Today

Today… our nation watched a new president take his oath to finish the legalities of getting into the white house for the next 4 years. Those who know me know that I am not a fan. We’ll see what happens.

Today… I spent some time going thru bills to pay, filing papers away & tossing out stuff that has outlived its purpose. Well, by tossing out I actually mean tossing into the recycle pile. 95% of what I went thru went there. Now I have a few neat piles that need attention on the side part of my desk. A sales tax form for Nicole’s Visions, the sales records to go thru & add up, a jury duty form the hubby has to finish filling out & a growing pile of coupons. It looks much better than it did this morning.

Today… I did another load of laundry. It seems never ending anymore. One of the things on the list of going natural is to find out what works to gets clothes clean. And soft too. I’m looking forward to getting into a house so we can see about having a clothes line. I’d like that. I miss the smell of line dried clothes. Especially from spring to fall.

Today… I feel better in my mind. I’ve had days where I feel like I have no purpose. Like it doesn’t matter if I do anything. Today was a bit better. Maybe it was the sunshine the other day. Maybe it’s the fact I get to see Amy Wednesday & Cindy on Thursday. Maybe it’s because after doing the bill stuff it doesn’t look as bad as we thought. Maybe it’s because I’m slowly moving forward in several directions. Maybe it’s because after cleaning up my desk I feel more in control of my life. Or… Maybe it’s just because I know I have such a loving & devoted hubby who always knows just when I need to hear I Love You.

'eh'

I think all the 90 to nothing has worn me down mentally. I’m feeling rather ‘eh’ today. With such fun & positive things going on, it feels like I should be all chipper & cheerful & whatnot. Well, if there were sales at the Drop Dead Fabulous store, maybe. If I already had everything in place for the bra event, maybe. If my hubby were not going thru one of his down swings, maybe. If I had even a sale on Etsy, maybe. But, none of those things are happening right now so I’m just ‘eh’.

I just downed a whole Mounds candy bar without any thought. I could easily eat another one if I had it. Thankfully I only grabbed one at the checkout a bit ago.

On the surface I can have the world thinking I’m on top of the world. Sometimes, that gets tiring. Like today. I know it’ll pass tho.

I’m bummed because I can’t find my Avon face stuff anymore. Leave it to them to discontinue the line. Dammit. I’m an adult (or so they tell me) & I still get acne or pimples every now & then, & I have oily facial skin. So the Avon Solutions line of stuff called True PoreFection was great. I used the toner on occasion. I used the face wash stuff on occasion. But I used the Oil Free Skin Clearing Lotion almost every night. I only wash my face with water most of the time. After drying off, I put a bit of this on my face before bed. It really helps clear my skin & it even cuts down on the oil for awhile. Well, my last bottle is about gone. Now I can’t find anymore. I’ve emailed the local Avon lady to see if she happens to have a stash of them. Or if there is a replacement product they now carry. I hope so.

Dang I hate this blah feeling crap. There is so much I need to be doing & I don’t wanna do any of it. I really need to snap out of it.

I think in just a bit I’ll go out & get my flowers watered. I should have done that yesterday. With the warmer weather we’ve had I really have to pay more attention & remember to water them regular like I was doing all summer. I slacked off a little when it cooled down, & it’s hard ot get back in the habit now. Soon as I do, it’ll cool off again.

I can’t believe how fast the year is going by. I’m looking at how soon we go on vacation, and then open the store & it’s scary! No, vacation time is not scary. Being ready to open the store is.

So there you have some random babbling from me. Not much else going on that I feel like writing about today. Guess I should put on the happy face so I can positively promote the bra thing again. Off I go.

Where has the time gone again??

I can’t believe I haven’t written a regular blog post / journal entry since the first. Allot of my time & energy has been in getting this bra collection thing off the ground. I haven’t even thought about writing just because. Weird. That I can recall right now, there isn’t too much in the daily life to write about. More of the same for the most part.

We had our first meeting of the minds for the mall store on Saturday. 2 of the girls who did show up only stayed a little while. The other girl, Amy, stayed beyond everyone else. We ended up talking about many other things after we went down the list of things for the store. I’m kind of bummed that not everyone showed. This has been planned for a long enough while that if this was important enough, you think they would make the effort. I understand why 2 of them didn’t come. They both contacted me to let me know too. One other one … just didn’t even bother contacting me. She called long after & asked how things went & all that. Sigh. I know things will be fine in the end tho. I’ll have to work on some things for that this week sometime & get them out to everyone.

Connie & I went down to the market again Saturday morning. This time we were on a mission tho, to help recruit people for the Safeway craft bazaar thing she is helping organize. Was nice to see everyone again. Next Saturday is Taste of the Harvest. That’ll be fun to go to, as a spectator this time.

My friend Joe has worked on getting him & the groups he supports into more local events & functions this past week. He got into not only the Taste of the Harvest, but also Wings & Wheels. So that is very cool for him. While I was taking him a few places one day, we ended up in the office of Annette Pennington. She is someone I know I’ve mentioned when I was still all involved in the market. She really is a nice lady. She was happy to help Joe, & knew she knew me from somewhere. I told her where, & then told her I was no longer affiliated with them at all. And of course, after asking why, I told her. She was in complete agreement that there are WAY too many politics going on with the market & the board. She was amazed at the amount even. For such a small town, it was unreal. I agree. But anyway, she told me that I should be selling my work down there. I told her I couldn’t afford it. She offered to give me a better rate, but I declined. I have too much on my plate to spend the money on a booth in hopes of making some money. We’re looking forward this year, to being just people for that weekend.

I now have a lot of my stuff in the Drop Dead Fabulous shop. Laura is so excited to have me there too. She’s been such a wonderful & supportive person not only with my photography, but with the whole bra thing. It’s fantastic.

I worked hard to get 100 samples made for a Pagan Pack event. I made 100 magnets, like the ones I made ofr the Friendship box our Etsy team is doing. Only for this one, I wrote Blessed Be on them all with a silver sharpie. They look cool. I also donated a couple 8x10 matted prints & a few cards. The big event is the Salem Witches Ball in Salem, MA. It is the biggest event of this nature in the US. Let’s hope my sites see some traffic from these things.

My mind is racing but I don’t know what to say. Figures. There is more I could write but it’s a lot of stuff business related. I know that gets boring. And .. I’m working on keeping some of that stuff separate so I can post about those things in my Blogger business blog. As for personal stuff… money is tight. The dog is weird as usual. We’re getting excited about the trip to FL. Love is good. Time is going by too fast. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get things done.

With that, I’m done! I’m tired today … could be from the afternoon fun . . . Or just cuz I’ve been going 90 to nothing all week.

Time continues to fly by

And just that fast the end of August escaped me & here we are in September already. I had planned to write a bit more about our Labor Day weekend, but it seems the month ended before I had a chance to get it logged in the August file.

We had quite a nice weekend. After a slow start Saturday morning we ended up deciding to go to Deception Falls. Pack some snacks, load the car, & off we go. Dog in tow even. It was about a 90 minute ride to get there. We even had to pass thru a bit of rainy icky stuff up on Steven’s Pass. But things leveled out & we had wonderful weather when we got there. Well, I say wonderful … it was mostly overcast & it did try to drizzle once. But to me it was perfect. I had one of my kids, & my hubby with me. I had great light for general pictures of the forest & the falls. No bright sunlight to try & compensate for when snapping off endless pix.

So the falls were nice. The forest loop trail was even better. I think I enjoyed myself more in the forest walk than just seeing the falls. As we wandered thru the forest, I felt a photo book coming out of me. So, we’ll see if I can make that materialize.

After the falls, we headed back towards home but made a stop at another place. It was called The Iron Goat Trail. What a cool place. It is a trail built right over what used to be where a railroad ran. I’ll have to get more info on it so I can write about it correctly. The walk we took there was really cool. We got to see what was left of a wall from an 1800 foot long snow shed & part of a tunnel. Neat stuff. We plan to go back to explore other parts of that trail too. Some of the other areas have more cool “ruins” from a time long ago. Like 1916 long ago!

We hung out Saturday evening doing not much, after our long day out exploring. Oh .. I took 169 images at Deception Falls and 62 at the Iron Goat. That also includes taking the same scene multiple times while changing settings. So afterwards, I took 139 & 45 respectively. I haven’t gone thru them yet to see how many of those I’ll end up keeping.

Sunday Connie worked. We went to the Unitarian service. It was their annual drumming service. Oh how cool that was. My friend Amy was there, with her daughter. We saw Johnny from the market but didn’t get to say hello. He’s such a cool dude. Nicknamed, or known as Johnny Bamboo, he is working on getting his own clothing line (I think) of clothes made from bamboo. Not everyday that some nice looking guy tells you “here, feel my shirt!” The service was really neat tho. It wasn’t the same drumming feeling of a Pow-Wow, but it was cool. Afterwards Tim was chatting with the guy who heads the drumming group during the week there. I think he may try going to see what it’s like. Makes me happy. I like seeing him make new friends & get involved in stuff.

After some lunch, we ended up wandering into town to get a couple things from Wal-Mart. After that we met Joe & his family down by the loop trail on the Wenatchee side. Was nice to have a reason to go take the dog out. Tho after her very long & exciting outing the day before, she had plenty of exercise for the weekend already. Took a few more pix …. I know, as if the well over a 100+ wasn’t enough right? I seem to go thru spurts.

Today was another good day. After a quick & easy breakfast, Tim & I worked on cleaning out our other fish tank. It was time for a complete tank cleaning. But hey, knowing that fish water was good for plants, I knocked off “outside plant watering” from my to-do list!

Before the fish tank stuff, as we were sitting here at our respective computers in the morning, I got a wonderful phone call. Laura had a chance to see my websites & check out some of my work. Who is Laura? She is the Life Coach who owns In Touch Life Strategies & Drop Dead Fabulous (we'll have to get her online, or at least get some pix up there). We had stopped & chatted with Laura & Rhonda, the wonderful lady who makes her own scented lotions & also runs the store the day we wandered the sidewalk sales downtown. They have transformed what was our old Metaphysical shop. So she is a lady who deals with a higher end clientele, & likes nice things. She likes my work! We had talked about me bringing some stuff by in a couple weeks. Well, she wanted to see them now! When she called this morning, she said my stuff was “stellar”. How cool is that? So I spent about an hour getting a bit of everything together as samples to show her. From 1 this afternoon, until 330, we sat & talked while I showed them my stuff. I have a feeling my stuff is going to sell very well in their shop.

I’m excited. I feel like I’m turning a corner here. I have finally closed the farmer’s market chapter of my business life & now I’m opening a whole new chapter. She is offering me a great commission rate. For that I also get her “marketing the shit out of my stuff”. Her words! We have agreed that she will be the exclusive carrier of my items in town. She wants people to have to come to her to get my artwork. And, my prices are too low. She has some of the same feelings that Marshal was trying to get across to me before. If your prices are much lower than other artists, people will indeed wonder what is wrong with yours. Got it. She will be helping me figure out a better “in range” price for a few of my things.

After all that excitement I got home to my honey being in pain. Damn. Not good. I hate when he hurts. He had one of his lovely shooting pains in his lower back that then shoots down his leg. We were supposed to go to Joe’s for a BBQ. I told him if he wanted to cancel, we would. No biggie. Joe would certainly understand. But, being the guy he is, we went. It was nice to go visit. The food & company were both good. We only wish our trip home was as easy as walking next door into our own house. But, that’s another vent.

So, I have my work cut out for me between now & the holidays. I need to have stock not only for the mall, but for Drop Dead Fabulous! What a fun & exciting problem to have. Looks like my week is shaping up to be busy. This post has links ... I'll have to make the next one with some pictures ...

And quick as that it’s Friday already.

And quick as that it’s Friday already. Last real post was on Monday night. Funny how fast time goes by.

Got my hair trimmed on Wednesday I think it was. It’s back to being shorter & cuter. I like it. Some of the bounce is back from my perm too. I think I’m ready to color it again. No idea exactly what color tho.

Thursday evening I went to a belly dance class. It is designed for weight loss. Slow & easy. Made for folks who are recovering from surgery, or are shy or just want to maybe lose some weight. OMG what fun. This was my second week going. I feel like such an uncoordinated person. I’m determined to learn tho. I love this. It feels fantastic when you’re doing it. Not to mention the thought of it turns my honey on!! A couple of us are going to try to get together outside the class to practice more. The class is only once a week, but hey for $2.50 a class… you can’t beat that. And it’s put on my one of the ladies who is very active in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She’s also the lady who does the Buddhist meditations. That’s something else I’m thinking of looking into down the road a little.

This morning Connie & I went to the local Costume Shop. What a fun place. It’s full of not only belly dance stuff, but actual costumes & ballet stuff too. Oh the money I could spend in there. Since we are students we get a 10% discount on our belly dance outfits. Hey, it covers the tax so that helps. Connie grabbed a hip scarf for herself but I could not decide on one I liked. So I’m going to go back in there wearing an outfit I would like the scarf to match. Figure that may help me decide. Once we buy one, we’ll check into just how hard it would be to make our own. That could be so much fun, especially with all those jingly coins!!

So Thursday morning we lost the reed fish. Not sure exactly why. Everything in the tank was perfect. Even took the water to be tested. It’s possible he just stressed out & didn’t make it. Major bummer. Everyone else seems fine for the time being.

.....Insert a 3+ hour break ……

Oh my, oh my. Gotta love it when the man comes home an hour early ….. and the house is empty …..

Afterwards we splurged & went out for Chinese. Now he’s sitting in front of his puter … & here I am. Again. I’ve now totally lost whatever else I had planned to write. Funny how sex will do that. Hopefully we have a fun & full weekend.