Welcome To Only Child Diaries

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting. While doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast.

The Reality Of Catching Up

Today I'm going to talk about catching up. Catching up with work. If you listened last week, you know that I'm coming off my big event at work, and I'm so far behind on everything else besides work. After the event, I asked for three days off. Not because three days off was enough to take care of everything else in my life that I needed to catch up on. No. Because I felt like three days was kind of the maximum amount that I could take off without everything else going to crap. Let me explain.

Silent Auction Follow-Up And Payments

After an event, a fundraising event like this, there's a lot of follow-up to do. And specifically with this one, because we had an online silent auction, yes, some of the people that won items were actually at the event live and could pick up their items. There's other people who were not at the event, so we are trying to make arrangements for them to pick up their items or get the items to them in another manner. But there's also the subset of those people who haven't paid for their items yet. Now, this was news to me because I discovered this Friday afternoon, this past Friday, because I thought that everyone who actually won an item in the auction when it closed was automatically charged on their account that they had put into this auction portal. But I learned that that was not the case. And I'm glad that I learned it because otherwise I probably would have given away things for free. So that adds an extra layer of complexity. Now, last year I had the assistance of one of my coworkers who helped me, you know, give out the prizes, deliver the prizes, whatever, right? Um, because he's a little bit closer to the office than I am. I'm about minimum 25 miles away, one way. So it's quite a drive. In addition to that, and you want to be able to do this process in a timely manner, so right. In addition to that, this year we had a pledge drive during the event. And some people did pay, I would say about half. The rest of them didn't. The rest of them were confused about how to pay their pledge. So some of them have paid since then, and there's about gosh, I don't know, 30 to 40 percent of the people who still have not paid. It's about 10 days later, and they have not paid. And then we had a dessert dash. Now, I had never experienced in all my years as a fundraiser, I had never experienced a dessert dash. I've been an event planner

Pledges Paddle Raise And Dessert Dash

and I've been to a lot of a you know fundraising events. I had never experienced a dessert dash. Okay, what it is, is there's a table of desserts, a display, if you will, and those items are guarded. And then each table of guests writes down their bids collectively on a card, and the table adds up their total number of bids, dollar-wise, right, for the table. And the table that has the highest uh dollar value of bids gets to pick first for the desserts, and so on, second, third, so on and so forth, right? So it was a little confusing. I'm gonna say that not everybody got it, um, but most people got it. Some people had left, or some people some people actually, when they heard what we were doing from the MC, um, that's when they left because they didn't want any part of it. So that's fine. We've only had about two-thirds of the people left in the room, and we raised about $2,000 that way. So for us, that was pretty good. And the paddle raise, which was, you know, who wants to donate $500, who wants to donate $250, right? So we had to keep just keep track of who those people were, and they were probably about I would say about 15 people or so pledged in that way. So again, most of them have paid, some of them have not. So that's kind of my first priority is to get those pledges paid because that's part of the revenue, right? And also because our fiscal year is gonna end at the end of June. So it's important to get as much money in before then as we possibly can. Um so that's what I've been doing this last. I've worked what? Uh well, I worked two days. I worked three days since the event. And then I have to start sending out um thank you letters and processing that. There's still there's still some auction items that are open, some things that didn't sell. So those are gonna be close next week. Some of the higher ticket items, right? Um yeah. It's it's a little crazy. It's yeah, and again, I wouldn't be doing all this legwork, but my coworker is back to having a family sort of emergency and is spending more time with his family

Doing It Solo And June Deadlines

these next two weeks. So last week and this coming week. So I'm back to doing it all by myself. And there's no, I don't think there's any admin support coming up for it. And at the same time, I'm also trying to work on an event at the end of June where I'm a solicit, um, not really an educational event to get people that have donated or would like to donate to us. Uh, it's like an informational event. Uh, it's well, it's called a lunch and learn. So I set we set the date and I've got to get people to that. I've got to try to go around and say, hey, do you want to go come on, free lunch? Right. So I'm a little, I'm a little crazy with that.

Three Days Off And Home Triage

So I had three, three whole days. Wow, I had three whole days. I had I slept. I tried to sleep more because I was really, really tired. I'm still really tired. I think, but I'm getting there. I what did I do? I um well, I washed the dishes. There was a big pile of dishes in the kitchen. There's a big pile of dishes. I cleaned half of the bathroom, which was exciting. Um that was exciting. I did a lot of laundry. I took my husband to PT. I've ordered groceries. I did work in the yard a little bit, but that was that was tough because you know, my energy level is still not it's still not quite there, but I'm getting there.

Zones Clutter And The Porch Pile

Oh, and then yesterday what I did was now, you know, my whole life is everything is always like an emergency, right? So if and if again, if you're a regular listener, you know that I really go out of my way to decorate the front yard for Halloween and then for Christmas. Well, with Bill's health issues this year with his herniated discs, I just didn't have a lot of time. And my friend Lauren came over and helped me with the Christmas stuff. Uh, but then after Christmas, it started raining, I think, and I needed to pull the inflatables, the inflatable uh yard, you know, decorations up quickly. And I just kind of piled them on the front porch on the end of the front porch, and they've been sitting there. Well, I had some time a while back, and I took a couple of them off this pile and things had gotten dirty. I think it had rained on them, but they were muddy, and so what had happened was that some snails, believe it or not, some snails had decided that they really enjoyed being inside of these, you know, the folds of these inflatables. So I found new homes for the snails. I picked them off and I put them, you know, whatever. Clean them up, put them in boxes, put them in the garage. But there were still some, there's still a big pile of extension cords and inflatables. And, you know, at any given day or time, there's probably about I'm gonna call them a zone, like not a room, but an area, or like outside, like the patio, or the front porch, or the the different parts of the yard or the garage, or there's different zones. There's probably at least I don't know, 30, 30 different zones that I could lend my attention to, right? Because I'm just again, I am not a very organized, neat person. I can do, I can do it, but it's not my brain doesn't really easily think these things through. I'm not a great organizer. Some people can just, you know, whip, whip, whip, ch, ch, ch, you know, and everything's perfect and it's great, and it's whatever. I'm just not that way. I have to kind of think it through, and I have to look at it, and I have to go, okay, what am I gonna do? Okay, how am I gonna do this? So I've been looking at this pile of Christmas inflatables and extension cords on the edge, the far end of my front porch, which is quite extensive. I mean, it's not extensive, but there's all this other crap in the way. Not that anybody's gonna go, oh, look at that pile of right, it's under all this other stuff. But I've been looking at it thinking, I'm just tired of looking like Maw and Paw Kettle. I mean, that's a reference from what, the 60s. You younger people might not understand that one. You could look it up. Anyway, so yesterday the weather was

Cleaning Inflatables Snails And Spiders

really nice. Because here's the thing the weather's not always gonna be nice. Like, we're gonna get into summer soon, and it's gonna be hot, and being outside and doing things is gonna suck. So it was a lovely day. So I took, there were five different five or six. No, there were there were six. I took them, I spread them out on the lawn, I got a bucket and a rag, and I started wiping them down. The snails had vacated, and um, luckily for them, I did find a spider. I heard something, and I forget where it was, but somebody said you're always you're always within six feet of a spider wherever you are. And I didn't really like that because I don't really enjoy spiders very much. Um, but anyway, this this time I was. There was a spider, I think I sent it on its way, and cleaned everything up. I found all the boxes that these things went into. I rolled them up, I got all the air out of the inflatables, put them in the boxes, and I did some way, somehow, I found a little niche for each one in the garage. The garage is the garage looks like a disaster. I'm not gonna lie, but they're all in the garage. So they won't get any more weathered. Because I was worried, you know, that their the sun is was hitting that pile at a certain time every day, and you know, it's not good for them. Plus, it's June. So we have June, July, August, and then it's gonna be September, and then it's gonna be time to start for Halloween. So don't get me started. Okay, so I did that. So I feel like, and I have spent some time out in the garden, but I feel like I haven't really done that much.

Rest Maintenance And Small Wins

I wanted to do, I wanted to take my car in one of those days because it's woefully behind on its maintenance, oil change, whatever. I'm gonna take that in next week. Um, because I just one day I just wanted, I just decided to just sit here and not do anything. Just sit and watch old old movies, like old rom-coms, um, play games on my phone and not do anything. And that was wonderful because I hadn't not I hadn't done that, like not done anything. I hadn't done that in a long time. So I'm not gonna say that my house looks like Martha Stewart because it doesn't, but you know, it's it's a work in progress, I guess. I just have to spend more time trying to hit these zones, right? It's like find a zone. And I I want to work outside more, but anyway, that's that's where I'm at. So now I'm gonna go and try to get something done outside, believe it or not, and um treat myself. That's my treat. And uh next week, well, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me.

Wrap-Up And How To Support

If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace, and these are the Only Child Diaries.