Do Gooders

When I left the office on Friday the “do-gooders” had just left. They had been there all day bringing in bags and bags of clothes and toys to be sorted wrapped and designated for families down on the reservation. I thought the wrapping of gifts and such was going to be a one day ordeal but I was wrong. I understood as the volunteers left the office they were coming in on Saturday as well to wrap and most likely will be there on Monday and who knows how much longer.

The volunteers are mostly from the office directly above ours the ARC (used to be the Association of Retarded Citizens but was not politically correct, so now it is just the ARC). The ARC staff radically changed in the past year becoming much younger with an infusion of VISTAs . Young, committed women who are out to change the world ; A number of the VISTAs morphed into actual staff. They have massive amounts of energy and has re-energized the whole building. I had hoped to spend the day catching up some projects, drinking coffee and taking calls. But what I had not taken into consideration was the doors to the office and hall(which is not heated) were left open to assist with the off loading of bags of toys and the constant coming and going of the volunteers. I froze my butt off all day and it was a very long day. So tomorrow I have more of the same to look forward to—happy Santa’s helpers wrapping and bagging. The only bright spot is the ARC administration is feeding these folks pretty well, cookies, potato chips, sandwiches and pop and what comes in our office is shared with our staff…namely me.

The new staff starts tomorrow, the secretary, so this will be interesting—the office will be in a bit of disarray as the new person gets her bearing. We are also having a Christmas function later in the week, an open house of sorts so I am thinking the next couple of weeks will be lost weeks. I am supposed to be off the week following Christmas so my year is just about over. I just need to show up and go through the motions. Traditionally the calls fall way off as we head into Christmas week. I am still breaking in the new person so I guess if I have any downtime I will use it to train my new person and try to catch up on some of my projects. I still need to do any Christmas shopping I am going to do in the next week and half. We don’t have much funding for Christmas this year but the vehicles are basically working OK, we have food, heat and each other and the Spirit of Christmas we are just about set. Provided that is that some trauma of one sort or another does not occur. I am holding my breath though, there are a couple of snow storms forecast for the next week and this could change everything.