Day 17: non coincedence--heart vice cashier.

So this non-coincidence is very upsetting and needs background information as usual.

The past 2 days I have been a Back-Pack monster. My churches goal is to give away 300 backpacks to Slavic village kids this Saturday!! We collected 125 from church folks so far.  I'm the excited organizer of the chaos and so with donation money in hand I set out on my adventure.  I bought 125 more backpacks and school supply stuffing yesterday. Such a simple thing to write but this was no easy task. No store just has 125 backpacks sitting there to buy. Glimpses of day include: cashier checking out 180 notebooks INDIVIDUALLY, emptying 4 Walgreen's shelves of 39 cent pencil boxes, ringing out 50 backpacks from a cosmetic counter,  counting 800 folders at Marcs. My faithful companion and I went to 12 stores. I always wanted to be on a shopping spree show when I was a kid. Shopping til you dropping..is actually pretty rough.  We were aiming for 300 but even I in all my scrimping couldn't squeeze 50 more backpacks.

I embraced the 250 and thanked God for all the generosity. I just really hoped for 300. Anyway, today I had to reverse shop (which is so not as fun) and return a few to many of this and pick up a few more of that. I had 50 extra 1 subject 20 cent notebooks from Walmart and thought I'll return them and pick up a few more backpacks to even the age groups. I needed to go to Target (20 cent pencil sharpeners), Walgreens (still needed more 39 cent pencil boxes), Marcs (return 100 folders), post office (half.com sell) and Kmart (25 cent crayons). POOOOR JOVI.

I wasn't going to stop at Walmart because 50 notebooks could easily find a home in any of the 240ish backpacks that are in my friend's living room right now. Walmart was not in the plan. I pulled in Walmart anyway. I hate when my car does that!  I thought fine..may as well return the notebooks and see if they have more backpacks...maybe we'll get 50 more somehow.

I walked in the door and rolled my notebook filled cart into customer service.

"MS. MOSS!!!!"

'Awwwee.' (My heart instantly gets all soft and mushy but no one can tell in Steelyard Walmart.)  'Hi Diamond..' (spelled: Dy' mond, I think.)

She was my poor cashier who had to return 50 notebooks and my former student who acted like this was completely normal because I was always doing weird stuff in class. We chatted about school, about her old friends, and her future plans. I got sooo sad.

I pushed my cart away and wanted to cry. I miss my students. I really miss my students. I can't even teach right now if I wanted too. I didn't want to feel like crying because then I just get really mad because of my unspoken job mess.

Then I get a call from a glorious generous lady (who didn't know how many backpacks we had), "Hey, I want to go shopping. I'm thinking 50 more backpacks. What else do you need?"

(Now remember I just returned 50 notebooks because I didn't have 50 more backpacks.)

"Well", I said to her while I was soberly drove away from Walmart and off to another store, "I need 50 notebooks to go in the backpacks. They are 20 cents at Walmart."

UGH! Why did I return those right now??!
Why did I have to run into a student that derailed my focus right now?
Why can't I just go back to teaching?!?
Why didn't she call me yesterday to tell me she wanted to go shopping? 
WHOOHOOOO 300 backpacks!!!

That was just a really weird coincidence.