Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The perks and perils of outsourcing

Last Saturday I hosted a Yom Kippur Break Fast for about 20 people, and this Saturday I'll be having 30 guests over as we give our daughters their Hebrew names in a shared Brit Bat ceremony. As part of my ongoing and largely unsuccessful effort to do a little less (this maternity leave has been jam-packed with activity), I decided I'm not going to cook or bake. With my mom, my in-laws and my best friend in town for the event, the last thing I need is more shopping, coordination of cook times and dishes to do.

So I called our local Cosi and ordered a mess of sandwiches, chips, salad and cookies for delivery around noon on Saturday. Imagine my surprise when they showed up today with the food delivery. Fortunately they acknowledged the error was theirs and promised they would still come as promised on Saturday.

With the cooking taken care of and my house cleaner scheduled to come on Thursday, all I needed to do was buy a bottle of Manischewitz. Right? Wrong. Isabel called to say she can't come this week, which means Josh and I are on deck to give the place a top-to-bottom scouring before folks start arriving on Friday.