Giving Back

Many of you know that I am a member of our local Junior League. I like the opportunity to volunteer, and the chance to give back to the community. This weekend, I was one of about 10 of us in charge of putting on CARE Fair, one of the largest free health clinics in the state (I think). It certainly seems large. For 2 days, we offer free medical and dental services and we see around 3000 people. I saw we, but really I mean the Dr's. I don't actually treat people. I just helped organize it. This blog may be long, but I feel the need to share my experience. We will go day by day: Thursday- Thursday was set up. We use a five story school building to host this event. The school so kindly donates the space to us, so we try to be very careful with how we use the building. Before any set up takes place, I had to take pictures of each of the rooms so we can return everything exactly how it was previously. I thought we should have started earlier in the day, but the Director decided that 12 was early enough. We went and got the U-Haul, and went to the storage unit to get all our stuff. We emptied one of them easily enough, but the other unit is full of exam table that weight around 500 lbs. There were about 6 of us trying to load all this (all women, and not very buff). I don't know how it happened, but we finally got it all on the truck and to the school. My job was to oversee all the logistics of CARE Fair. I reserved the truck, made arrangements with the other rental companies for tables, chairs, draping, etc. I also reserved walkie-talkies, and some children's books to hand out. The books are donated and we usually get around 2000. I was told that they would be ready for me to pick up around 2 on Thursday. So Michelle (who was in charge of dental) and I went over to get them. We arrive at the location, and they lady tells us that we not only have to pack our own books, but we also have to count each one. Seriously???? We didn't have any boxes to pack stuff with, we thought we were just picking them up. So we sat there for about 2 hours, counting and packing 1008 books. Yes, exactly. I counted every single one. Then we go to pick up the walkie-talkies. They aren't ready. No one told them I would be coming. Great. But they were very nice and just asked me to come back in 45 minutes. We went back and tried to help with the unpacking effort. Part of my job was the kitchen and food. The kitchen was my domain. I had everything organized in no time. Then I just helped everyone else. When I finally had a chance to go and pick up the walkie-talkies, they were closed. Just another thing to add to the list. We finally finished around 9 pm. I was exhausted. And totally wound up about the next day. I got home, tried to sleep, without much success, and woke up around 4am and just laid there for a while. OK, I will tell you about Friday tomorrow. For those of you interested in joining the Junior League, we are having an open house August 18th at 6pm. You can check out the website at www.jlslc.org.