A Healthy Crowd

Dearest Rachel –

I don’t know what it felt like to you or Daniel, but it seems like whatever I have right now is like one of the colds either of you would deal with; longer term, lower symptom intensity, but just there the whole time. Rather than being laid out flat like I used to (up to and including that first night in Basel, where I really thought I might be pushing myself to dangerous limits), I’ve been dealing with smaller but still irritating things like post-nasal drip and the raw throat that goes with it and this general sense of lethargy – the latter of which is not a good thing, now that the school year has started, and I have programs that I’m committed to at church.

Ironically, one of the few things that hasn’t suffered a bit from whatever it is I’ve gotten has been my appetite. Stopping at a Chick-fil-A on the way to church yesterday afternoon, what Daniel was having looked so good. I decided to go up and order a sandwich to go with my nuggets and soup (hey, they offer it, it’s good for a cold, why not?) Which wouldn’t be so problematic if it weren’t for the fact that I’m not as active as I would otherwise be, thanks to whatever this is.

Not to mention the fact that the weather is its usual unpredictable self (which sounds like an oxymoron as I’m writing it, but anyone who lives here understands me perfectly) at this time of year. Long sleeves or short sleeves? Jacket or no? Yesterday had me splitting the difference, with a ‘yes’ to the first and a ‘no’ to the second, and hoping for the best. Which worked out okay – although I’m not sure about this morning, since it’s gone back to raining again like it was Sunday afternoon (which, I should point out, compounds that lack of desire to exercise).

All in all, the season is not off to the best start, at least on a internal, personal level. But as long as I can bring myself to power through it – which it frankly seems like I’ve no other choice – I can conceal it, and be a part of something much bigger than whatever it is that I’m dealing with here.

I just mentioned that Daniel and I were on the way to church yesterday… on a Monday. You know what that means; Awana has started for the year. And as usual, while we have a reasonable complement of leaders, we’re dealing with the usual concerns of whether we have enough. Now, if we’d had the average crowd that we’d gotten last year, we should have been fine; a group in the mid-forties would allocate five or six to each leader. Which is more than I would have been able to handle if I were in their position, but it seems like the crew we’ve assembled is reasonably capable of managing that much.

But that’s not how many showed up; there were nearly seventy kids there last night. I think that may be a record, honey. And while I’m not sure if everyone was overwhelmed from dealing with eight or so kids in their care, I was told by Daniel that the gaming portion of the night was, well, chaotic, to put it charitably.

Meanwhile, my duties in recording attendance have expanded, with the retirement of Ms. Todd, who had been checking kids in at one club or another going back almost fifty years by now. So I was recording names and ages (and therefore teams, since they’re based on the kids’ ages) throughout the night, which is why I have what I think is a reasonable handle on the size of the crowd. Although I’ve heard that I may have missed a kid or two as they ran into club without checking in, so my number might actually be low by a couple.

It’s a nice problem to have a healthy crowd at these things, but it’s still a bit of a problem. And all I can do is tally everybody up that I see, keep a proper amount of distance, and hope I don’t contribute to them becoming unhealthy by next week. To be sure, opening night is often the high water mark in terms of attendance, but I’d just as soon the drop-off not be attributed to anything I might be dealing with.

So with that said, honey, let’s see if you can keep an eye on all our little guests this week, and have them come back safely (although if some of them could be a bit more subdued, that would be appreciated). And wish us all well, as we’re likely going to need it.