That Time of Year
It’s that time of year for me. When friends text “hey, haven’t seen you!” and follow up a minute later with “right. End of July. See you in September!” When parents bump into me in the grocery store and suddenly I’m holding an impromptu “know your rights” discussion in the frozen section (next to the Haagen-Dasz “Spirits” ice cream, if you must know, and thankfully I don’t have any “Rum Tres Leches” in my cart yet to sit there melting and possibly drawing raised eyebrows.) The time of year when I’m having my friend in the passenger seat text cryptic messages like “FOSS kits” to my work email because I’m driving and can’t write it down but I really need to poke someone about that tomorrow. When I’m cruising all the back-to-school sales looking for the BEST deals because the more money I can save now, the more we can help out a parent in a bind later. When I’m at work emailing IT, checking on desks that should have arrived by now, and calling Facilities because the AC in the gym is still down–all at the same time. When I’m tracking down seemingly-random pieces of paper for HR and giving the copier a swift kick on the way past (I don’t actually kick it, but I am pretty quick at righting its wrongs.) We try, every year, to be ready. We do inventory and figure out what we need. We do research, and figure out where to buy it.…