slow and steady wins the race...

Rumor has it that we might close our inventory today. This is the longest amount of time that I can ever remember "working" one. But we are special. And special people get special treatment. I know Jan and I both will be ready to see the last of this thing. (perhaps a picture of a monkey on my back would be more appropriate!)

In other random bits of my life, it appears that spring is here to stay. The Bradford pear trees that were not lost in the ice storm are beginning to bloom, along with what might be cherry trees. (I am not very good at determining what plant is what. I mostly identify them by "it's green with pink blooms" or some such technical term as that.) We also have daffodils blooming and 30 out of 50 new tulips coming up. I'm hoping to take some pictures this weekend.

The city is beginning to spruce up for the Derby as well. May will be here before we know it. Rumor has it that they want to have all the ice storm debris up by then. (I'm thinking that it's a great idea since it will have been three plus months! It looks like Louisville has been invaded by herds of beavers. Flocks of beavers? How do beavers travel? Packs? Gaggles?)

Speaking of animals, Bakari is finally up and running around. Apparently he just needed a bit of equine surgery. Even though he's not an equine.

And, just in case you might be fascinated by all things Derby, my nephew-in-law is working on a horse for Louisville's Gallopalooza. You can check out what he's doing here.

Other than that, I hope everyone has a wonderful "springy" weekend!

The clarity issue

I've discovered (after countless inventories) that working 19 out of 30 hours does very little to improve my mental clarity.

A better way to put it would be to say that I have a head full of pudding. In other words, I will not be offering up amazing insights to everyday living today. (not that I ever do. But I suspect I might be more nonsensical than usual.)

I also discovered that I really don't mind hearing my name 4000 times during inventory. Just as long as it's not accompanied by "I think I cut my finger off." As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain that I can go the next twenty years of inventories without ever hearing those words again. (and I'm fairly certain that Mary Jane can go that many inventories without wanting to ever say them again too.)

Fortunately, I have the day off today. At the moment I am pretending that I am going to be productive and catch up on all the things that didn't get done this weekend.

However, for the sake of honesty, I imagine that I will take a nap and then get some rest. (Perhaps inventory should come with a warning label that says something like you should not drive or operate dangerous machinery until you know how this will affect your person.)

And now that everyone else has left for work or school, my head full of pudding and I are headed back to bed. Here's hoping that the dogs won't play roller derby over the top of me. (one of their favorite morning pastimes is to run around the room, leap over the top of the bed and then dive underneath it. Pause and repeat.) I could always shut them out of the room but they tend to howl and cry for company then. Which leads to the parrots calling their names and telling them to be quiet. (except for Orbie. He's more likely to start barking like the dogs.) All of which leads to too much excitement for me to sleep. Anyhoo, I'll let you know how things turn out.

Well, 2009 will be forever known as the inventory that Mary Jane tried to cut her finger off. I'm thinking I will probably remember this for a long long time. Maybe forever. (some people will do anything to get out of a little counting. :) )

Sometime around 6:30, Mary Jane paged me to the stockroom. As soon as I walked in the door, she said that she thought she'd cut her finger off. I thought she was joking.

Turns out, not so much.

While we still aren't quite sure how she did it, she ended up at the ER, receiving stitches in one finger and "glue" for the other. And I am happy to report that the tips of her fingers now appear to be where they belong.

(If I'm rambling, please forgive me. It's been a long night. Which will be followed by a long day. However, the hardest part is over. )

And as for Mary Jane, she will be fine. She's medicated and hopefully sleeping. She was a little disappointed at missing all the counting fun. That's okay. We'll be doing this again next year.

No rest for the weary...

...til Sunday night. It's inventory weekend at ye olde LifeWay store. Which means hours upon hours upon hours of counting and checking and counting again. We hope to finish up by Sunday evening around six. Honestly, for some strange reason, I love inventory. It satisfies some neat and orderly part of my soul. However, can I tell you a secret?

By the time we finish this weekend, I will truly be sick of my name. Because it will have been called about 4 thousand times in the next 60 hours. It sounds something like this: Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen Karen. (I know that I work with some of you who read my blog. Please understand that I love you dearly and in no way does this mean that I don't want to talk to you or hear you call my name. It's just that when 24 of us use my name over and over and over again, the cacophony makes me want to change it to something melodious like Cinderella. Or pretend that I am Cinderella and I live at Disney World where they don't do inventory. And if they do inventory, please don't burst my bubble.) So, my lunch is over and it's time to head back to counting.

Because I like to share

We finished inventory! (and all God's children said "Amen.") This year we counted close to 107,000 items. That's about 10,000 more than last year. I personally worked 33 hours during those three days. Which really isn't so bad. As far as I know, we had no real glitches. Everything seemed to go smoothly. I took some pictures so I could remember this momentous occasion. (Not that I am likely to forget. But I am getting older. Hmphf. I actually typed odder as opposed to older. I suspect that both might be true.)



Anyway, this is the back room. The rule of inventory is that you can start early (before 9pm on Saturday night) and count anything that a customer cannot reach. So, we stuff as many things into the back room as humanly possible and count away. I was mildly concerned that we might have lost an employee back behind all of this but I figured they could get out when we put the store back together on Monday. Oh wait, what's this we stuff? I am off today! So when everyone else puts the store back together. We crafty inventory people make sure to drag back all the itty bitty collections of things that take enormous amounts of time. Things like jewelry or pass it on cards or novelties or bumper stickers. We forgot the highlighers though. Sorry, Byron.



This is the middle room. See all the boxes? Those mostly contain VBS. Which came on the truck this week. The truck we weren't supposed to get. They promised we wouldn't get this truck. But we aren't going to talk about that. Because it's all behind us now.



This is MJ's magical cart. I made the signs. Because I am crafty like that. MJ is the coordinator of trouble. (I think I'll have to make her a name tag that says that.) She is responsible for doing something with all the items that no one else can figure out what to do with. It's an ugly job but somebody's got to do it. So I nominated her. Because she can handle me most of the time and we all know how much trouble I can be. (No, MJ, I would prefer that you not comment on that statement. No matter how much you want to.)

And this? This blooming extravaganza was waiting for me when I got home. This is Mabel. Mabel the tree. He's a boy tree. Josh got him for me one year after I had surgery on my hand. He (Josh, not the tree) brought me home, still drugged up, and showed him to me. In my anesthesized state, I declared him to be "Mabel the boy tree." (the tree, not Josh.) And so he (both Josh and the tree) has been ever since.