Ok, so it’s been a few days since I last posted. And whenever I go several days without posting, I start obsessing about what I will write about, and think about how it has to be stellar writing because my readers (all 5 of ya) have been waiting and now I gotta post something meaty to chew on.

Well, so sorry. But instead of blogging “steak”, you will be feasting on stale bread and water this evening. Because all I’ve got for you is a small holiday freak out. Ho freakin ho.

Today was a tough day at church… well, not so much “tough” as “there were a million things to do, which gives me a million opportunities to drop the ball at some point”. We had treats to prepare and deliver, I had a lesson to teach (and for some reason, teaching a room of small children still makes me sweaty and my voice quivers… like I’m in high school AP English class all over again, giving an oral report on a book I never got around to reading)… where was I? Oh right, treats to deliver, lesson to teach, “meet your teacher” activity to plan, announcements to… well, announce. And to top it off, I found myself standing at the front of the primary room with thirty little pairs of eyes staring at me judgementally because I couldn’t figure out how to get the DVD player from the library to work, and those little pairs of eyes weren’t getting to see the video of baby Jesus being born.  Make it work, dumb teacher, the eyes say to me. Press play… how hard is that??

Harsh.

But now Sunday is over and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Yay! I am breathing a big sigh and pressing play on the iPod. Boney James Christmas is soothing and puts me in a terrific mood. Tomorrow is nothing but hot chocolate and Christmas tunes, last minute wrapping and — in fact — last minute gift buying. (I know, I’m being one of those people this year.) But I only need to last-minute-shop at the Bosch store, which I’m guessing isn’t all that crowded on any given day. Even Christmas Eve. (Ok, knock on wood.) Nothing more to worry about until Christmas Day, when we won’t spend enough time at one of the relatives homes and someone’s feelings will be hurt, and I’ll fret about it and mentally note that we will need to spend more time at that person’s house at Easter.

Yes, it is hard being neurotic, why do you ask?

More in the morning, when I have more space between me and this day.

A little background: I’m in the Primary Presidency at church, meaning that I’m over the children and their Sunday school classes. Another part of that job is overseeing Cub Scouts. I really don’t know where to even start with this, because when I say “don’t know much about scouts”, I’m being absolutely serious. I’m not sure that I know enough about scouts to write a blog post about it. So instead, the focus of my blog post will be on my ineptitude in a scout leadership role.

First, let’s address my lack of knowledge as to which of the 46 monthly meetings I am actually supposed to attend. Den meetings, Pack meetings, Pack planning meetings, Roundtable meetings, Scout leadership meetings, new scout orientation meetings… I’m sure that if I actually attended these meetings with the frequency that I should, I would (eventually) start to acquire some scout knowledge. I’m just having a hard time getting psyched about investing the time, which is both selfish and irresponsible. But I like to honest here on my blog. If I can’t be honest here, well, you know.

At the end of the month, Jachin turns 8. At that time he will enter cubs and I will be thrust into scouts from a different angle, the parental angle. I’m hoping that wanting to see Jachin be a successful scout (Jon’s an Eagle Scout and he turned out pretty great) will be the motivation I need to really just throw myself in there with complete abandon… and let them chew me up and spit me out.

As Princess Leia might have said when her little Jedi started into cub scouts: “Help me, Jachin Alexander, you’re my only hope”.

Anyone out there have any scouting advice?

Jon and his dad spent several weekends building some really nice storage shelves in the cold storage room a few months back. I mean, nice ones. Adjustable and everything. The only “food storage” we had was a few boxes of macaroni and cheese, a couple boxes of Goldfish crackers, and 4 packages of Chips Ahoy cookies that I got on sale at Albertson’s. Not exactly a year’s supply of anything. So Jon set up a dry-pack cannery assignment for me at church a couple weeks ago. The cannery is where a lot of the humanitarian and welfare aid for our church is done. Volunteers go in and do the actual packaging of the food into #10 cans, and in return the volunteers have the opportunity to purchase X amount of cans of whatever. So this was our chance to get some actual food storage.  

So I went in this morning, having absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I was there to help with whatever they wanted and I knew that I wanted to leave with some cans of food. I had “n00b” written all over me. I actually couldn’t even find the physical entrance to the building for several minutes. (Yes, it was painful to admit that in writing.) But I got in there, and they were very nice and I filled out my sheet with what I wanted to purchase, and then I followed a guy around with a cart filling up boxes with my food cans. It was pretty painless. So $130 later, my trunk was filled (by me) with real food storage. I felt like a grown-up.

Then came the actual volunteering part. This made me very nervous. Surely they have people in there everyday with the best of intentions to help, but who aren’t all that bright. How bad could I screw up putting Hot Cocoa powder into cans? So there are all of these ladies there who, clearly, have done this a few times. They pick what I later learn are the easy spots on the assembly line. I am left to lift 40 lb bags of hot cocoa mix. I have to balance the bag on my hip, pour it carefully—without spilling any—into cans, trying to approximate how much is 4.8 lbs of cocoa mix. There is another lady who is “shaking” the cans, to get the powder to settle, another lady who puts the can on a scale to make sure it’s actually 4.8 lbs., another lady puts one of those gel packs in it to keep in the freshness, and yet another lady seals a lid on. (Yeah… who had the crappiest job?) I pretty much did this for 2 hours. We did switch to powdered milk later, at which time I stole the “shaking” position on the assembly line.

So I got through the two hours, made a few jokes (that I’m pretty sure no one got but me), hopefully did some good, and came home with a trunk full of real food storage. Yeah! And I could tell that by the time I left, there were some ladies in there looking at me with a little bit of respect. I kept up with the hectic dry-pack environment, and I earned some definite cannery-cred. I’m no longer afraid of the cannery.