rain and phonebooks

Every year my kids school delivers phone books to earn money. I have to restrain myself from doing the Steve Martin thing" The New Phone Book's here! the new phone books here!" this year I managed to say "Here's your phone book" with a deadpan look, including the Asian family who I am pretty sure had no idea what it was I was doing there.....We really did have fun. I had to work in the afternoon, but we did about two thirds of the route in the morning, then Bron and a friend spent the afternoon at MacDonalds and a mini gold place that is near where I work. Then we went out again, but it was raining by then. I thought, " we will just go load up the car and I can finish tommorrow night on my own or something" but the girls, even though they had no rain coats, were game, so we carried on. we didn't load quite as many books this time, as it didn't look like there was much left, but guess what, guess how many books short we were? yup, you guessed it...exactly the number of books we hadn't loaded, we were short of. So back we went for more. I reckon the car holds about one third of a route, takes us about an hour and a half to do that, including travel time back for more books and the time it takes to load it up again . Last year it seemed to take all day, and yet we had three girls. I mostly just moved the car. This year I helped deliver too. I got to do all the scary places, and all the beware of scary dog places. What are Moms for? I sure got my exercise, all that walking and carrying. Had some carpal tunnel moments, but other wise quite enjoyed it. Luckily work was nothing as busy as last week. The whole weekend that weekend was crazy busy. This last weekend was quite quiet. Anyway, then I took the girls for pizza and pop. I figured we all deserved it. Unfortunately , not too many people volunteer to do this, so all the routes were not done. I wish I had some free time coming up, but I don't. I would really rather do this than sell tickets and the usual fundraising. Good exercise and you get to see all these neat yards and houses. Makes you realize how rundown and overgrown your own is but still....

I think that is one more thing I am grateful for. No one from work will ever accidentally come to my door and see how I live. Last year I guess we delivered to my boss (apparently we were noisy--try delivering phone books on a Saturday afternoon with three giggly teenage girls quietly...!) I had no idea he lived in that area. It leads me to have this thought. One of the things I like about my city job is the anonymity. I get to know the regulars, but they don't really get to know me and they don't care. Conversely, one of the things I love about my rural job is that I know everyone, I get to see my neighbours....I guess it is two sides of the same coin. I remember the first person I shared my office with, she lived at the opposite end of the city and liked it because she didn't run into our patrons when she was off duty. I can see her point. I was once in MacDonalds after work with my kid, and it really disturbed one of my toddler group to see me in a place that wasn't normal for him to see me. I can remember the same thing happening when we had playschool in the house and one of the students saw B, who happend to be in jeans and tshirt, doing home reno, rather than being at work, in uniform. He had a tough time assimilating that info....(it is right in there with believing that teachers sleep at school....)

Well I guess that is it for this particular theme. Read on for more.....