PT Oh No!

So I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I'm serving on the PTO board as Stewardship Coordinator.  It has been a lot of fun so far and not that hard.  (My kind of job!)  However, several weeks ago, our current PTO President told us that her husband had just accepted a job with the University of Texas and they were moving back to Austin.
When I got that email, I immediately pulled out our PTO bylaws to see who was next in line.  We didn't have a vice president so I was curious as to who would fill her role.  The bylaws state that if a vacancy occurs in the office of president, a current PTO Executive Board officer will be selected by the Executive Board.  So that meant that 5 of us could potentially be the new president.

Whew!  That was four other people better qualified than myself to tackle this position.  I breathed a small sigh of relief.

And then I got another email from another board member that stated due to her work schedule, she was going to have to resign.  And then I heard from another member that she might be moving in March because of her husband's job.

And then at the meeting last night, one of the other members stated that she would love to be PTO President in two years when her youngest was in Kindergarten and her husband was hopefully done working 80 hour weeks.  But she would not be able to handle the role of president now.

So that left me and one other woman.  And I think the other woman would be PERFECT for this job.  BUT, she's the current treasurer.  And you can't be treasurer AND president...um conflict of interest anyone??  And we felt like we would have a hard time finding someone to be treasurer so it made sense to leave her there.

And guess who that left?  Yes.  That's right.  Me.

And y'all.  I'm going to be honest and say that I am scared to death about the prospect.  My two biggest fears in life are public speaking and heights.  Please don't ever put me up on a bridge to give a speech because I might just faint dead away.

I told them that I would do it, but that I did not want to run the general board meetings - because all those people are public and I would have to be speaking in front of them and I'm already breaking out into a cold sweat thinking about it.  (When I had to introduce myself at the last general meeting and explain my role, I got flustered and felt like I sounded like a blooming idiot.)

The treasurer and other members said that they would be glad to run the board meetings and with that caveat, I agreed.

On the way home from the meeting, I was in a daze, wondering what I had just done.  The current PTO President is really good.  She's got a lot of great ideas and a strong vision for the PTO and she's just got so much energy and....big shoes to fill.  Big. Shoes.

Luckily for me though, she has the year pretty much planned out so at this point, it's basically execution of the plans. I hope and pray I can do a good job. 

And I think this is going to be me for the rest of the year: