Checkmate!

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned lots of times that the Dog Walker is trying to earn all the Merit Badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. This is a huge deal for him and we are on the brink of accomplishment!

We had it all planned out…last Sunday was the Court of Honor and badges were presented. The Dog Walker received 17. The plan was to have him earn all of the badges except one. Then we could schedule his final Court of Honor/Party and he would be extremely cool!

So things were rolling according to plan. We scheduled his party for September 11 and sent out the invitations last week. The blue cards were in and the badges were done. One of the things he has always wanted to do is give a gift to each counselor or person who really helped him achieve his goal. So last week we went over to Beck’s Leather and Craft. We had arranged with them to make 100 key chains (at an amazing price!). It took us a while to stamp them with an eagle, then cover each one with a satin sheen.

When we got home, I got online to print a list of badges so we could put a counselor’s name with each one. As I was scrolling through the list, formatting it to make things easy, my eyes read each name…American Business, American Labor…Basketry, Chess, Climbing…wait a second. I was stunned to see a badge that we had not earned! Chess was never on the list…what’s up with that?

I punched in the keys for Meritbadge.org. Sure enough, it was a new badge and its release date was scheduled for September 10, one day before we were planning to share with our friends and family the Dog Walker’s successful achievement of a goal that he had not quite completed because now there was a new badge. This was not good.

After several stressful moments, I discovered that the requirements would be released online on September 7. In the meantime, we are playing lots of Chess at our house. I’m the resident Chess Champion here, although maybe that’s not saying much. I keep telling the Dog Walker that I got pretty good because my older brother beat me for over 100 straight games. You can learn a lot by losing…

That doesn’t make him feel any better when the only person he has managed to beat has been Prima Donna. Sport is actually pretty good. He even beat my sweetie today (with just a tiny bit of help). So, as long as we can anticipate most of the requirements, we will be celebrating next Sunday after the Dog Walker passes off his last badge and then the newly released last badge. If not…checkmate!

My brain hurts!