Communication is a nice tool, or so I hear

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I got an interesting phone call from my mom last Thursday afternoon, just as I was settling in for my nice, long, four-day weekend. It seems she had paid a visit to her basement to retrieve something from her little-used freezer and discovered something that might be of interest to me there, so she called me.

When I picked up the phone I heard, “Did you need these three big boxes that are in my freezer?”

I thought that was an odd question. What use would I have for boxes that were residing in my mom’s freezer? And why would anyone be freezing cardboard boxes? I was a mite confused, so I asked, “Boxes? What boxes?”

“There are three boxes in my freezer with some food in them. One of your kids left them here a while ago.”

I was clueless, so I pressed her. “How big are they? What’s in them?”

“Well there are three of them.” (I think we’ve established the fact that there are three by this point.) “It looks like cookie dough.”

I had a vague recollection of some fundraisers in which my kids had participated during their spring sports while school was still in session SEVERAL WEEKS AGO. These fundraisers took place at the beginning of the sports seasons. It’s safe to assume we were peddling our wares about EIGHT WEEKS AGO. The fundraisers involved selling cookie dough, among other food items. It’s usually a short window of time between the deadline for sales and delivery of goods. Everything should have been distributed long ago; probably SIX WEEKS OR SO AGO, well before the school year even ended.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Jake was home at the time of this phone call, so I asked him if he remembered putting anything in Nanna’s freezer. (Our freezer is usually full in spite of the fact that there’s never anything to eat around here. We’ve been known to borrow space in my mom’s freezer for things like these cookie dough fundraisers.)  Jake said he remembered delivering the items he sold, but thought maybe he might have just left some things at my mom’s that we might have purchased for ourselves. I was sure that’s all it was. I told him to run over and see what was in Nanna’s freezer and just bring back whatever was there. My mom lives a block away. Jake left on foot. I had visions of fresh baked cookies for desert that evening.

Not long after Jake left the house, my mom’s van pulled into the driveway. Jake exited from the passenger side and proceeded to haul three (yes, three) large boxes into the entryway of the house. Upon closer inspection, I could see the boxes were full of buckets of cookie dough, cheesecakes and pizzas. This was obviously more food than we would have ever ordered for ourselves.

Someone had sold fundraiser items, stashed them in my mom’s freezer and never delivered them!

Crapweasel!

Jake reached inside one of the boxes and smugly produced order forms that had my daughter’s name written on the tops of the pages.  Those pages were full of MY coworker’s names and their selections of items they had purchased. And paid for. And probably expected to be delivered… oh, about SIX WEEKS AGO! I could feel my face turning red as I envisioned my coworkers gossiping amongst themselves at work behind my back…

“What’s the deal? When is she going to deliver our stuff? I PAID for it already! That’s the last time I order anything from one of HER kids’ fundraisers!”

Kacey, my usually responsible daughter, had picked up the fundraiser items after softball practice one day, while I was at work, and upon finding no room in the freezer at home, delivered them to my mom’s freezer. She neglected to tell me about it and promptly forgot about them herself. Mark may have been aware of the situation at one point, but as I understand it, he’s not responsible for remembering stuff. And since Kacey’s life is a revolving door of activity and since all I could think about during the month of May was being ready for Jake’s graduation party, no one ever gave the fundraiser a second thought.

I managed to get most of the fundraiser items to work today. What didn’t go today goes tomorrow. I sent out an apologetic email to those who had supported the fundraiser. I explained what had happened and asked why none of them had come and slapped me upside the head, reminded me that they had paid good money and wanted their purchased items NOW! Most people ordered one item. One woman ordered something like sixty dollars worth of items! When I asked if she hadn’t wondered when I’d be delivering the goods, she shrugged me off saying she had forgotten. Forgot? Would you forget spending sixty dollars and getting nothing in return?

Most of my coworkers stopped by my desk to have a good laugh at my expense, and were pleasantly surprised to be getting some goodies today. They were quite forgiving, except for the one girl who had actually not paid ahead of time and tried to give me her money by sticking it down the front of my shirt. I forgave her. I may not feel so generous with my daughter the next time she has a fundraiser. She’s on her own!

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