When pictures of Aylan Kurdi were about all you could see on Facebook, my heart broke. I decided I couldn’t face my God and tell him I’d been too busy to do anything about it.
But money’s tight. I needed a fundraiser – one that would have a low overhead cost, would maybe be easy to get people willing to help with, and would be pretty likely to succeed.
I decided to organize a bake sale, and invite the neighbors and ward to donate treats. After all, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to donate a batch of cinnamon rolls than to donate $30, but hopefully that’s about what they’d fetch. We have the big farmer’s market at the park across the street, and that would make a perfect venue.
I didn’t know it, but every little thing that could be stacked against me, pretty much was. For reasons too lengthy and boring to describe, I was only able to announce the bake sale and ask for volunteers once, and while I was doing that, Margaret Steward was seriously giving me vibes of wishing I’d just sit down so she could get the lesson going so it was rushed, flustered, and pretty ineffective. Plus they started passing around the signup before anyone knew what it was for… so I had a grand total of 5 people sign up in RS, and 2 in Primary. (Then, of course, you can’t even plan on everyone who did sign up actually following through…)
Early on last week, I called 9 different bakeries, hoping to get them to donate a few dozen of their leftover treats on Friday night I could go pick up. No one was able to commit. Maybe I’d have had better luck if I’d gone to the bakeries in person, but them’s the breaks when you’ve got seizures. You’re just not driving anywhere, no matter how noble the cause.
I ended up needing to spend $25 just to register with the County for a one-time permit, and $20 to register with the Farmer’s Market. The night before, I looked at our scant offering and seriously wondered if we’d make back the $45, let alone cut any sort of profit. Scott also told me that they’d changed the time of the BYU game, so that would put a serious damper on the turnout to the market since everyone would be home watching the game. Scott wanted me to give him a list of everything I needed done by the end of Friday, and it stressed me out so much I had a PTL seizure like 5 minutes later.
There was some silver lining here and there, though. Scott’s mom, Deena, was on the phone with him and heard about me and my attempts to organize this bake sale – I really shouldn’t have attempted it without a committee, should I? – and said she was going to put $50 in the mail to cover my registration expenses and another $5 to cover getting a treat for each of the girls. (She’s a good egg.)
Well, I fell apart on Friday, and Scott pretty much pulled together all the loose ends. He wrapped the treats, he made the sign (granted, he did that in SLC, so that was already going to be his job), gathered the tables and canopy, and then he set up my whole tent and pretty much was incredible.
At the end of Saturday, I’d made almost $125. I feel… okay. Mostly glad it’s over.
And I’m sorry this isn’t exciting or interesting, but I needed to get this all written down, even if it wasn’t pretty.
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