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Crafting and prayers for HPS’ers

There are some days, like today, that I want to shout to the universe – enough! We need to cure this disease, and we need to do it now!

Today was a great day actually. Work decided to move our magazine press deadline back to Friday. We share an art director with another magazine, and the other magazine was late getting to press so he hasn’t even started to do layout for our magazine. That took some of the pressure off of me too. It means that I feel pretty confident I can get everything done next week without too many late nights. It also meant I didn’t bring home much work. Yes, I’ll probably log onto the work server Sunday night and get my ducks in a row so I can hit the ground running Monday morning – but I haven’t spent the entire weekend fretting about the magazine.

That meant I could concentrate on fretting about HPS issues. Grin!

The HPS Network is selling Christmas CDs this year as a fundraiser. I know how important fundraising is to us – and how desperate we are for funding. But, to be honest, I’m not a good fundraiser. I HATE hitting up friends and family for donations. I hate going around asking people to buy things (although I don’t feel too bad asking all the people I’ve bought girl scout cookies from, or cookie dough, or candles for a band trip etc.)

A flyer went around work a while back saying that we were going to have a company craft fair Nov. 10th. Back when we were a family-owned business we’d have tons of vendors in during the holiday season selling all sorts of stuff. They were always sister-in-laws, or aunts or some relation to a company employee. This seems to be the new corporate answer to that tradition.

Great! I thought. I can enter the craft fair and sell CDs without having to go around the office begging! Thing is CDs aren’t exactly a “craft.” No problem – I thought. I bought all this stuff to do Christmas crafts last year and never got around to it. So, thinking I had plenty of time, and being reassured I need only bring a few items – I signed up.

Guess what? Surprise, surprise I haven’t had time to sit around making cute Christmas decorations. Now, the craft fair is coming at me like a freight train – and I need some cute crafts ASAP.

So, after running a bunch of errands this morning, I started painting. I’ve painted probably four hours today, and I just about have the first item finished. Oh boy, is it going to be a long week! What was I thinking???

I should be working on some grant – not sitting around spending four hours on an item I’ll be lucky to sell for $10. I’d better sell some CDs!

I also just about finished the doctor invitation letters for the HPS conference, minus one I had a question about for Donna. I’ve been working on the HPS board calendar and the NOAH newsletter article too.

But, all of this was purely therapeutic. I enjoyed painting. I haven’t done it in sooo long. In fact, I have several tubs where I store my paints and brushes. When I opened the paint bin, there was dust on the paint bottles. DUST! Four years ago, before HPS, I would have never had a spec of dust on my paints. I used them often. I’m a little amazed I haven’t made a complete disaster out of the project for being out of practice.

It was so nice to be able to work on HPS things without interruptions from every day life. No work, no other obligations. It was especially nice as I’ve been feeling so frustrated about not being able to do more lately.

Every day I read Katy’s blog. I know how Katy’s hurting. I know how desperate her parents must be feeling. Ryan has had some stomach issues lately, and the anxiety of the burning question in the back of both of our minds – is it colitis? There are several other HPS’ers struggling with health issues just now that I can’t blog about because they are not as public with their stories as Katy and her family. So, all I can do is ask you to pray for people you don’t know in places you’ve never heard of who need a treatment, who need a cure. Their situations are weighing heavily on my heart.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Aw Heather, move to New York. It seems I could give you a hand with something...even dusting those paint bottles.

You are so amazing! How do you find time to do all the things you do?

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