Busy Bees and Flyer Godmothers

Here's a pic I took this weekend, that represents our upcoming schedules: Busy bees.

Bear with me for the next couple weeks, while I post superficial blogs or direct you to someone whose writing or photos will no doubt stimulate you more than mine will.

It's T — 13 days to our Care Package Event for the Warrior Transition Battalion. I've been quietly putting it out there for the last month, and it's time to kick it up a notch. As Emeril would put it, "BAM!" As my Mom would put it:

Put some Bam on it.

We had a newspaper interview last week, for next Sunday's paper. I have a radio interview next Monday morning (7:00 a.m., WIXY. Listen in, I'll be both nervous and sleepy. Don't ask—I just will!)

I've spent ungodly amount of time researching the better buy: Printing at home, or paying a printer. I've sent files for business cards to one printer, and files for notepads to another. The better buy is DEFINITELY the printer that donates his time and materials. (Thanks, Steve!)

After work this evening, I placed an ad in a central Illinois rag, made an appointment with another company to discuss magnets, and bought ink for a printer I don't own. I got home, and ran back out to return that ink, and buy ink for the printer I do own.

I have 250 shopping bags in my car, and I printed 500 labels. I will deliver the bags and labels to the angels at Developmental Services in Rantoul, IL, and they will affix them for me.

I have newsletters to write, e-mails to answer, boxes to address, and customs forms to fill out.

After that, there was thinking to be thunk.

When all of that was done, this evening, I set about driving from place to place, to hand out flyers. "O00000000000h," I lamented to Clint, "How do I expect everyone to find out about this event on time?!! I have to get to work!"

Guess the heck what.

Every single place I stopped tonight, to hand out our flyer...There was already a flyer there. Flyers that I'd attached in a mass e-mail, with a request to "Pass it on," have been printed, in COLOR, and circulated!

And I walked back to my car, alone, downtown, tonight, smiling.

It's been one of the busiest, hectic-est, stressful-est, loveliest and most fulfilling summers of my life. It's been a rollercoaster, chock full of disaster and elation: construction, fire, homecoming, Alzheimer's, Anniversaries, Friends, Cancer, Weddings, Engagements, Toenails and Possums.

And yet I hear about distraught families, and saying "no" doesn't occur to me. I call one or two who say they'll back me up, and I bank on the rest, willing my hair not to fall out in the interim.

Lo. E-mails and donations begin to roll in, and I step away from the chaos to find that my Flyer Godmother—or Godfather, I don't know—has been working in the wings, making sure I'm covered.

THIS EVENT, my friends, will be a success.

And I love that all we had to was ask.

Bring It On.

And Thank You, Flyer Godmother.

Good GodAllMighty.

Thank You.