This weekend I had to coordinate a reception following a concert, which mostly means plan/prepare the food, decorate, serve and clean-up. Plus work my full-time job the day before and the day of the event. For various reasons, this became a high-stress event, and while I had volunteers to provide half the refreshments, I neglected to firm up volunteers for serving, and only had two volunteers for clean-up. though I’m sure if I had asked some of the attendees, they would have pitched in, and they did for setting up, and I really didn’t need anyone to serve. But I did have one other person helping in procuring and preparing food…the head of the committee, a friend and really nice woman who can be very frustrating to work with due to the fact that…well, that would be a Pit thread, and it’s not germaine…just let’s say she can be a bit ditzy.
So I’m up all night Friday preparing my food contributions (biscotti, salmon mousse on cucumber, chevre with sundried tomatoes on toast, veggie dip, , cheese and crackers, ham roll-ups with some kind of fillng I don’t remember making, cheddar cookies, and fruit, and ham sandwiches on cranberry-orange bread). Yes, I know, overkill, but I was told to kick these receptions up a notch from high school punch and cookies, and I ran out of time to find volunteers (because I was chastised mildly for seeking volunteers from the choir) and I love to cook and rarely get a chance, so I was having fun. I got two hours sleep, went to work, then got to the church at 4 and started chopping cheese and slicing the pineapple. And decorating, because the committee member in charge of that had to go out of town on short notice. But I’m happy. Stressed, but happy.
So I’m at the church, and the committee chair comes with the veggies and beverages and two giant bags of dime-store popcorn (not fitting in with the theme at all, but by this point I’m too exhausted to argue) and says, “Oh, I bought you something!” and hands me a plastic bag. In which I find a 5 lb. sack of flour. “I thought since you do so much baking I’d get you a little gift,” she says.
No one has ever given me a sack of flour as a gift before. And not fancy flour, or gourmet flour. Just Gold Medal All-Purpose. I thank her and set it aside. During the evening she reminds me twice to be sure and take it home, but I forget. No matter. Due to an error in prior planning, I’m on the list for early service coffee hour the next morning, I’ll get it then.
I get home at 10:45 pm to find my elderly mom still up. She attended the concert, but didn’t even stop into the reception at all. That’s another Pit thread right there. But what does she tell me? She decided to bake bread that day (probably because I had cleaned all the counters during my baking binge and she had room to bake) but she had run out of flour. The only flour I had bought was self-rising, which wouldn’t work, so she had to run out to the store, where they apparently are still hiding things from the old people (another Pit thread!). Now you have to understand, this is a woman who usually buys flour in 25-lb. sacks…running out is unthinkable. And there I was with an unexpected gift of flour…three hours too late and a mile away.
So I get a bizarre gift, which I end up needing, but a few hours too late, so now I have too much.
I guess I’ll just have to bake while I’m on vacation this week. Which leads me to the next bizarre gift/timing incident. My mom finds out that she can let me use her frequent flyer miles for two round trip plane tickets. I didn’t know she even had any FF miles, and she didn’t know family members could use them. So I would love to go visit my sister in Omaha since she had to cancel her trip here this summer, and my nephew is enlisting, and I tell my mom that I have vacation time coming…but it’s too soon. She told me this Friday night, in the midst of my baking binge, and too late to get things/money/schedules coordinated in time to go this week. And I don’t get another chance to use more than a day or two of vacation before the end of the year (I work in retail), and I do not want to visit Nebraska in February. So now I know I have a free flight awaiting me, and I can’t use it for months. If I’d found out just two days earlier, I wouldn’t have made a bunch of appointments for this week, and I’d be posting this from my nephew’s computer in Omaha.
This is just not my week for gifts.