The Charity Fun Fair: Part One, or, In Which I Bruise My Ass and Get Rained On

Welp, it coulda been better, coulda been worse. (For the record, next time I decide to drive round-trip to Virginia and drink like a fish socialize into the wee hours just before an all-day fundraising event, you have my permission to smack me. Thank you.)

I baked like a madwoman all last week. There were chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies and chocolate oatmeal cookies and molasses spice cookies and brown sugar drop cookies and peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and blondies and sugar cookies with pretty sugar sprinkles.



There were homemade doggie biscuits and raffle tickets. At the last minute I decided that we needed muffins as well, so there were zucchini walnut muffins and banana chocolate chip muffins, commingling in unnatural proximity in their plastic carry case. Can you tell which are which?



All told, there were 360 cookies, 61 muffins, and 26 baggies of dog biscuits. And here's what THAT looks like.



Because I do not wish to whine, I am skipping over the oven burns and the late nights and the fatigue and the general neglect of my husband and children and the low back pain and the omigodI'mnotgoingtohaveenoughstuff panic. Instead, check out the nifty containers on the far left of the photo! They have handles and snap-on tops and hold gazillions of muffins neatly, and only cost $3.99 at my local dollar store. (Yes. $3.99 at the DOLLAR store.) I love them and want to keep them near me always.

Saturday morning I finished wrapping all the goods, dipped some chocolate truffles to bring to my gardening buds (hee! Marcia made that one up), and got on the road around 2:30pm. The drive to Virginia was mostly uneventful ('cept for the damn Beltway around D.C.), but stressful in that I was watching my speedometer with one eye the whole time. See, somehow I've managed to collect a few speeding tickets in the last year (totally not my fault! I'm an excellent driver!), and if I collect one more, I think they're going to take me to the Big House and throw away the key. Or at least suspend my license.

Feeling very virtuous and lucky at having not been pulled over, I arrived to find my friends sitting out al fresco with wonderful wine and nibblies, and the evening unfolded with lots of conviviality, good cheer, great food, and big wet dogs giving sloppy kisses. (We won't discuss the ill-advised drunken tractor-pulled wagon ride, the ensuing toppling of said wagon, and the resulting bruise on my ass. Bygones.)

Sunday morning in Virginia dawned cloudy and thunder-y and slightly hung over. After mainlining cold orange juice and foisting my orphan seedlings on my friends, I headed home with a bagel clutched in my hand and some wonderful new-to-me varieties of tomato and pepper seedlings in the trunk.

And it started raining.

And it rained. And it rained. It rained biblically, with sheets of water and hydroplaning and flash floods. And I tried very hard not to freak the hell out while squinting to see the unfamiliar highway through the deluge. I waited until a decent hour and called Michael: "For the love of god, please tell me it's not raining there!" "What do you mean? It's gorgeous and sunny." Salvation at hand! But I made him go check weather.com, which was calling for showers beginning around 4pm. Feeling slightly less panicked, I made the drive home in good time (WITHOUT SPEEDING!). The rain let up around Baltimore and Home was, as advertised, sunny and splendid. After dropping off my junk at the house, I drove into town to meet Michael, who had taken care of set-up and advance registration.

To be continued.......