And a Dressmaker Too

This past weekend, I visited the person who is going to make the dresses for my girls to look over a final trim selection and make some design decisions. While it took three go 'rounds to get the trim I wanted, we have it now and it looked great, at least I think so. We also discussed all the persnickety details that go into the final dress look, like how far down in front and back the V-neck should fall, the length of the sleeve and so on and so forth. What astonishes me just a little bit is how many different skill sets it seems to take to do the job of Grand Line Officer well. I realize that there are lots of people to help with a lot of the different bits of the job, but at the end of the day, you really need to know at least a bit about all these different things. Just looking at the last ten days for example, to be successful, one would need to be a bit knowledgeable in all these different categories: Assisted Living Facilities: The Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron sit on the board of trustees for our Senior Living Community and the other Grand Line officers sit in the meetings as well, which is a very good thing, because if you've never had any experience in Assisted Living Facilities, the meetings are a great chance to learn what you are going to need to know. Just learning what all the jobs are that go with the job descriptions on the budget is a task and how everything is coded and managed is another task. Employment Issues: Since the SLC has staff, there are employment questions and issues as well. I often tell people that any time you deal with a business that is more than just the owner, you have employment issues because you have employees. It is rather inevitable. I know that I have a great advantage because our office represents clients who run these sorts of facilities and on top of doing real estate, we also do employment law on the management side, but how hard it must be to get that expertise if your work does not touch on those fields. It is vitally important for the Line Officers to be involved though, because we need to be there as the representatives of the membership. And by the time you are done, you've learned so much! Event Planner: There are a number of events that we put on every year, but each year they are supposed to be a bit different with some repeat things, some new things, a new theme and sometimes even a new format. While we ask people to take the lead on organizing the events, a fair bit of the creative juice is also supposed to come from us. Finance and Financial Planning: While we have experts to manage our investments and a well educated and practiced Finance Committee to manage the financial affairs, a Grand Line Officer at a minimum needs to be able to read a financial statement and understand a budget. Again, going to the meetings is vital and important to learn about these things if one has no outside expertise. There are also some nice books that teach these fundamentals and I wonder if we should buy one or two for our library so that people with no work experience that taught them anything about finance can get a head start. The basics are not hard, but some of them are counterintuitive. But the members are great about answering questions and again, what a great opportunity to learn and gain new skill. Fashion Design: This is the toughest one for me. For some of the members, the look of their dress is a really vital item. But almost no one, including me, who has gone through the Grand Line has any fashion design experience. At least most of us sew, so we know what a dart is and usually can distiguish between and Princess and an A-line style, but imagining how these things look on different shaped people, especially when, like me, you CANNOT draw to save your life, can be quite the challenge. I like what I have designed, but who knows what it will look like when it is put together? And I like all the fabrics, but a swatch is not a dress, so again, who knows how it will look all put together? Will people love it or hate it? Will it be a high point or will they demand that I design a tasteful paper bag accessory to go with the dress so that no one knows who is in there? All I can do is cross my fingers and hope. At least it is done and the pieces are what I wanted, no plastic sequins, no glitter and no big puffy parts. Fingers crossed now and not uncrossing until July when everyone sees the thing and I get the first reactions. I would hold my breath, but I can't do that long enough. Next weekend, I will be in Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, San Pedro and Anaheim.