School Is Out

Last weekend was our Deputy Grand Matron School of Instruction, the last big, big, school we have to do - Whew!

The School is traditionally two and a half days and what an exhausting two and half days it is.  The problem is that there's really more like five days of material to cover and there just is not more time, so you have to make a lot of hard decisions on what to do and what to skip and then you just work, work, WORK until you drop.  Information overload is not just a phrase after you've been through one of these schools!

But it was a great school!  Even though the hours were long, the 2013 Deputies were real troopers.  Early in the morning, late at night and every time in between, the ladies were positive, cheerful, and eager to learn.  They really got loaded down with information and training, but I think that everyone was pleased with what they did and learned.  It really felt like all the work in putting it together and setting it up really paid off.  But I am totally ready to get a full night's sleep at some point.  Almost every night for the two weeks before the Revealing and then during the two weeks between that and the Deputy school, I would wake up at around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, remembering one more thing that needed doing or one more thing that didn't get done, or one more thing that didn't get staged to go or one more thing I needed to arrange or one more thing. . . . and then I couldn't get back to sleep!  I keep a pad by the bed to write stuff down, but I would get so worried that I would run out of time to get things finished that I would just get up and work on the stuff for an hour or so and then try to go back to sleep for a bit before getting up at 7:00 am to go to work.  That makes for tough days when you normally don't get to sleep until 11:00 pm or midnight.  Now I am afraid that I may have gotten into the habit of waking up at that time and will keep doing it.  Grrrrrr!


Anyway, now that my staging area that was filled with eight boxes and four tote bags full of stuff (plus miscellaneous stuff that didn't fit in a box or a tote bag) for the Deputy School is now emptied of that stuff, (pretty much all of it went home with other people - yay!),  it is time to fill that area up again with all the stuff that has to go to Grand Chapter.  Unfortunately, the piles keep getting bigger.  The pile for Deputy School was bigger than the pile for Grand Officer School and the Grand Chapter pile will be even greater still.  I have two cars, possibly three, taking my stuff down.  A couple of years ago, I had two cars coming home with me and I was warned that this year, it may be three or four cars worth of stuff coming home.  Yikes!

I also have to pack an awful lot of clothes.  There's formal outfits and travel outfits and casual outfits and costume pieces and the shoes for each and the hair bits for each and the underthings for each.  How is it possible that I could raft down the Grand Canyon for eight days with a twenty-five pound duffel bag holding everything I needed to wear and I can't get to Grand Chapter without a suitcase, two dress bags and two tote bags, one whole tote bag just for shoes!  Sigh!

I've written the speech that I give after Grand Installation, but now I know that I also give one on Wednesday, so I will be writing that this weekend, while I am trying to finish everything else.  I had this crazy idea that maybe I could get a manicure this weekend, but the jury is still out on whether I have the time for that.  Sigh some more!

Next weekend, I am staging for Grand Chapter and then there I will be.  It's going to be  a Wow week.