Contemplations and a Flat Fellow Named Stanley.

I got the red jacket of rejection.

About a week ago my London Marathon ballot came in as bust. As a person just coming off a half part of me was gloriously relived, and the other part of me felt like poo.

But, I got a red jacket. It's really nice and not bright yellow (which is my normal biking jacket). All the pockets have zippers and there is a big, white, London Marathon hello-I-got-rejected logo on the front.

Now I have to consider charity. My dilemma is this: fundraising. Okay, yes, for three years I did fundraising for a living. I know how to fundraise. But:

1. I have to believe in the cause.
2. I have no real fundraising base here.

Trust me, when the red jacket of rejection arrived I immediately started looking up the charities I know I would support. Result? Almost every single one of them had already given out their places or their closing date was in a day or two. It was like being beaten charity bats while zipped up tight into the red jacket of rejection. Seriously.

So now I'm in a mental block about it. Knowing I HAVE to decide something, but worried to pieces I won't make the fundraising goal. This is on top of all the training I know I need to do to succeed.

Thank goodness I have Flat Stanley.

For anyone who ever gets the opportunity to be a Flat Stanley host, take it. Not because people will think you are strange carrying around a little paper person colored by you hometown third grader. . . or that you have to explain to the museum docents that sticking it next to the case of shrunken heads at the Pitts Rivers is educational for said third grader. . . or even because you spend up to thirty minutes positioning said paper person in such a way that he looks 'natural' in a shrub. . . do so because it's way cool.

My Flat Stanley is into wearing earth tones and has a pocket on his shirt. I've taken him all over town today and spent a lot of time adjusting him. The teacher, in her wisdom, laminated him for safe travel. Problem is that means glare if the sun catches him. Thankfully England is a cloudy place, but nonetheless there are some pictures I will need to redo on some of our more common gray days. And with it being zero week (yay Oxford speak - go look that up) we have people climbing the walls. There was a line to get into Christ Church! I've never seen that before, ever.

So mercifully all the walking and photos with Stan got some of the rejection off my mind. . . yet makes me think that if I put as much passion into the fundraising as I am into Stanley, then perhaps I should just choose a charity and make the leap.