Panic Stations... or the story of how Scribbles went to work in her pyjamas

Photographic proof of said event - note massive polarfleece jumper, oily hair bound back by pen, decided the grey trackpants were truly too ugly to show you.

I was so excited about what I had learnt yesterday that I forgot to share how... ummmm... exciting my Sunday was.

Your favourite Scribble woke up at around nine in the morning, not hideously late for a Sunday lie in. After pretending to sleep for just a little longer, I gave up my warm bed and trundled down to the lounge. Made my coffee and my breakfast, did some email correspondence, etc and then sat down on the coffee to savour the second coffee. At this stage I'm planning to do some of the housework I've been talking about for the whole of last week - a start is better than no progress at all, right? It'll make a productive morning before heading over to the shore for a christening.

All of a sudden the Scribble-phone starts ringing. Checking the caller ID, I realise that it's my boss calling. After being very tempted to just reject the call, I answer. It is my frantic boss calling - she is about to leave for America (literally, heading out the door to go to the airport) and our weekend person advises that she can't come in to manage the function, her car has broken down about 120kms away on her way to work. She's told my boss that one of the other girls that can cover but that the cover doesn't have keys. My boss can't get hold of the acting manager so is getting hold of me to go and unlock the centre. The time is quarter to eleven. I live about thirteen minutes drive from the centre. The hire starts at eleven am. You do the maths.

I can't find my shoes anywhere - the only ones I can see are the stilettos I wore out last night. I tear out the door in the sweatshirt and pants that I slept in and my "hori shoes"... i.e. bare feet. I'm running my fingers through my sleep afro on the way to work, speed up the driveway like a rally driver (we're currently having road works at the homestead, resealing driveways and repairing drainage etc) and leap out of the car bang on eleven apologising profusely that the centre isn't open and why... of course once they all see me hot-footing it over the gravel in my bare feet they realise how "dedicated to the cause" I am, and all is forgiven. I open the centre and do start-of-hire liaison with the hirer while waiting for the cover to arrive. I settle down into the office and think "Huh, I would have expected her to be here by now". I ring the girl that I've been told is covering only to have her go "Scribbles, I said I COULDN'T come in".

Scribbles says "What?"

At this stage I start whipping out the admin book to see who I can beg/plead/bribe to stay in over the entirety of the hire... there's no way I can stay until the end. A christening is a once in a lifetime thing. I ring Big Boss to inform her of the situation and tell her what I'm doing. I finally get the Director of our performing arts programme to come in and take over from me - he and I go way back to when we used to attend the same performing arts programme together. He comes in and I have just enough time to shower and get some lunch down my gullet before driving over to the shore (for my foreign friends this was around 40 kms or 25 miles, no small feat on Auckland's motorway system).

The christening/family dedication was beautiful though and I ended up staying at Ms Bee's house far too late, just talking about life, the universe and everything. Ms Bee is like a sister to me and I'm really happy to see her finally having a joyful, positive life (including finding the soon to be Mr. Bee, once all the legal stuff with Mr Aye is finished... long story LOL) with her children. Mr. Bee's constant drunken proclamations that I rocked helped too :P

PS - FarmBub squares knitted since goal set: 2. Ten more until goal completion. Twenty nine more until blanket completion :)