Life’s Paths Cross: Two Weeks

by rosemary on 03/17/09 at 5:57 pm

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Family, business, and Woman’s Club must-do activities have all converged early in this month of March. Whew! life is grand.

It all began on March1st, in California. We flew down to Oakland and picked up our 26 year old son Ryan, who has been living in Asia for the past three years. We visited with my youngest brother who had housed my son for two days while Ryan adjusted to the 16 hour time difference. Then we moved on to my spouse Phil’s parents home 50 miles away. We indulged in my mother-in-law’s delicious French cooking for two days, and then proceeded groaning down the road to the annual National Society of Consulting Soil Scientist’s meeting in Sacramento.

The four day meeting was held on the Delta King, a renovated paddle wheel boat. But Sacramento is my hometown, so we bunked at my middle brother’s home two miles from the meeting site. My 94 year old father resides a mile from my middle brother, so I was able skip out of the meeting a couple of times to spend some wonderful quality time with him talking about politics, the financial crisis and history. He is so sharp still.

I served as registrar for the NSCSS meeting this year. It was a much smaller meeting than normal as so many of our fellow small business members are suffering financially from the economic crisis. We missed them but the meeting had great content and was well worth attending.

My eldest brother showed up from Oregon on our final full day in Sacramento. It was pure circumstance that got us all together for a much needed family meeting to discuss a few issues concerning our aging father.

We returned home to a Spokane once again caught up in the grips of winter with 3 and 5 degree days, snow, ice, and hail and lightening storms. Our families business waits for no woman. Filling out and filing C-Corporation IRS Tax forms and a complex new-for-this-year Errors and Omissions insurance form due both [due by the 15^th of March] were the first items on my to-do-list. Groan.

In the midst of filling out those darn forms, and settling Ryan into his USA life, I got two calls from my GFWC club’s rental chair, Gail. First call, the thermostat in the basement Rose Room had ceased to work. The Church that rents that room wanted it replaced because the temperature outside was hovering at just above zero. So I researched programmable thermostats [always take the opportunity to go-green] and ran out to purchase a new 7day/4 period item. A church member kindly volunteered to install it for no cost which allowed me more leeway on the price and quality.

Second call, the solitary men’s toilet in the clubhouse was running hard and no amount of handle jiggling would stop it. I really hate plumbing, but I do understand the basics so no research needed just another shopping trip for parts. Fortunately, Ryan was willing to take on the job of replacing the innards, supply line and shut off valve.

So, March 11 was family volunteer night, with Ryan fixing the men’s toilet, Phil programming the main clubhouse thermostat to fit the clubhouse rental week and blowing down the steam furnace, and me programming the new Rose room thermostat and doing some office duty updating the Club computer’s security.

The monthly club business meeting was on March 14. Peace.