There’s no reason this shouldn’t be a good weekend for me, but circumstances seem to be conspiring against me. By “circumstances”, I mostly mean my interior monologue, but since this is my journal, I’m going to see if I can find someone else to blame.

I went to quilt guild on Saturday morning and managed to lose my nametag between the check-in desk and the auditorium. I looked all along the path I’d taken from one to the other. It wasn’t on or under the literature table where I’d dropped off some flyers for United We Quilt, which still needs volunteer quilters. It wasn’t on the floor of the bathroom or in the stall I’d used. It wasn’t in the trash, at least not in the part of the trash I was willing to paw through (once I got to the slimy coffee cups, I was out of there). It wasn’t on the floor around my seat or on the steps leading there. Crap. I retraced my steps a second time; no nametag. One woman in the bathroom did say she had seen a couple on the floor there, but had no idea what had happened to them. I checked at the check-in desk, which is where I would have taken one if I’d found it. No nametag. I sat through the announcements, thinking maybe who ever found it had given it to the president and she’d say something from the podium. Nope. After the meeting, I checked with the college’s desk, which had opened in the meantime. No nametag. Bummer. Now the only hope I’ve got is that whoever picked it up will find my address on the roster and mail it to me, but that doesn’t seem very likely.

The nametag itself wasn’t special, just a piece of paper with the guild name and year and my name and city. Oh, and a gold star because this is the first year I’ve been a member. Not something I’d want to treasure forever. New ones are issued every year, so I’ll be getting another soon after I pay my dues for 2004. It mostly had value as a way to avoid paying the $1 forgotten or lost nametag penalty at check in, and since there’s only one more guild meeting this year, I’m only going to have to pay that once (and I could even evade that by getting there late, after they shut the check in desk down). So I’m not particularly irked about the thing itself, I’m irked that I lost it, that I wasn’t careful, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to details. I don’t want to be that person.

Let’s assume I’m not that person, that this isn’t my fault for not securing my nametag better. Whose fault is it? I blame the person or persons in the guild who decided to not provide nametag holders for new members. Not getting a holder meant that when I got my nametag, I put it in the only holder I had on hand, which happened to be the one from my 20th high school reunion. I slipped the guild nametag in front of the reunion one, and that worked fine until this last meeting. Now, it wasn’t a very secure holder, lacking any sides to it, and I didn’t do anything like tape or glue the things in, but I shouldn’t have had to. If the guild wants me to have my nametag at all the meetings, the guild should give me something safe in which to put the nametag. Because they didn’t, now I have lost not only my guild nametag, but the one from my reunion, which was a little bit special, because it was proof that my husband loves me. When we picked up our nametags at the reunion, Mr. Karen’s, like those of all the rest of our classmates, had his yearbook picture on it. Mine, however, did not. “Were you in the yearbook,” the lady from the reunion company behind the desk asked. “Of course I was,” I replied, “I was the co-editor”. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d screwed that up, since they showed Mr. Karen as one of the missing classmates on all the notices leading up to the event, even after he’d registered. Anyway, I was feeling left out because I didn’t have my picture on my nametag. To make it better, Mr. Karen talked the reunion lady into letting him borrow the only copy of our yearbook she had behind the desk and then took a long walk to the hotel desk and talked the attendant into making him a copy of my picture and lending him some scissors so he could trim it to size and giving him some tape (or glue?– see, I don’t know because I don’t have it anymore thanks to the people at guild) so he could put it on my nametag. He didn’t have to do that. Of course I know he loves me without having to rely on a collection of evidence, but it was still nice to have it. And now I don’t. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to look at my anniversary ring instead.

A little while after I came home from guild, Mr. Karen was putting something away in the utility bills folder and noticed not all the cable bills were there. Now it was his turn to be irked. The cable bill was my responsibility. Paying it was no problem, but I was also supposed to file the “keep this portion for your records” portion in the right place in the folder. That last part didn’t always happen. Much as I would like to blame someone else for that, I can’t. The system is not all that complicated; Mr. Karen even changed it so that the cable bills went in the front of the folder so I wouldn’t have to find the right section. So why did I not just open the file drawer and find the right file and put the piece of paper in the front of that file as soon as I paid the bill? Well, I would, usually, if I paid the bill at the desk under which the file drawer lived. But if I’d taken the bill downstairs because that’s where my checkbook was or to work because I was going to pay all my bills at lunch, odds were not good that the filing would happen. Once I’d paid the bill, it was off my to do list, and things that aren’t on the list rarely get done. Heck, things ON the list often don’t get done. Now that we have satellite tv, maybe I’ll do better. Maybe I’ll write “pay DirectTV and file bill in folder” on my list.

So, I’d been irked, and then Mr. Karen had been irked, so it was my turn again. I got my opportunity in the form of a houseguest who changed his plans and waited until almost the last minute to tell us for sure, and then changed them again after that, but since now it’s almost time for him to finally arrive, I need to post this and get dressed rather than venting about that. Once he’s here, maybe I won’t feel like ranting anymore anyway.

***
Almost exactly a year ago, I was looking forward to the weekend instead of being pissy about the one I was already in.