I need a vacation

I am tired. I need to go on vacation. Today I have been glued to the telephone and the computer. I am in the process of trying to get people to do the children’s message during the 5 Sundays I’ll be gone (don’t forget that’s 2 services per Sunday). I only lack 3 more services of the 10! If you know me, you know I am telephone phobic, so I have to screw up my courage to make all those calls.

In addition, I had to write both teacher and student lessons for my Sunday School class and find 5 people to teach that class as well. I now have four lessons ready and four teachers. So only one left to go…

What else, you say? Well I have to tie up loose ends on my responsibilities for our women’s “get-away” day in October. I am excited about the event, but there is much to be done for such an event. I am on the program part of the arrangements, so today I worked on the emails to our speakers (who I had previously had to call and invite to speak), in addition to sending out emails to all the committee members so that they are all up to par on the program arrangements. I am also speaking at the event (I am doing the opening and closing so as to save money on inviting more speakers) , so I also tried to hammer out my outline, so that I could share that with the  group leaders. It’s always good to avoid overlap.

This event is really a big deal, as it’s kind of a first. We are trying to attract those women who don’t normally participate, especially our younger women. We are meeting at a hotel for the day, near the beach. We will be closing with a fashion show! Our publicity is to the left. We are hoping for 200 women. We have begun accepting fees and already have a number of women who have paid. We may have bitten off more than we can chew, but we are excited. This coming Sunday we are having another bake sale (these bake sales help us to raise funds to pay for those women who can’t afford the event). So today I made up the dough for about 15 dozen chocolate chip cookies. That was the fun part of my day!

After I finish this blog, I need to update the blog and facebook page for our women’s event. If you want to take a look at our blog, you can see it by clicking on the screenshot of the page (it is in Portuguese, of course). 

Unfortunately someone used my credit card, or tried to use it online at an international site, and it had to be cancelled, a major hassle. I am grateful that the credit card company picked up on the fact that I don’t use it on the internet like that and they called me. But today I had to do the paper work on that. Again, fortunately they have already sent me a new card and was able to activate that today as well.

At the same time, I also had to renew all our banking info, with new passwords, cards, checks, etc., since our bank fused with another one and all the account are different now. I am actually glad that took place now and not while we were out of the country, as everything was frozen until I got all that done. The nice thing was that all was frozen on last Saturday when the fusion went official and I didn’t get the new account information until Wednesday. How much money do you think the bank made on that  deal with their millions of customers?

My suitcases are out and I am throwing in a few things gradually. I worked on getting finances straightened out for travelling, too. Poor Sissy is stuck at home, paying the cleaning lady, taking care of the cat, paying bills, on our behalf. She deserves a vacation, but looks like that isn’t happening, as she will be taking a “summer school” (although here it is actually winter school right now)class during the school break.

So I am tired. I didn’t even watch any soccer matches or go to the gym today. Too much to do to get ready for vacation. My poor husband has to do the same, as he had to arrange to fill the pulpit and make sure all the other events, like business meetings, worship planning, bulletins, were all taken care of. Is this normal? Do some people actually just pack their suitcase and walk out the door on vacation without having to spend days preparing people to substitute for them?  I need a vacation from getting ready to go on vacation!