At the last AWC board meeting, we were discussing the seeming apathy of our club members who aren’t signing up for or participating in many of the activities that are being up on the calendar by our hard-working activities officers. It’s hard organizing activities; it’s a total crapshoot. You never know what’s going to work and what isn’t…some years things get a great turn-out and the next year the same thing has to be cancelled. There are so many factors: time of year, day of week, whether the activity costs money, whether it falls after payday, whatever. You just try and hope for the best.
All of us have been noticing a sort of general malaise this year, though. Even my sushi nights that used to see 20 sign-ups are now lucky to get 2…besides me and my 2 sushi-fiend kids. I tried to soothe the understandably upset activities officers by explaining that the club just goes through phases and apparently this is one of those years where it’s hard to motivate people. “Maybe too many things have cost money lately,” said one. People aren’t even signing up for St. Patrick’s Day Dinner this year, even though it’s usually a big draw. I suspect it’s because we couldn’t get a reservation at the usual place and had to take the other Irish pub in Malmö which doesn’t get hopping until quite late.
One board member said she’d put together a survey asking club members what activities they want to see and maybe get some idea of why they aren’t participating. I tried to tell them: we’ve done surveys before, more than once and the answers always vary so much it doesn’t help. They can’t get a babysitter, they don’t have a car, it costs money, they were otherwise engaged. All the regular reasons why any of us don’t sign up for or go to something, despite our best intentions to be more involved.
I don’t go to or organize nearly as many events and activities as I used to, myself. Partly it’s because the kids are older and partly it’s because we’re just too busy with other things. I look back now and boggle at the amount of things I used to do. My calendar is STILL full, but these days it’s with my kids’ activities, not with my own. Of course, I still schedule things: bookworms, sushi nights, the monthly meeting, lunches in Lund. And Little Big Bookgroup with the kids. Most of those are every other month or even every other month and a half, so I typically only have 2 AWC events during any given month, if that.
But guess what’s pulling in the sign-ups? MY PIE NIGHT tomorrow, that’s what! YAY PIE! PIE WINS! So far, there are 35 people (including kids) signed up and my cousin Cate has told me she’s coming even though she hasn’t actually put her name on the list, so that brings the total to 38! There’s always someone who doesn’t show or gets sick so I expect we’ll still be around 35, but still: WIN! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm pie!
I’ve been planning that we would make 4 pies: 2 taco pies and 2 caramel pies, but tonight Anders was wondering why the heck we need to make 2 of each when there are so many people coming.
Anders: “How many people are coming?”
Liz: “36-ish”
Anders: “That’s 72 pies!”
Liz: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Then I explained that, wait a minute, it’s not 1 pie per person, it’s 1-2 pies per FAMILY. Almost half of the people signed up are kids. So it’s only maybe 15 pies. I might be bad at math but I’m not THAT bad. And I told one friend to bring a gigantic salad and cucumber/carrot sticks for the kids. So maybe we only need to make 2 pies, 1 each, but I bet you anything everyone is going to want to TRY every damn pie. And if they do that, there won’t be any leftovers. How sad.
So! 4 pies it is. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
“When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy.”—Jack Handy