I'm So Lucky

I'm not the world's biggest fan of meetings. There are huge chunks of my life, spent in boring, badly run sessions, that I will never get back. I consequently look to spend my volunteer efforts in ways that minimize the need for these soul-draining exercises.

However.

I've been on the Executive Board of the school's Parent Association Committe for almost 2 years now. I expect to serve until The Child graduates. Because I love it. It's not an elected position, all the members were recruited by the administration. I first said 'yes' for the simple reason that meetings were held on Thursday mornings. And you know how I feel about evening meetings. I figured it would be a fairly easy way to rack up my service hours. What I didn't expect was to have quite so much fun.

By an act of pure grace, I happen to serve with a collection of very creative, funny, committed individuals. We are charged with raising $12,000 of the school's annual budget and with building community. We kill two birds with one stone by planning fundraisers that people want to attend. Today was our last meeting before tomorrow's Halloween Carnival. It. Will. Rock.

When we took over, the PAB had been losing steam and was nearly non-existent. It was like pulling teeth, so I hear, to get volunteers. Some classes stepped up, others not so much. We're changing all that. We have great room parents who act as our little field marshalls. An event is coming, we tell them what we need, they get it done. We also started this year having already planned our calendar of events (which was unheard of). This means we spend all our time focusing on how to make each event as terrific as possible, rather than constantly trying to get ahead of the curve. We have our curve. We own our curve. It's almost too easy.

And we have fun. Each member has his or her own particular strengths and we give those gifts free rein. We like each other. We laugh. We get more done in one hour than some executives do all day. I'm sure of that.

Tomorrow we'll be busy turning the cafeteria into a carnival and transforming the upper floor into the dreaded "Hallway of Horrors", which we will all be manning because, hey, that's the most fun bit of the night. And we're selfish that way. (I'm still debating, btw. I'm either going to be a Catholic school girl with a really bad attitude or a banshee. Thoughts?)

I don't know why I'm necessarily posting about this except that sometimes I just can't believe how fortunate I am: all I did was say "yes" to a morning meeting and I fell in with a terrific group of people. It's kinda like how I feel about y'all. Lucky, lucky me.