The Most Ridiculous Week

This time last week we were relaxing, enjoying the 4th of July, the sporadic rain showers, seeing Love & Mercy (which I highly recommend, btw) and soaking up time in this quiet life of ours. How innocent it all seemed at the time.

Let it be known that Monday July 6th started my real education into the world of PR and Communications.

I spent the EN. TIRE. DAY. dealing with a sensitive issue that happened over the weekend. Now I obviously cannot go into details here, but I assure you it was a time suck of the grandest level. It was phone calls and those “hard conversations” and appeasing this group and appeasing that group and putting out fires left and right so fast that I looked like I was doing a stomp dance. I tried to remind myself-this is what I signed up for. This is what it means to be in this line of work. Crisis communications isn’t for the weak. And that worked. Part of the time. As the day wrapped up well past the official work cut off time, I thought to myself “What bullshit this was. I had REAL WORK to do today.”

And that my friends, is what you call a challenge to the PR gods.

And the PR gods responded with:

CHALLENGE:ACCEPTED. bitch.

and dropped the mic.

On Tuesday I got a phone call from a producer at MSNBC. They had seen an article recently printed in the NYTimes magazine about our top cookie seller who broke the world record and has a giant lifetime goal that she’s working on. They want her in NYC on Friday to tape a segment for one of their shows. Is that possible?

This article interview was done way back right after cookie season ended…when it made sense. But it went live in July. Does not make sense. And then it got picked up by several outlets like it was a new story.

I sent the media request to our national org and after eleventy million emails and phone calls between myself, my supervisors, the Mar/Com team at GSUSA, the producer and PA at MSNBC, the girl and her mother on Wednesday, the interview was green lighted by GSUSA and I was booking a flight to go as our council rep.

I left Thursday at 10:45am and headed to Dallas. Switched planes and headed to Philly. Where I got stuck for many consecutive hours. But then I got to NYC. close to midnight. And at the end of the tunnel where I went to locate my carry-on that I had to end up checking…there stood Elizabeth. We had plans to meet when my original schedule had me at the hotel at 8pm. When the clock hit midnight I knew there was no way. And yet…there she was.

She who had already taken off her bra and put on her soft pants for the night, took a cab and met me at the luggage and hugged my neck and we talked a mile a minute and she knows me well enough to know that I was sideways and scratchy and that didn’t bother her at all. We hugged and talked more and then I got in my cab and went to midtown and she got in her cab and went back home to Brooklyn. She spent X amount of bucks to come hang out for thirty minutes TOPS and say I love you.

As I rode in my cab into the city, I finally took a breath and got emo about the whole day.

I got to the hotel, checked in with our girl and mom who were traveling later in the day than I, and at last contact were stuck on the tarmac in Chicago. They got to the hotel and we were all safe in nyc and had plans to strategize over breakfast.

Let me tell you also that I hadn’t eaten since the early morning. I wanted to eat in Philly but they kept pushing my flight back by 30 minutes and that never gave me time to get to food and back. So I was hungry. But it was too late for room service and the mini-bar didn’t offer anything I wanted so I just decided to sleep.

The next morning we schlepped our luggage to breakfast, we had coffee we worked the talking points that had been sent to me, we worked the outline that had been sent to me and our 13 yr old was ready.

30 Rock is cool. Especially when you get to by-pass the tourists and get your super legit name tag badge. We went upstairs to the studios and it was great. We saw several people that have shows on the channel, (I used to watch MSNBC religiously but I’ve quit watching political tv because it’s just all so ridiculous, so I had no idea who anyone was. I am so not their niche market!) Our girl did great, the segment filmed and in an hour we were out the door in our car headed back to LaGuardia.

There was more stuff that happened ya’ll but I’m too tired to even think about it. We got home into OKC and I got to my Casa McClellan after 11pm and just crashed.

This morning we were hosting one of our signature events with a major curriculum announcement that I’d *hopefully organized media for so I went in to work. One of the news channels did in fact arrive, and we had several other contingents there to work with so that was good.

The 2:00 memorial service for our dear Macie’s momma was the final piece of this puzzle, and as of right now, 4:10 pm I am worked. I’m headed to the couch with a cold beer and some Parks & Rec and I swear…

As God is my witness I will NEVER challenge the PR gods again!.