Fabric Finally and Budgets Too

This past week, I had to go down to Los Angeles on Thursday morning for work and rather than flying back up to San Jose on Thursday night and then back down to Los Angeles on Friday night, I decided to stay and work some and then go back to the textile district and continue the never ending (well, almost never ending) quest for organza and other fabrics in mass quantities.

Victory is mine!  Victory is mine!  Happy Dance!  Dance of joy, dance of joy!  Victory is mine!  Exceedingly poor, but very happy, that is me!  I am now the proud owner of 180 yards of embroidered and beaded organza, 273 yards of charmeuse in various colors, and 105 yards of beaded and embroidered satin! (Well, okay, I only have one yard of the last fabric, but the rest is on order and will get shipped to my seamstress.)  The problem of course is that I had to pay for all this fabric and getting paid back does not happen for months, so really what I have done is turn about $6,000 into dry goods.  Of course, that is not even to mention silly little things like zippers and thread and buttons and other miscellaneous notions.  But someday the money will come back to me, right in time for me to spend it on something else, I am sure.  I am nowhere near done on buying fabric or dresses or outfits or anything close to anything like that, but at least now SOMETHING has been accomplished on this front.  And to think that I was just two blocks from where I went shopping last time when I found the stores with this stuff - WOW!

Of course, money has been very much on my mind of late, not only because of the seemingly bottomless list of things that I have to either pay for or front money for to get back later, but because it turns out that spring is budget season in our Order and everyone needs to have one.  I have discovered a difficult little twist in the budgeting process which probably needs to be addressed, but I am not sure how just yet.

What I have found is that now, meaning March, April, maybe May of this year, is when the budgets are prepared for the fiscal year that starts October 1 and runs to September 30.  So these budgets are really for my year and not for the current year.  However, and here is the snag, my partner and I are not currently part of most of the committees and groups preparing these budgets, so when these groups go into their "executive" session to review, approve and vote on these budgets, my AGP and I are not in the room to take part in the discussion or explain what we are trying to accomplish.  Instead, we give all that information to someone who is on the committee and hope that nothing is lost in translation.  We were invited to come talk about one or two things, but they just listened to what we had to say and then tossed us out again before the group talked about our presentation.  Also, it seems to me that if you don't already know pretty much everything you want to do by February or March, you can't get your stuff into the budget so that there will be money to support your projects, but if you wait until the previous October, which is what people seem to want you to do, to start sounding out the members and fleshing out your plans, you can't really be ready to know what you want to go with and what you are going to do by February.  And once the budget is done, if you don't have funds in it for what you want, too bad!

So it seems to me that at a minimum, the people whose year it is should get to be in the room for the discussion of their budgets, so that if something is not approved, at least you will know why and maybe there will be a chance to find a fair compromise.  All I can do now is hope that everything we asked for is approved in which case, no harm, no foul, but it still doesn't taste quite right.

Next weekend, I am in West Virginia for the Tri-Line meeting with our Right Worthy Associate Grand Matron (boy I hope I got that title right!), who is the head of our Order on the international level, so I will miss being in Fresno.