Oh where, oh where?

This morning marks the third day that little Harry has not come home. I fear he may be truly gone this time. He went out as usual before breakfast on Friday, but never returned. As sad as I am, I am hoping this means that he finally found his way home to where he belonged in the first place, before he came to visit on January 18.

Ozzie moped around the house for a day, refused to eat and generally sighed a lot. He's over it now.

I spent yesterday at the shop, painting, painting, painting. It is starting to come together in a swirl of light, bright color! While I lost myself in the meditation of brushstokes, MaryAnn and Chaz moved display cases, Hannah and Maggie cleaned and dusted. Today, we are going to try and finalize some of the yarn orders.

Here's the dilemma: dozens of manufacturers, each carrying 30 different yarns in a multitude of fibers and blends, some of which come in 300 different colors. Then there's the budget, the space, the reviews (some yarns pill, bleed, split, smell bad, according to the online reviews), the Spring/Summer season versus Fall/Winter, trying to put together a good mix of weights, gauges, and fibers. Add to that the patterns, the books, the samples that need to be knitted...my brain hurts!

It's all very fun, very exciting. A new venture!

I'm going to the dump...is there anything you want?

Today was swamp-out-the-garbage day. I had the ton of shredded paper Kellie manufactured from the To Be Shredded Bucket (3 years worth), the five-foot stack of catalogs, magazines, and junk mail that proliferated over the holidays, 3 weeks of kitchen and office and bathroom garbage cans, two giant boxes of flattened cardboard, dirty furnace filters, broken plant pots, 3 dog food bags full of plastic milk jugs for recycling, a broken car window mechanism and a strange collection of foam scraps. I literally had to lean on the rear hatch to stuff it all into the car. It felt like sitting on a bulging suitcase to close it.

When I arrived at the dump and popped the hatch, my detritus spilled out onto the ground, a great lumbering garbage-monster emerging from its den. Our dump has separate dumpsters for paper, plastic, cardboard, metals, construction materials, appliances and just plain old pedestrian trash. So, I traveled the rounds, depositing my various bags and boxes of discards.

But then, what's this? Nice 12-inch ceramic tiles sitting in the construction dumpster? Can I have these? I snagged up about 30 square feet of ceramic tile, it should be good for something around here. Maybe I'll make a mosaic table, or replace the carpet in the entryway with tile, or who knows.

This is why my house is a mess. Even when I go to get rid of stuff, I still come home with more.

Success!

I had a great shopping experience yesterday--just what we needed for just what I was willing to pay! And it all fit in the car! (With some rope to hold the hatch closed, that is). Lunch with Melanie was fun, and the dogs didn't complain too loudly when I finally got home. Life is good.

I woke up this morning thinking it was Friday (it's not), and wondering if I could get to Kingsport to buy dog food and get an acupuncture appointment before the meeting. Once I had my coffee, I realized I am at the library today. This time dislocation is only going to get worse, I fear.

My plan is to cut my library time down to one day per week when March begins. Bill will be coming home, the shop will be in chaos getting ready to open, and once we do open, I will want to spend most of my week there. With three partners and a six-day week, we can split up the time so that none of us has to be there every day. At first though, we will probably want to.

The sun is shining, the bassett is baying--I've got to get moving on my day.

Scavenger Day

I'm off to Mo-Town (Morristown) today, hunting for a kitchen sink base cabinet, pegboard display hooks, any furniture that looks like it would fit aesthetically into the knitting lounge area of the shop, and to have lunch with my friend Melanie.

The doggies will not be happy with me being gone for most of the day (again!), but that's the way it goes--it's a dog's life, right? At least they are getting along with each other better. Ozzie licks Harry's face (leading me to ask, "what has Harry gotten into now?"), Harry runs around Ozzie acting goofy and playful. It's now a house with two dogs, for better or worse.

Tomorrow, Spring is supposed to arrive. No, really! The temp is predicted to be in the mid-to-high 60s. I'm ready. I am SO ready.

Other than that, it's just day-to-day stuff. Working, sleeping, knitting, planning, and keeping the dogs at bay. Waiting for Bill. Sorting through my millions of Post-it notes.

Brrrrrrrr...........

I'm actually COLD. I have spent most of the winter in T-shirts and capris, but it's downright chilly here now. Yesterday, I was snowed in and couldn't get down my driveway to go to work at the library. Luckily, Peggy substituted for me, and today it looks like the sun may get warm enough to melt the ice off the mountain.

My head is spinning from all the details required to get the business going. We've got about six weeks until the opening, and are starting to feel the money pinch as we make up tentative orders of everything we want to carry in the shop. Too many choices! Not enough money!

This weekend, we'll be blanketing the town with our flyers. Next week, we're going to start on painting the bathroom and the following week is our big Kick-off membership meeting. Then the painter and electrician will be coming in to do the big work the last week of February. Then we'll be painting all the display boards, moving the cases, arranging the space, learning the cash register software...well, the details never end. Thankfully, I'm not having any trouble sleeping, though my partners say they are spending their nights tossing and turning.

In the middle of all of this, my hard-working husband is hopefully due off the ship the first week of March. I have really missed him this time, though we talk every morning now, since he's in the shipyard in Singapore). It will be nice to have someone warm to hug when he comes home.

Murphy's Law

I go to the dentist regularly now. Back in my twenties, I thought I had no money to spend on dentists. I am paying for that decision now, thirty years later.

My dentist has mapped my entire mouth and come up with a plan. My insurance will only pay 50% of two crowns per year. So each year, we pick my two "worst" teeth and work on them. This year, I chose #14 and #15, mostly because they were right next to each other and we could get two done with one dose of local anesthetic. I have temps on them now, and the crowns should be back from the elf who is sculpting them sometime next week.

So of course this weekend I broke #31. There isn't a feeling in the world quite like chomping down on your sandwich, then feeling and hearing a giant CRUNCH that sends the brain two simultaneous messages: "WTF?" and "THAT'S MY TOOTH!"

So now I need a repair, and I've used up my insurance for the year.

Sigh.

Sunny's Blog

No sooner do I get back into the swing of blogging here again, I have been assigned to write Sunny's Blog on www.sunnysideyarns.com too!

I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to manage TWO blogs, after my experience with Blogger's Block in December and January, but I'm giving it a go for now.

We are very busy with the store--everything from repairing furniture to planning budgets, agonizing over what to order, writing procedure manuals, trying to think of every little contingency and realizing the futility of that process.

I fall into bed with relief and exhaustion, my head filled with lists and to-do's.

Harry's Home

I let the dogs out for their morning duties yesterday, and Harry never came back. I finally gave up looking for him about midnight. This morning I was trying to get used to the idea that he wouldn't be part of the house anymore, while telling myself that I wasn't really that invested.

About 9 am, there was a scratching at the door, and a sad little floppy-eared dog slunk in. He was cold and hungry, and as soon as I fed him, he climbed wearily up on the futon and went to sleep.

I was surprised that for the 24 hours he was gone, Ozzie seemed quite bereft. He wandered around the house whining and whistling, and wanted to go out more than usual. Now that the bassett is home, Ozzie is content to go back to ignoring him as much as possible.

Dogs. They get into your heart, even when you don't want them to.

Hankering for Spring

While the rest of the country is hunkering down for the Storm of the Century, I've been dreaming about asparagus. While I'm not quite ready to say that our snows are over here in TN, I'm getting ready just in case Spring is around the corner.

Yesterday, I seeded artichokes, asparagus, tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli in the AeroGrow. Starting seeds is my annual personal act of faith -- the cold will end, the darkness will abate, spring will come, and life will go on. Some years, the garden is abundant; in others, the sun doesn't shine and the tomatoes rot on the vine.

But the surety that water, soil, light and seed will result in a green sprout reaching for the sky is my idea of a miracle.