with terroristic threats against this new, undead woman.) Another man was charged with raping and sodomizing his stepdaughter. The mother was there at the sentencing and started her statement by saying, "I never thought to ask him if he would rape my child." Good point. He had no previous history and who asks questions like that? For anyone interested, here's what I would predict Biker Boy would say to answer the above questions: 1) Biker Boy 2) Not that I know of. 3) Not that I know of. 4) Not particularly. 5) They're okay. 6) No. 7) I THINK!!! And theorize. 8) 26 9) No. 10) No. 11) Not until you asked these questions. 12) No. Actually, I know that the answer to the last four questions because I asked him today. Because you can never be too safe.

A Simple Thank You

I spoke at an event sponsored by the organization for which I volunteer. It was a simple request and a simple enough job to go up there and say a few words about my experiences. And I didn't give it a second thought. And today I got a thank you card from the organization and a direct quote said "You are such a fun and vibrant presence and I'm grateful to have you as a volunteer." It was a very sweet thing to say and I think I may have to thank them for their kindnesses.

New Job

So I was in court today and I was watching part of a murder trial. Since I was only there for about an hour and a half, I missed most of the history, but here's as much as I understood. Back in 1984, a guy sexually assaulted a woman he later killed. Along the way, he stalked her and as part of the stalking, he somehow accessed some of her checks and wrote checks out of her account. Now, in 2000, he got some fancy hotshot lawyer who decided that he should appeal he murder conviction. 2005. It's finally brought to court. And me, little old me, gets to watch an hour and a half of it. It's no Law and Order. The first hour and a half is the cop telling the lawyers that he gave the rape kit samples to the lab, the lab tech saying she gave the samples to the ME, and the ME saying he gave it back to the lab, blah, blah, blah, establishing the chain of evidence. Then came the super exciting moment. The handwriting expert. This woman has a 27 year long CAREER in analyzing handwriting. She had a three-year long appreticeship and then started a consulting business of her own. She was amazing. She was like, "look, the connection between the A and the G goes below the line. The didn't happen in any of the known samples. The stem of the G goes higher than in any of the known samples. The slant is fifteen degrees different. The ratio of the capital letters to the lowercase letters is different." Anyway, you get the idea. How come that never came up on a list of career options for me? When I took the Myers-Brigg and they told me I should be a nurse, a social worker, or a teacher, how come it forget to metion handwriting expert? I need to stop the grad school train, get off, and get on the handwriting expert train. So, when you're telling little kids that they can do anything when they grow up, you can tell them the usual boring jobs - teacher, doctor, lawyer, CEO of Disney, President of Guatamala - but don't forget the cool occuptaions like handwriting analyst and stenographer.

Bless the Broken Road

Sometimes there's a song that I listen to over and over and over and over again. Dozens of times in a row. Then I don't listen to the song for years. But every time I rediscover a song like this, it sets off waves where all I do is listen to the song. Songs from the past include Skid Row's "Wasted Youth," Juice Newton's "Angel of the Morning," and Garth's "Which One of Them." Just before Thanksgiving, I listened to "Which One of Them" dozens of times in Magenta. Dozens. Right now there's a Rascal Flatts song called "Bless the Broken Road" I can't seem to get enough of. There's a verse that says: I think about the years I spent just passin' through I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you But you just smile and take my hand You've been there, you understand It's all part of a grander plan. Yeah. If the decade of your twenties suck, I'm glad I'm here in this place where I am. Biker Boy really does sometimes just smile and take my hand and make me think everything is going to be all right. I volunteer for an organization that does court monitoring. Yeah. Once or twice a month, I take an afternoon off from school and go to the county courthouse and watch proceedings. Setencings, pre-trial hearings, motions of all sorts, I've sat through them all. It's weird because anyone, ANYONE, can just walk in and watch court. I have this shield because I'm with this well-established organization, but any Joe Blow off the street can come in and hang out in the gallery. Yesterday I watched a jury trial for an hour, among other things. Some guy accused of CSC 1. Criminal sexual conduct first degree. Basically he was accused of raping his stepdaughter. It wasn't all that exciting. There were a couple of witnesses on the stand and the jury sat in the jury box, watching the attorneys fire questions at the witnesses. Some jury members were quite attentive and you could see their eyes bounce from person speaking to person speaking. Some were not quite so attentive. They stared at the ceiling. They doodled in their notebooks. They never looked at the witness stand. The defendant was in custody, so there were a couple of sheriff's deputies in the courtroom as well. So the jury watched them, too. What does any of this mean? I have no idea. It bothered me that I know the name of the girl this man was accused of molesting. It bothered me that the jury got to go home and discuss the case over spaghetti with their spouses even through they're not supposed to. It bothered me that I assumed this man's guilt without thinking twice. It bothered me that stepdaughters are in danger. It made me even more angry about my roommate's somewhat strange obssession with defending Woody Allen's disgusting relationship with his mentally disabled stepdaughter. It made me angry that the one of the only two non-white faces in the courtroom was the defendant. It bothers me that I can't stop thinking about this trial. The nurse who did the exam on the alleged victim was on the stand. She had the great job of opening the evidence bags and showing the jury the clothes the victim was wearing when she came in for the rape exam. It was an OJ-like moment when she held up the jeans, white tank top, and pink t-shirt. I keep picturing some girl in a pink t-shirt going upstairs with her stepfather and getting punched and raped. I keep picturing this girl getting no support from her mother (who had told the police officer that her daughter was a whore) and crying all alone in her room at night. I picture this man getting raped himself while in jail. I see it all in my head. More than that, I picture this happening again and again and again all over the world, in all sorts of families, in all sorts of towns and homes. I can't stop thinking about it. Over and over again, everywhere I look I see violence. Horrors at home and horrors overseas. And sometimes it gets to me. Let's examine the statement Kobe Bryant made when he settled the criminal rape charge. "First, I want to apologize directly to the young woman involved in this incident. I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year. Although this year has been incredibly difficult for me personally, I can only imagine the pain she has had to endure. I also want to apologize to her parents and family members, and to my family and friends and supporters, and to the citizens of Eagle, Colo. "I also want to make it clear that I do not question the motives of this young woman. No money has been paid to this woman. She has agreed that this statement will not be used against me in the civil case. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter. "I issue this statement today fully aware that while one part of this case ends today, another remains. I understand that the civil case against me will go forward. That part of this case will be decided by and between the parties directly involved in the incident and will no longer be a financial or emotional drain on the citizens of the state of Colorado." Fuck you, Kobe. Yeah, I know. It's so hard to tell when people consent to sex. Fuck you. That statement is taped to my desk as a reminder of all the work we have to do. We can't keep dragging people's names through the mud. The girl who was raped in the trial I watched, I know her name. The girl in the Bryant case, everyone knows her name. Don't they have a right to not be victimized over and over and over again by the criminal justice system? Don't I have a right to know that if I were raped I could count on the police to protect me? And judges to not say my name in court? And my mom not to tell everyone I was a slut? But I have to think that some higher power has this in order for a reason. I'm unclear about religion or god(s), but I know that there hasn't to be a reason for this madness. So, until I figure it out, I will do my best to survive and help those who aren't so good at surviving. Because there's always another song that will be listened to over and over and over again.

Raccoons are just rats with a cuter outfit!

Tough weekend for the most part. I did a training for the sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking prevention program on campus. I’ve kind of let my interest in some of these activities slide a bit in the past couple of years, but this was enough to rekindle my anger in these issues. Anyway, it was tough to get through. I wonder to myself how I made it through when I was working at a job where I dealt with this stuff day in and day out, for well over forty hours a week. *Roommate* says it must be that I’m tougher than I think. Anyway, but there was an enjoyable event that did occur. Saturday night I went to a polisci party that I felt obligated to attend. Anyway, I had to be at school early again on Sunday, so I pooped out and left the party early. My friend Biker Boy said he would walk me home since *roommate* was busy getting drunk and didn’t want to leave the party. So we’re walking down a fairly major street in the great City of Lakes. And I hear a rustle coming from a tree next to the sidewalk. I look over and see this cute little raccoon face staring at me, at EYE LEVEL. I squeal like a little girl, grab Biker Boy’s arm, and run far away from the raccoon. All I can think about is how mean raccoons are. Biker Boy glances over, sees the raccoon and says, “hey, I think there’re two of them.” Sure enough, when I look back, there are TWO raccoons staring at us. I scream again. And run. And Biker Boy laughs. And laughs. And as soon as I turn the corner I begin to laugh and laugh and laugh. Getting the shit scared out of you is apparently a good thing. The laughter was cathartic. And I need that. And now Biker Boy is getting a stuffed raccoon for Christmas.