WalMart has their school supplies out so I hit them early today. We now have all of the folders, pens, pencils, glue, and crayons for the village of Allen. I still need to get notebooks, erasers, and rulers - they didn't have those out yet. I'll be checking with them in the next few days to wipe those out too. Once we have all the school supplies I'll be buying backpacks. Once we get all 150 backpacks and school supplies for the village of Allen, I will start stocking up for the village of Wounded Knee. I want to do one village at a time since I don't have any idea how much money we will raise and I want to make sure we have enough for at least one village. I'm really hoping that we have enough for both villages in 2008, but we'll have to wait and see.
Now for the story that if you're sadistic, you'll find funny.
Walmart generally opens the cases of school supplies. Occasionally you can find cases of notebooks that have not been opened, but most of the school supplies are opened, which means - you have to count each individual item just in case someone took one or two out of the case.
If I need 450 folders, which I did, then I have to count out 450 folders individually. It's a pain but whatcha gonna do. Today I was in the middle of counting folders, all 450 of them, that is typically a challenge in and of itself because if you have ADD (as I do) you can lose count very easily and have to start all over again.
Today it was a bit more of a challenge than normal because as I was counting the sound system was throwing out congratulations to various associates from around the country for their years of service at Walmart. So, here I am counting and over the loud speaker I hear, "Thanks to Sally for her 18 years of service at Walmart. And thanks to June for her 14 years of service. Thanks goes out to Ben for his service of 21 years, and a special thank you goes out to Bill for his 24 years of service at Walmart". That went on for a while. I kept wondering how many people have that many years of service and how much longer they were going to keep repeating numbers while I was trying to count.
EVENTUALLY they said, "Let's go to some music now". Oh THANK YOU, I thought, grateful that they were not going to be shouting out numbers anymore. Then, to my great dismay, the song that came over the sound system was "One, two, three, like a bird I sing". Oh gosh, can we stop with the numbers already?
