One heck of a stressful week

Whew! I don't usually write about anyone other than Nicky, Tom and I on here, and I rarely if ever mention work, but I have to share this with somebody! So heck, why not share with everyone...

So this week I'm helping set up three office parties (one of which went VERY nicely last night) and my mom is going into surgery on Friday morning. Not sure how much extra stress I can pack into this week!

Two of the parties are Holiday parties for the libraries where I work. We have about 350 employees, so there is a committee appointed to put on the parties. We have a pretty small budget, too small to cater anything, so we did a LOT of prep work and decorating ourselves. I think it really went well for the evening party we did last night. We have a daytime potluck tomorrow and hopefully that will go off without a hitch. We had decided last year (I was on the committee then too) to do two parties to try to please everyone. Some had complained in prior years of having a party during work hours, and some complained that they wouldn't want one outside of work hours. LOL! You probably CAN'T please everyone, but we are sure trying! So our compromise last year and this one was to have an evening party with fingerfoods and champagne punch for just staff where they could bring a guest. Then we have a sit down potluck (we supply the main meats) during lunchtime two days later. Any leftovers from the evening party are used then, and it really seemed to go well last year. Hopefully it will go well this time.

Then our department has several folks who were unfortunately missed (darn PeopleSoft!) when the employee recognition ceremony took place last month. This was a ceremony to recognize folks with a certain number of years of service to the University. For some reason 6 people in my department were left out. 4 of them have more than 20 years with the university! I think that is really something to honor! Most people don't stay with one job for more than 5 years nowadays, so I think anything over that is really special! We have a tiny bit of money to do a departmental celebration and I'm in charge of that. That party is Friday. Well luckily my coworkers are really willing to help out, and so I've gotten a menu together and preordered the food, we'll go shopping tomorrow and then my coworkers will actually do the setup and cleanup Friday.

All that should be stress enough (considering that I still have my 'real' job to do too). But on top of that the most concerning thing, and the thing I appreciate everyone's prayers and good thoughts for is that my mom is going in for surgery on Friday morning. So I'll be leaving Friday morning around 4am in hopes that I'll get to be there and see her before her surgery. She's a pretty private person, and I'm sure she won't be too thrilled for me to put all this on here, so I'll try to be circumspect. But heck I just am one of those sharing people. She was diagnosed with endometrial cancer about a month ago and then we found out that even though all paps have come back normal, the cancer has spread to her cervix too. That means it's at least stage 2 cancer. We won't know anything for sure about the stage or what kinds of additional treament is needed until after the surgery. So keep those prayers and good vibes coming!

Whew. I feel better getting some of that out! Now, go over and look at the new photos and movies I put up. ;)