The Calm Before The Storm

Thirty-three weeks down, nineteen left to make a difference.

I am finally climbing back out of the ocean and on to the surf board.  My mother being ill in April completely killed me in terms of staying on top of everything.  I lost almost four weeks of evenings and am just now back to where I should be, but it has taken six weeks of nightly work until 10:00 or 11:00 pm, Monday through Thursday, to get there.  I am totally ready never to do that again!

But I've managed to catch up somehow thank goodness.  My notes and letters are caught up.  There's no speech to give this weekend at Oregon Grand Chapter - we just have to travel up there, eat without dropping food on our formals, smile a lot, and travel home.  I am very much looking forward to the trip, especially since my longest time friend moved to Portland a couple of years ago and I haven't had a chance to see him and his wife since the move because of my travel schedule.

So we are going to fly up on Saturday, and the whole family is going to his house for lunch.  Then we will go to Powell's - an absolute must for the bucket list of anyone who loves books! - and then we will drive on out to Pendleton.  Getting there Saturday night will be much preferable to arriving on Sunday, as the Grand Family usually does, because we will have time to rest up and don't have to race into our rooms and out in our formals for the Sunday night banquet.  And flying to Portland and driving from there is ten times better for me than trying to drive up there.  I just don't have the stamina for it anymore.  But it is often too foggy up there for me to fly myself, so I am stuck on a commercial flight and have to hope it is on time.  Sigh!

I've also managed to catch up because the next sets of remarks I have to give are all fact messages and not inspirational messages since they are all for receptions and anniversaries. It is hard to believe, but we have finished the Official Visits in the South.  We still have a dozen to do in the North, with most of them in our nine day northern loop trip, but the Southern OVs are finished.  So we will go south the two weekends after Oregon for four receptions and a 100th, but those remarks are a lot easier to write.  So that is a relief too.

And we've gotten the very last clothing selections made and out to everyone.  The Deputies have their ordering information for their session/forever dress, which are supposed to all be ordered by June 24, and the Grand Pages' dress and vest information has gone out for them to get in their orders.  With those items selected and out to everyone, at long last, I am out of clothes - yay! :-)

Of course, there's still tons to do.  It is June and that means that I have had to write the session outlines for Grand Chapter and start a massive to do list because a lot of stuff for the session has long lead times so starting now is not too early and is not quite yet late.  In another week or two, when I am comfortable that the outlines are right, I will start the scripts, but once the outlines are good to go, the scripts are not difficult.  The only tough parts to write are my annual report for Thursday morning and my farewell address for Saturday morning.  The rest is just, a la Mozart, scribbling and bibbling, bibbling and scribbling. :-)  But there are lots of other hard parts, ten million things to buy and decisions to make.  Sigh!

Since I am caught up, I am looking forward to attending my Chapter meeting this week.  I haven't managed to attend one in the past four or five months and it will be nice to be there for once.  I don't know if I will also manage it in July or August or September, but I hope so.

This weekend I am in Oregon and the following two weekends in the south for receptions.