Almostgotit.com

My mother-daughter book club has been trying to decide when we can meet this summer, and the email has been piling up:  there’s just way too many summer camps, graduations, and family trips to work around.   Consequently, I have just dusted off a snappy tool I once used to organize business meetings, and you should know about it, too. 

MeetingWizard.Com is a free, simple-to-use website that helps a group set up a gathering (of any kind!) in just a few easy steps:

1) The organizer fills in a simple online form (adding email addresses, an event description, and all possible meeting times), and MeetingWizard sends out an email linking everyone to a page containing the response form.  Note: once you’ve added email addresses to MeetingWizard, you can re-use them forever.

2) All recipients of the email respond by selecting ALL possible dates (note: not just the still-open dates they prefer – nor will MeetingWizard allow them to do that, clever Wiz that it is!)

3) MeetingWizard collates all responses in one place so it’s very easy to see which date or dates work best for everyone.

4) The Wiz can automatically choose the first date without conflicts, or you can choose one yourself.  MeetingWizard then sends everyone an email announcement of chosen date.

5) MeetingWizard can also be set to automatically send out a reminder a day or so before the actual event.

Cool, or what??

Blogging may have to take a back seat again this week.

A friend of ours (I’ll call her “Joy”) died very suddenly yesterday morning. The married mother of 9-year-old “Phillip,” she was the parent with the steady income and the health insurance plan.

The family had many plans for the future, but this scenario wasn’t one of them. There was no will, few financial reserves, and though Joy’s husband “Andy” is a shrewd businessman in his own right, this hit him as an absolute broadside.

All he can do right now is weep or look stunned. And whatever he has left, his son needs it all.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are stunned too, and trying to put together the beginnings of what to do next for someone whose spouse suddenly dies.

Yesterday, amidst the busiest weekend of the church year, finding an available priest for the family was my first emergency. Today, between holiday celebrations, we’ve been arranging a funeral.

Everybody dies. And there are basic “death checklists” that virtually everyone will deal with at some point, given our universal mortality.

Most of these checklists assume a person is older, however, and without quite so many entanglements.

Where are all the other answers? (oh, help!)

And where’s the universal genius who’s supposed to be in charge of all of this, anyway?

Someone needs to reassure and manage Andy’s clients until he can do so again himself. Since Andy taught me much of what I know about webpage management, some of this may fall on me.

Andy and Phillip also need financial advice, legal advice, and health insurance. They need money and childcare and household management plans and community support. They need everything.

Nor are these homeless people, or hermits. They have friends, relatives and co-workers. They are “plugged in.” And we, the family’s network, are doing what we can.

What strikes me is how stupid, and helpless, we all still are.

Most of all, though, I vacillate between wanting to weep and wanting to yell, because God Damn it, Easter or no, this is all wrong, and Phillip needs his mother!

Creative Commons Photo by estherase

Well, that was a strange little interlude.

It seems my predecessor wasn’t quite so eager to resign after all, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem except that the Board of Directors wasn’t quite sure they could do (ANYTHING) without her, either. So I decided they’d have to do without me instead, and here I am.

The “no succession plan” scenario is, unfortunately, far too common in the nonprofit world (most churches require retiring ministers to leave the congregation entirely, for this very reason). Perhaps this Board will do a better job next time; for my part, I suppose I’ll chalk it up to learning how to fail faster; I was just glad I saw the no-win situation for what it was as soon as I did, and got out before there were any actual murders.

My friend Emily has asked me to guest-host her “Rocky Road of Love” blog for the next week or so (starting Monday) while she is in PARIS doing some research (she’s a writer, and does that sort of thing.) I think she mainly wants to see me get off my dark-night-of-the-soul butt, but it’s very kind of her and I think it will be a lot of fun. Stay tuned!

——-
Related Posts:5 strange things I did to get my job
Working for a nonprofit organization
Career or blog in a rut? Find a Traveler

Today my friend Emily over at The Rocky Road of Love has posted my recipe for sweet summer squash chowchow. Her blog continues to delight a growing audience with its ongoing love story-with-recipes. She’s another of my mentors, and I plan to borrow a few of her adjectives, if she’ll let me.

I’ve just been “tagged” by Peggy at the Career Encouragement Blog

The rules of tagging:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names (linking to them)
4. Leave them a comment on their blog letting them know they’ve been tagged!

8 Random Facts About Me:

1. I have a double-jointed big toe.
2. I didn’t like olives or coffee until after I was in my 30’s, and now they are both my favorites.
3. I’ve written and produced three plays. Really, really obscure ones.
4. I was an English major and have read lots of great books, but I still love children’s literature most of all.
5. I’ve never had a full-time job, regular salary, and benefits all at the same time.
6. If I didn’t already eat meat, I wouldn’t be able to start now.
7. Today in particular, I’m thinking about contacting Peggy to learn more about the “accepted process of panhandling” This may be a skill I’ll need.
8. I’d never, ever tell my kids and their friends that I used to be able to burp the entire alphabet, too.

The eight bloggers I’m tagging are all (pick one: brilliant, funny, inspiring) people I’d love to know better: some I know already, others I’ve only corresponded with by email or via blog comments.

The Rocky Road of Love and other Great Recipes
The True Vyne
The Pink Slip
Wishy the Writer (’course, she’s taking a “blogging hiatus” at the moment. But read hers, anyway!)
Working Girl
Work Coach
Lauri Kendrick
The Change Agent

Photo by Goldring (Creative Commons)

A friend of mine lives in the country, and her old farmhouse is surrounded by acres of trees, which on summer nights are  full of  twinkling fireflies.  Before she built a deck off her 2nd floor bedroom, we used to climb out her bedroom window to sit on the porch roof with a bottle of wine just to watch them.

We went there on Friday.   Some of us picked blackberries while others made pies, barbequed, and laid out dozens of salads.  The house was full of people, as were both porches and the yard.  The people were mostly writers, lawyers for special causes, and other passionate folk who seem to love what they do. 

It was marvelous, like drinking limoncello straight from the bottle. 

I especially enjoyed joining the upstairs-porch crew of wonderfully-eccentric, uncensored, pissed-off women.   I came in just as a woman wearing a pink cowboy hat with sequins was half-way through an animated story about dog-poop, jerks who steal parking spaces, and other perils of downtown living. 

I didn’t catch half their names,  but it was a total trip listening to women who get even more irate about things than I do, have no interest in being reasonable, and would frankly make very alarming neighbors.

And who Just. Don’t. Care.

All of these wonderful, firefly people have something I want, and these women in particular were living something like my own suppressed female “id”,  with no apologies whatsoever. 

To be honest, it was very refreshing. 

I suspect that I too would love to tell someone that if their dog craps in my yard just ONE MORE TIME, I’m going to get out my gun and blow their fucking heads off. 

In my universe, though,  I’d just get sent to jail!!

— 
Don’t miss the cool firefly links, at right!