"Lorelai, I need you for a moment."
Lorelai turned at Michel's concerned voice and put the books she was trying to alphabetize down. "What's wrong?"
"You know the convention we have scheduled for next Saturday? Well it seems that we have overbooked ourselves for the weekend."
Lorelai crossed her arms and thought for a moment, "What do we have scheduled for the day after?" Michel just looked at her and she realized how big of a problem they had. "Oh no! Not the Patterson wedding! Please don't tell me we have a convention and a wedding to pull off in one weekend!"
"I could tell you many things but I do not believe that it would solve our current problems, such as the amount of food to store, getting the rooms clean for the guests, setting up both functions and getting them down-"
Forgetting the books, she crossed the inn over to the desk and began to search for a pad and pen. She could feel her heartrate going through the roof already, along with the berating for being stupid enough to schedule two major events in one weekend. The sheer number of things that popped into her mind at that one moment to get done in just over a week were suddenly dawning on her. She had forgotten about the convention because all of the details had been finished weeks ago and the wedding she was currently meeting with the couple for details every few days.
"Michel, don't worry about next weekend right now. I am going to go in my office and figure something out, you just keep things moving. Hold all of my calls."
Michel opened his reservation book and began going about his normal activities. "What do you plan to do?"
"Make a lot of lists."
A few hours later Lorelai managed to get a staff meeting together in the dining room before it was going to be opened for dinner. "We have a big issue concerning next weekend; we have a convention and a wedding back to back. The transition needs to happen fast, and I'm going to need some of you to stay overnight to help the wedding be put together, and we're talking Roadrunner fast here people. Now I'm cancelling lunch and dinner services on Thursday and Friday in order to give the kitchen staff time to make sure all of the baking is done in time, and I will be running around all week to get all of the supplies and make final plans, so if you need anything, ask Michel as he will be doing the day to day services.
"Room cleaning will have to be done before noon on Sunday which is when the wedding guests who are staying are scheduled to arrive. I know that this is going to suck and we're all going to be tired and on short fuses for a while but we'll get this done, and then after which you can have a contest to see who gets to shoot me if I ever do this again."
"Ooh let it be me please," called somone from the back.
Lorelai glared at him, "Michel will be getting all of the final details to you throughout the week and keep you up to date. Meeting adjourned, we've got a lot of work ahead of us."
Michel followed her up to the desk and they both began going through papers for each event. Both groaned at the same time when they saw everything that needed to be done listed out on the notepad that Lorelai had almost completely filled up. "We're never sleeping again are we?" Michel groaned.
The phone chose that moment to ring and make them both feel worse. "Dragonfly Inn, Lorelai speaking."
"Lorelai? This is Sylvia."
"Oh hello, how have your wedding plans been coming?" She moved Michel over and began typing on the computer to bring up the reservations list.
"Very well, actually. I just called to let you know that Joe has agreed and that we want to have the wedding at the inn."
Lorelai smiled while inwardly she was groaning at the thought of another wedding on top of the other things piling up. "That's great, it's a date then. Now, this next week is going to be really crazy around here with another wedding coming up so why don't I give you a call when that's done and I can begin to help you out with getting things set up here?. . . Great, bye bye."
She hung up and turned to Michel who was giving her his evil stare, "I hate you, do you know that?"
"Don't worry her wedding is at the end of August, we'll have plenty of time to recuperate, and hopefully by then I will have gotten a labotomy since unlike Scully, I have much unrest."
The crowd parted like the Red Sea in Lorelai's wake among Stars Hollow's streets. They had learned over the past couple of days that until she was over with whatever was stressing her out, her phone was now an extra limb and her eyesight five feet in front of her was severly compromized. She strided down the street, holding her phone to her shoulder and writing things down on her notepad as she talked, "Michel I don't care; until this is over you, me, and anyone in my way has no outside life, and that included Paw-Paw and Chin-Chin. . . Yes I know they like Italian food. . . Aw geez, fine I give in Michel. Take the night off and I'll cover for Tobin, but I am not coming in until late tomorrow, and we're talking late late, later than Michael Jackson was to his hearing kind of late." She snapped her phone shut angriliy and shoved it in her bag before continuing to write notes to herself.
Luke saw her coming and rushed over to the door of the diner to open it; it beat having Lorelai run smack into it again and forcing him to clean it just after getting it put in. After she stumbled up the steps he gently nudged her in the direction of the counter and shut the door, going back behind it to pour her some coffee. She grunted slightly but kept writing, and his eyes bulged, "I never thought I'd see the day when you didn't inhale the coffee as soon as it was in front of you."
His comment seemed to stun her out of her funk and she shot her head up, "Oh geez how did I get here?"
"Glad to know I'm so memorable."
"Sorry I'm just distracted. Tobin isn't feeling well and can't work tonight and Michel's been doing extra hours already covering the inn himself while I run around madly so after he complained over ten e-mails, five phone calls, and three post its stuck to my car, I'm letting him have the night off and I've got the inn. Which I guess works because the flowers just came in and I need time to organize which ones are for the centerpieces and aisle decoration and unstring the lights and set up the convention room and-"
Luke cut her off by quickly kissing her. "Breathe," he commanded.
She shot him a 'why don't you know this?' look, "I can't. It takes too much time and energy away from stressing over how screwed I am this weekend and the amount of coffee I'm going to be able to get out of you before then."
"You don't need coffee you're going to be close enough to a heart attack already."
"Gee thanks; just what I want to hear."
Luke winked, "Always glad to help. Cheeseburger, fries, and pie?"
"You know me too well."
I'm going to call that it for this chapter since its been so long since I posted, but the next one should cover the wedding weekend. I don't know, my original plan for the story was to finish with LL's wedding but I guess we'll see how that goes since I'm nowhere near the thought process on that.
RnR
Snow