This is how we do it

This has been a rough week, with Issues from one person with both my husband and myself.  (Prayers definitely requested.)  And a parish council member's mother died.  Her funeral was this morning.  I tried to get the kids ready to go to Orthros which was before the funeral, but my husband started Orthros early and we came late, so we didn't get any of it.

The kids and I went home to have lunch and nap afterwards while my husband went to the cemetery and meal afterwards, and I looked into jumping through some medical hoops.  The online registration system wouldn't accept my birthdate, today was the last day to register, but I found someone on the phone who made arrangements.  Then we go to get our blood drawn, but somehow there's no appointment for either of us, and they're not taking walk-ins as their A/C is out, but we can go to another place and have our blood drawn ... if we hurry, since they close in an hour and it takes half an hour to get there and the average wait time is 20 minutes.

So we go to the second place and I'm still not in the system and the lady at the front desk doesn't have me in the computer at all, so I called the same phone number and "Scott" put me in the system from there.  (I still can't register, so I don't know whether I can get my results and/or qualify for the survey and following steps, etc.)  Then, after our blood was drawn, the phlebotomist said he thought we were done, and there wasn't anyone at the front desk, so we load the kids and the double stroller into the car and drive off ... until there's a guy who races up beside us and says that the lady had run out the door to flag us back for something, so we went back and signed paperwork.  Whew.

At least we could now go home and relax.  My husband hadn't scheduled anything for this evening, making the service for the day an Orthros so he'd have some time to relax before Holy Week.  Except that the priest for the next-nearest church had told his parishioners that we'd be having an Akathist again tonight.  No worries, he said later this week: he'd tell everyone and nobody from his church would come.  We got home and there was an email from another priest attached to that church whom my husband confesses to which said that they could set up a time when he came to the Akathist service tonight.  And he didn't get any of my husband's (three) phone calls.

So my husband slips into his cassock and drives over to church... where there are three or four next-nearest parishioners and one of ours (who had to work for all the previous Fridays and whose daughter is on the way) ... so my husband calls me and says they'll do some sort of service, Vespers or Compline, so, without thinking, I have Teddy put on his shoes and snatch Lucia up, and we go to church.  A little while into the service, the other priest comes with his wife, too.

Honestly, this was not how I planned the day at all.  I imagined being this tired next Friday.  Our house is a wreck, we have almost nothing planned for Easter baskets (his is ordered, saying "Radio Flyer" on the side), I have a birthday something to plan (with the cutest little honeycomb baking pan that just arrived today), and there's a horrible, niggling thing in my head that I've forgotten something but I can't think what.