Day: November 15, 2006

Today I flung myself bodily across the gap between our store software and the various shipping services. Now 1400 invoices with matching labels are prepared to march across my back and be transformed into packages.

Fortunately the rest of this process is going to be greatly facilitated by the willing minions volunteers who will be showing up for the work days. For the first time I actually feel like I have things sufficiently organized to manage it all at the Keep. There have naturally been adventures along the way. The credit card we used to buy postage was put on hold twice. Once yesterday and once today. Apparently purchasing $5000 of postage in $200 increments over the course of two days looks suspicious. The first time all I had to do was call the company and wade through an automated system to affirm that these charges were in fact placed by me. The second time I was fed through to an actual person who asked me multiple choice question about the color of Howard’s beetle and which of a list of people we spend the most time with. On the second question the correct answer was “I don’t know ANY of those names.” Credit card companies are careful about this kind of thing. Fortunately I was able to answer all the questions correctly and the hold was removed.

Other adventures of the day: Picking Kiki up from school early because she didn’t feel well. Putting Kiki to work stamping books since she was obviously not that sick. Eating lunch in the school cafeteria with Gleek, Patches, & Kiki. Taking three kids to Dragon’s Keep to drop off a load of shipping supplies. Helping Patches clean up a potty accident at Dragon’s Keep. (That makes 3 accidents in 3 days all at Dragon’s Keep. Agh.) Picking up Gleek from a friend’s house and driving slowly while she runs home next to the van because she wanted to walk instead of ride. She was thrilled to win a race with the car.

Later tonight I’m going to load the car with more shipping supplies and lots of books, then I’ll drive to the Keep with pajamad Gleek and Patches. Maybe they’ll fall asleep in the car. That would be really nice.

I am ready to go full speed ahead on all of the preparatory tasks for the book mailing party tomorrow. I have a million things to do today and my best shot at getting them all done is to build up a good head of steam and not stop until everything is done. If I stop I’ll realize how tired I am and how much I want to nap.

Unfortunately my kids are not ready to hop onto this train. Every time I start building momentum, a child has needs which require a full stop. I may have to dump my kids on a friend today so that I can get stuff done. I didn’t want to have to do that because they’re getting offloaded to others all day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On the other hand it is probably better for them to not see mommy than for them to get run over by the business train.