Graduation Open House 2016

[Note: Written on Saturday, Posted on Wednesday]

It was Friday night, the night before the Graduation Open House, and two men were standing in the church kitchen, apologizing profusely for the fact that the oven wasn't working.

I had gone to the church to make sure that everything was going to be ready for the party on Saturday, specifically that the tables and chairs were set out and the kitchen was ready for our use, as Cheryl wanted to bake all the cookies on the industrial-sized oven rather than our little one.  I had also brought over the cake (from Costco) and the ice cream sandwiches and the punch concentrate which we would later combine with ginger ale.

There weren't supposed to be any complications, not at this late hour.

But there they stood, the maintenance guy and one of the deacons, and it was obvious from the way the pilot light covers were lying on the floor that they were having a problem. They tried to explain what was going on, but their voices were blending in a cacophony of verbiage that made no sense. Only after a few minutes was my brain able to filter the noise from the signal and comprehend what they were talking about.

The pilot lights on the oven would not light. The top burners were fine, but they couldn’t get the oven to work. And Cheryl had specifically requested that the oven be working. She was adamant about that. Explaining to her that it wasn't working, was not going to be pleasant. The two men shrugged sympathetically at me; they were just glad they weren't going to have to do it.

That was my job.

Oh, well. Might as well get it over with. We wouldn't be able to bake the cookies in bulk like she'd planned; we'd have to do them at home, and take a bit more time, and carefully transport them from the house to the church. It wasn't going to kill us, just make things more difficult.

Cheryl would be upset, of course. It had been a long week – a long couple of weeks – leading up to the Open House and there was very little patience left in her repertoire. She was on edge, a tender branch ready to snap.  I was not looking forward to that little conversation.

{We’ll skip the chaos that ensued at home when the announcement was made...}

After dinner, Adam and I escaped drove did some shopping to purchase additional items (cookie plates and frozen treats and huge quantities of ginger ale) and then took them over to the church. The two gentlemen from before were gone. We stuffed the available refrigerators and freezers with our booty. 

Then, succumbing to a sudden curiosity, I took the oven apart to see if I could determine what was wrong and perhaps get the pilot lights to light. The first thing I discovered was that it is practically impossible to get the pilot light going unless the bottom deflector plate inside the oven is removed, exposing the pilot jet and the gas jets. Once they were open to view, it was trivial to get the pilot light going. Hmmm. The maintenance guy had been trying to light it from beneath the stove, with the deflector plate still on. And that hadn't worked. Hmmm. I put everything back together, expecting the light to go out -- but it didn't. Hmmm again. Perhaps ... perhaps the maintenance guy just didn't understand how to light pilot jets?

Occam's razor: when in doubt, go with the simplest explanation. The oven was working; I let it go at that. Besides, it didn't matter at this point. With the oven working, Cheryl could do what she wanted to do. And I could rest easier.

We went home to do just that.

::

Saturday was a lovely morning, but we were all in a panic to get everything ready so we didn’t waste any time sleeping in. I was in a hurry to get to the building, worried that someone might find my oven “fix” and try to un-“fix” it!  Luckily, no one had. It still worked. Then it occurred to me that we had forgotten about putting a sign out front so that people would know that there was an Open House here. So off to the store again, this time for poster board and stakes and big, fat Sharpies. When I got back, Cheryl and Mary arrived to start putting things together. Mary took care of the signs. I started setting up tables. Then remembered that we had no ice! So it was off to the store. Again.

Finally, it was two o’clock, time for the festivities to begin. People started arriving. Not many. Not nearly enough to make a dent in all those cookies Cheryl had made. Or the gallons of punch. Or the sheet cake.

Oh, well. In the couple of hours we were “open for business”, thirty or forty people showed up. It wasn’t the crowds we'd been hoping for, but it was a decent showing. Probably just right for a bunch of introverts like us. We enjoyed getting into deep conversations with the people who had shown up. And Deb had a good time with her friends.

After it was all over, we cleaned up and packed everything away. And then it hit us: What on earth are we going to do with all this extra food & drink?

Looks like there’ll be cookies to go with the coffee at church tomorrow.