I Never Make Mistakes

Last Thursday was a very unsettling day for me. I had just been hostess to the Ellis Domestic Science Club the day before and was tired from all the housecleaning and planning I had done to make our meeting enjoyable and to hide all the corners I might not have gotten completely clean before my friends arrived. I was feeling good about that, but was hurrying to get ready for a much delayed visit from our grandson, wife, and three children who were due to arrive mid-afternoon to spend the 4th of July weekend with us. This involved some shopping, bringing out extra furniture such as high chairs etc, and cleaning extra rooms in the house that had escaped my frenzy in getting ready for the club.

All of this was magnified by plans and preparations for a trip to Colorado for a family reunion coming up soon and the need to work ahead on my newspaper responsibilities so that my columns and articles will be ready by deadline each Thursday and Friday.

I had taken some pictures in to the paper for next week's articles even though I had not written the articles yet. I knew I could write the articles over the weekend, but the office would not be open for me to bring pictures in for scanning when I could get into town.

In the lull on Thursday before our grandson's family arrived, I hurriedly scanned the paper to see how they had handled the senior page, which was to run on Thursday due to the Friday holiday. To my dismay the article I wrote for that day was printed on the senior page, but the illustration I had taken in for the article was not used, but two of the pictures I plan to use for this week's senior page were put in the middle of my article. Since they had no connection to what I was writing about, and printing them a week early messed up some of my plans for next week, I was VERY unhappy.

Then I looked for my Middle Age Plus column, which regularly runs on Thursdays. I wrote about how the weather and the fourth of July had been an important part of my childhood. When I looked on the usual page there was no Middle Age Plus Column. Two other columnists had their columns printed, but mine was not there.

Naturally the first reaction on that tension filled day by this usually calm, organized and thoughtful person was to leave a complaint on the poor newspaper editor's voice mail. There really was no excuse for the two errors when I had worked so hard to get everything done on time!

Today when I got ready to write my column for this week I went back to my "Sent" file on the computer to see if I could possibly use the same column this week. I found the address of the editor with the notation that I was sending the column in and that a FAX would follow. There was one big omission however. I had not sent the column.

In my hurry I had neglected to "Paste" and "Send". I have no way to know if I did FAX the column or not, but I can assume that somehow I had gotten interrupted in my routine and none of the steps were taken.

There is no way to delete a voice mail. All I can do is apologize to Lynn through her own paper and let her know that even though I regret mistakes any of us make in print, I must admit that I do make my share.

But I am going to use the pictures that you saw last week again with my articles tomorrow.

I hope I remember how to do everything the correct way.