Do I amaze you? Only because you know so little about what's going on....

Kat cracked me up tonite with her sweet comment:

Have I ever mentioned my amazement at your energy and creativity? :)

Kat, my friend, I thank you for that. But after the past day/week that I have been having, it seemed ironically, tragically, puzzlingly, insanely laughable. As in, laughing myself into an insane stupor.

Tonite we had a birthday party to celebrate our son's 11th birthday. Although it all went well and he is very, very happy with how his big day went, it was fraught with a bunch of stress and I-feel-like-a-terrible-mother angst.

This year has had me feeling off-the-rails for many reasons. We were hit with a super stressful bunch of crap in November that dragged on and on and only just resolved this month. Christmas shopping was a struggle. I never wrote a Christmas letter or sent out cards or gave anything nice to a single one of our very wonderful neighbors.

In March our "birthday season" rolled around. All of the birthdays at our house fall between March and August. We have one in mid-March, 2 back-to-back in early April, others in April (for extended family), a single birthday for May, June, July, and August. Each birthday seemed to catch me off guard. "Oh crap! Another birthday! What the heck?!" and then I would begin the dance of the overwhelmed mother with no energy or creativity. What to get? What's the budget? Am I too late to order it online? Do we have to have a party?"

Sadly, my feelings about several of these should-be-special days was just great relief at crossing another one off of my list. The pressure felt terrible, I was unprepared, and felt like crap because it's not like I don't have fair warning that everybody gets a birthday every 12 months.

To make matters worse, I totally blanked out on my mom's birthday AND Mother's Day AND my grandmother's birthday. Which is terrible and I still haven't recovered from it. I love my mom and grandmother both a ton. But it was like my brain was broken. I could see the dates away on the horizon and would think, "Hey, I need to think of a gift to send..." and then all of the sudden the day was upon me or past me and I would think, "Shoot! I missed it. And I still have no idea what to get." I guess I could have sent flowers still, and maybe I should have. But it seemed like a cop-out and a lie. Because really I was just too mentally exhausted to think of anything or do anything about it.

For this birthday I had fair warning. These kids start telling me what they want for their birthdays p-l-e-n-t-y far in advance, and I even had a nice itemized list of what Jake wanted for his special day. Finances have been tight, so I was holding off on the purchasing, which meant payday this past Friday. My husband and I decided to do our shopping in The Big City Saturday night, which would include not only a trip to the health food store, but also birthday shopping. As it turned out, I guess my brain power was on low again, because we skipped our chance to go to Toys R Us to look for the stuff, mainly because we also had to go to Walmart and I was confident that we would find the stuff there.

And that was a bad, bad gamble. Because they had neither of the two most-desired gifts that my son wanted. Which was not good.

I was already exhausted, sleep deprived, and stressed from a bunch of other things during the week, and now I had no gifts for my child. And his party was today.

My husband's solution to this was so simply do an IOU sort of thing, and get the stuff for him later. And that just wasn't what I wanted to do. My kid told me well in advance what he wished for, and it was due to our own lack of planning and whatever that we were in this situation. My kid deserved to have actual gifts, not 3x5 cards to dash his hopes of a special new Lego set or cool new game to play with. I was determined to drive back to The Big City on Sunday after church and track down his gifts, by hook or by crook. (and I did)

Well, I could go on and on, but basically, I had plenty of ammunition in my brain to remind me of ways that I feel like I have been failing my kids and not being the kind of mother I want to be. I am sick of being unprepared, being too tired, being behind and late and sorry.

I thought of this mothering manifesto I used to have on my wall back in the olden days before I had 6 kids to homeschool, businesses to run, and a million more business ideas running through my brain. I thought about how so often I feel that I am not doing what I want to be doing and should be doing. And I feel like it is time to get back to the basics around here. No, it won't mean that I'm quitting my businesses. That's important in it's own way and has a worthy place in my life too. But I know that I am off the rails on several fronts that can be repaired and renewed.

Some people would excuse me and say that I have plenty of reasons to not be doing so great. 6 kids! Multiple businesses! Husband works a lot! Whatever! Yes, well those things are true, but I also know that I find plenty of time to waste and avoid doing things that need to be done. Though I will never be a perfect mother or home manager, I can certainly do better than this.

It is nice that sometimes people say very complimentary things to me about what it is that they see of my life. But I am never fooled by other people's opinions of me. There is always a whole lot more going on than the bit that gets revealed. And that's true for all of us. Isn't it?

Just Got Home...

My husband and I have been gone for 5 days to Ryan Lee's Continuity Summit internet marketing conference in Stamford, CT. It was hard to leave our kids, but we learned a lot that is going to help our family, which is the only reason we were even willing to go. I came home tonite to my awesome kids...and look at this great graphic my daughter designed for me while I was gone! She's coming along really well with her graphic designs, and even has a business making them for others on her online game sites that she plays! :) Entrepreneurialism runs deep in our family, I guess. :)

Gathering Wool...

To Do List: check

Kids In Bed: check

Getting Things Done: check

Get Distracted and Wonder if it is ok to stop working and do something funner: check!

What Doesn't Kill Ya Makes You Stronger: Truth or Fiction?

So after getting my computer back up and running late last week, the internet only worked for about a day before pooping out. So I've been without internet service since Friday night, til a few minutes ago. In the interim I went to the library to use their computers twice, the second time almost bringing me to my knees in anguish because of how s-l-o-w it was going. And by slow I mean that when I tried to delete 10 emails from my inbox, it took about 3 minutes for the task to be accomplished.

Weep with me, my friends.

At that point I called a friend and asked if I could come use her computer instead, which worked out somewhat better.

More tales of misery and rapture to come in the next few days (if my internet connection remains functional). I've got new photos and videos to share.....if I ever have the time.

Clearly, the deck is stacked against me

I do not exaggerate one single tiny iota when I tell you that literally every. stinkin. little. thing. that needs to happen in order for my businesses to get up and running again is taking way, way, waaaaaaaay, way more time, energy, learning curve, and frustration than I ever could have imagined.

If a malfunction could occur, it has.

If a server could go down, it did.

If a weird setting could be in place to cause extra trouble, you can bet your bippy it was there.

If I needed help, you can believe that it was nearly impossible for me to find in a timely manner.

If emails could get lost in cyberspace, mine did.

If I could possibly waste money on solutions that turned out to not be, I did.

If a computer, printer, or other piece of technology could refuse to work, break down, go slow, crash, malfunction, disconnect, or otherwise not do what I needed it to do, that happened as well.

If I could turn into a boring, blathering, griping version of myself, adding verse after verse to this same old stale song of technological vomit, I did.

Nothing is getting better. No end in sight. Today I almost decided to just can the whole enterprise and forget it. I still haven't entirely ruled it out.

Yes. Yes. It CAN get worse!

Still so sign of the recovery disc. And it's not available online. However, if I want to pay $20 and wait 2-3 weeks, I can have one sent to me. Isn't THAT just great?

Today's technological nightmare included having my husband's laptop (that he was kind enough to leave here for me) lock up and not work for the whole day, until maybe an hour ago when I figured out a way to fix it. (Had to uninstall the printer that I installed this morning. So now I can't print postage from home. Will now need to take orders to the PO every day...but at least so far there have been orders) My son's computer doesn't like me and wouldn't work at all today. So in order to carry on with business stuff I did it all via the library's computer, in 10 minutes of time that I had while my son took his driver's permit test. (he passed! Now my kid can drive!)

Thankfully, there have still been some orders, but filling them will continue to be tricky, what with having to do everything the s-l-o-w way.

To add fuel to the fire, we got some lab results back about the health of our poor rescue dog Marlee. She has:

hypothyroidism
kidney disease
liver disease
pancreas disease
muscle wasting disease or just significant muscle wasting because of being malnourished
and, finally, a bladder infection.

No wonder the poor girl is none too perky.

So, another $70 to the vet for three medications, and now I can look forward to more of the same as long as she lives. It would sure be nice if my businesses could get back up and running so that I could afford this! Because expensive, sick, elderly, deaf dogs are kind of outside the realm of our usual budget.

And, to add insult to injury....I accidentally bought maxi pads WITHOUT wings the other night. This did not make me happy. Wings are quite important to me, you see.

Those are just the highlights. (or would that be low lights?)

And just when I thought everything had gone wrong....

Would you believe that on top of all the recent business-related hijinks and messes, that my computer crashed yesterday? And then I tried to get on my son's computer, and it wouldn't work. Hours later his computer *was* working, only to have it stop working within 5 minutes of me trying to catch up on my work.

Obviously I wasn't meant to spend time on the computer yesterday! ;)

Instead I....

baked bread
made product to fill a large order
started reading Perfect Madness
taught my kids Pig Latin (or, should I say ig-pay atin-lay?)
cooked dinner
and relaxed a little bit

My computer is getting fixed by my son's computer genius friend. Apparently we had a virus. Now the problem is that I can't find my file with the recovery disc in it. Yeah, the deck is stacked against me these days. Hopefully we can find it online somewhere.

I keep asking myself, and God (if God is listening) if all of this means something. Is there a lesson here I should be learning? (How about, "When you have your web sites hosted by someone that starts to give you reason to think you cannot trust him, get thee away to new hosting!") Am I supposed to go in some other direction? Today I prayed, "God, what am I supposed to do?!" All I heard was, "Well what on earth do YOU think you should do?" :) It's funny how sometimes God sounds just like me....

So, what should I do? Do the next thing, I guess. Get the computer fixed. Start using an external hard drive to back up all of my stuff. Keep trying to figure out what to do to restore my businesses back into working order. Keep trying to find someone to help me get my new shopping carts looking nice and working properly. Keep pressing on with homeschooling. And do my best to not get my knickers in a twist in the meantime.

Stress and Aggravation

So if you ever visit either of my business blogs, you might already know that I am in the midst of a Code Red situation with my web sites. The short version (ha! short! You should hear the long version!) is that my web host company has apparently gone belly-up. Their web site is gone, the owner is incommunicado, and along with those pesky details is the bigger issue--the security certificates on my sites that allow it to be safe for payments to go through at checkout, has gone down with the business. So, the business sites are still there, but nobody can make it through the checkout. Sadly, this is the case for both of my businesses, plus tons of other ones out there.

So I'm in the process of moving to new shopping carts with new hosting. Which is an easy way of explaining that I have a whole humongous ton of work to do. Basically, everything that I have worked on and paid for to be done with my web sites for the past 2 years now needs to be undone and redone. Quickly.

While also homeschooling five children, and doing all of the other wife and mom things that I do in regular life, of course.

Try not to be jealous, please.

I have worked with many different techie guys to see if there is any lesser evil way for me to make this transition. There isn't. So yesterday I had to notify all of my customers that within a couple of days the sites are going to go down, and I'm not sure how long it will take to get them back up. I'll have to literally "turn off" the present sites and have no more access to them, and then "turn on" the new shopping cart/site which will then need to be customized with my design and have all of the products loaded into it. Which could be seriously time consuming. If all goes really, really well, maybe I could do my smaller site in a day. But, not much in this process has gone really, really well thus far, so I'm not counting on anything like that on the horizon. (hoping, yes. counting on: no.)

So it's a crazy, crazy time here. Right now I'm doing ok. I got all of the stuff off of site #1 yesterday, and tomorrow I will start working on getting the new version of the site going. In the meantime I'm working on taking the stuff off of site #2, and hope to be working on getting the new version of that one on Saturday. Wish me luck! (and you can watch my Twittering in the sidebar to the right, which may be all of the updates you will get from me for a couple days....I just don't know what to expect from this ride)

Things are Looking Up

FINALLY after four days, my sites are back up. What a relief.

So now I've got a deaf dog AND my web sites. We'll call it a good day.

Today:

Skipped church both because I wasn't feeling that great, and because I would have had to go alone (husband was working), and keep all six kids with me for a 90 minute meeting afterward. No thank you.

Waited to hear from a potential new web host, since my web sites are down thanks to my web host being completely MIA. Potential host did not call. So then I called the other company I was considering, and when push came to shove they were not going to give me the service that I was told I would get when I talked to someone there last night. Which caused me to not be sure what I want to do. So now I have had no web sites working for over 3 days, and I am not entirely sure what to do about it. At this point I'm too tired to make a decision, so it's another day of no web site while I try to figure it out.

We rescued a dog from the road in front of out house. It was just standing in the road, not even making an effort to move when cars would slow down and go around it. We went outside to call to the dog and see what we could do to help it. The poor thing stayed in the road and did not seem to want to come to us. It was getting toward dark and we felt sure that she would be hit by a car soon if we didn't make her get off the road. So we fashioned a leash with a child's belt, and got her to our yard. Gave her some water and got a donation of dog food from our next door neighbor.

This poor dog looks to be about 6 months old, and is extremely thin. She does not react toward us with any aggression at all, and although a little timid, doesn't seem like she's been abused. Looks like just a case of severe neglect. The poor thing. :( Initially I was going to call the dog warden, but once we got a better feel for what she was like, I felt that she would probably be put down right away because of how sick and weak she seems to be. We decided to feed her and keep her in our fenced back yard overnight, and see what we can do for some medical care/evaluation for her tomorrow morning. The kids are hopeful that fate has brought them a doggie......

One of our neighbors was driving by while we were leading the dog home. He stopped and told my husband that he had witnessed what looked to be a truck dropping off the dog in the road near our home. All I can say is that I hope we can get this dog healthy and safe. She seems to be very sweet.

I always feel so sorry for animals, having to live at the mercy of the humans around them. Obviously this dog was not well cared for wherever she was before tonite, so I'm just going to believe that if we can get her healthy, that her life can only improve.

So now it is 11:33pm. I'm a homeschooling mom about to not get enough sleep. I'm a business owner without my web sites. And tomorrow I need to figure out how to get medical care for a dog that's not mine, with money I don't really have.

Try not to be jealous. ok?

Oh, Happy Day!

I tackled the BIGGEE from my Plagues and Nuisances list!

What was it?

Taxes!!!

With my business growing about a zillion percent over the previous year, I was dreading trying to figure out all the tax information this year. Unlike many organized business people, I do not have Quickbooks or any other wonderful system for keeping track of all of my money. Instead, I have email files, and a large pile of receipts and printouts to sift through. It took me most of yesterday, and probably an hour and a half tonite, but now I am DONE! FREE! Oh glory, glory! I am so glad to have that behind me.

Now we will be able to get all of that turned into the accountant later this week, and hopefully then spend the next 3 weeks or so looking forward to a fat refund. (I hope, at least)

(Yes. Did you catch that? All of my hours and hours of misery and dread were only to get the numbers ready to go to the accountant. I wasn't even actually doing the tax paperwork myself. Lovely, eh?)

Next up on the P&N list:

-Hire a bookkeeper ASAP so that I don't have to go through this next year.

-Come up with a better plan for shopping and meals. I've totally fallen off the edge of the earth and things are not functioning very well in this area recently.

-Improve the current chore system here. A lot of stuff is falling through the cracks around here, and with six able-bodied children in the family, it really shouldn't be that way. The three older kids have regular jobs, but the three younger ones were never really assigned jobs, and they should have some. They do help, and have learned how to do a lot of things. I just haven't taken the time to really teach them how to do regular jobs, or enforce any of it. My hope is to get it all planned out in time for June when they will be out of school.

Current Pats on the Back that I'm giving myself:

-Despite my fears, I have really been enjoying homeschooling this year, and I am not stinking at it. We have had some challenges, but overall I am seeing many good things and feel like I've been able to make some really positive progress toward getting back to some of the things that I really wanted to be able to do with and for my children but wasn't able to for awhile. I am looking forward to our continuing adventures in homeschooling. :)

-Business is good and growing, and this is exciting.

That's all for tonite. I'm wiped. And morning will be comin' 'round an hour early... ugh.

Exciting Possibilities

Yesterday I was invited to speak at an upcoming online homeschool conference! Although my business isn't directly related to homeschooling, I am finding that a whole lot of homeschool moms are interested in my books and products. I have had people ask me before if I would consider getting a booth at a homeschool convention, but I felt like the expense and time involved wouldn't be something I would want to do right now. I have done a few booths at events and have found that it takes a ton of energy and is quite exhausting. Yes, I sell stuff, but I'm not convinced that it's worth it to me.

This opportunity, though, is perfect. I can record my sessions ahead of time and set up a web page that will serve as a display where people can check out the stuff that I have to offer. Now I just have to figure out what to speak about. True--I rarely run out of things to say. :) I've just never done a specific talk about healthy eating before, and doing the speaking without an audience to interact with sounds kind of....blah! I may go for an interview format instead of flying solo. I'm still thinking it through....

There is a lot of good business stuff brewing right now, so it seems like this might be a very good year of growth for us. Yay!

Working on the Phooey

Hey all--I have been in contact with the designers. Although I have not named them here, they seem to be concerned that I have misrepresented the situation with my blog design, and that they somehow will be damaged by the information I shared. I specifically did not mention their names because I was simply venting my frustration, not trying to damage them.

Apparently, through having them design 5 web sites for me over the course of over 3 years, I missed the little detail that the images used and installed by them through their photobucket account were only guaranteed to be left that way for 6 months. So, unfortunately, now I will have to hire them to redesign my sites again. But, the good news is that I now know that I need to go and get all of my web images safely onto my own photobucket account. I would strongly recommend that any of you with custom designs on your blogs or web sites check on this issue before you find yourself with a naked site. :) Hopefully in short time Dollymama Strikes Again will be looking pretty, as usual.

Oh Phooey!

You know, since I don't have much time to come by this here mighty fine blog very often, it had escaped my attention that my blog design is GONE! Gone, as in, no it is not because my computer is going slow on loading up the page--it's just gone. Because the designer that I used let her photobucket account expire....and all my design images are down the tubes for this blog and for my business site. I am Not. Happy.

So now I am scurrying around trying to contact this person, trying to back up all the images for all of my web sites.....ackk! Thankfully, I at least know how to do this. (If only I had known that I was going to have this problem--I would have been happy to handle all my photo hosting on my own.)

So, that's why my blog looks sad and plain.

Happy Dance!

I guess I should have asked you all to pray for me months ago when I started this whole thing with DHL…because a few minutes ago I received a phone call from the same woman I spoke with yesterday, and she told me that I will be getting the refund!!!

I asked her some about what happened and found out that she did not speak to my driver, but did speak to the manager of the DHL station in this area. Apparently there were even more messed up things about the shipment than I was even aware of. I’ll spare you all the boring details. But, the point is that they were able to determine that both my driver AND the station personnel messed up. So, they agreed that I did not get the service I was wanting, and approved the refund. Supposedly (pardon me for being skeptical!) I will have a check by the end of next week.

Sadly and interestingly, the refund isn’t coming because of anything I said..it’s only because of other things that I couldn’t have even known about. I’m glad it worked out, but sorry to learn that DHL has so little regard for the word of their customers.

I did email the president of DHL this morning, and rec’d an email this afternoon saying that they would contact me within 24 hours. Although my own case is resolved, I do hope that I get to talk with someone so that I can let them know how many steps along the way were messed up. I am actually thinking of making a list, because it’s mighty spectacular! There is seriously not ONE person that I have dealt with during this process that has not messed up in some way. I cannot imagine how a business gets to be as big and well-known as DHL when they are so disorganized and don’t believe in real customer service. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ever treated a customer so poorly.

You can be sure that I will never use DHL for any shipping in the future, and will go out of my way to try to avoid receiving anything from them as well. They have lost my trust and have showed me far too many holes in their system that cause me to have absolutely zero confidence that my account information or packages will be safe with them.

So, THANK YOU for praying and for caring! I was able to have a pretty good day without too much stress, and now I will just be praying for the refund to come without any problems.

I could use a little prayer about this

This is kind of off topic, but I could really use some prayer support. Back in October I sent a large shipment of my product to a vendor in Texas, using DHL. They completely messed up my order by not giving me the proper paperwork for the shipping I wanted (slow, ground, cheap), and instead I ended up accidentally getting overnight air delivery (fast, air, over $69 per box!). I was charged over $400 more than I was planning on. Needless to say, this has been annoying.

Since that time I have been going through the channels to try to get this fixed with DHL, and I have asked for a refund for the overage I was charged. I have had one problem after another with them messing things up, and I have been working my way up their chain of command. Yesterday I had a particularly upsetting phone call with a person in middle management. She basically told me that I was stupid to have trusted them with my credit card information (I had no choice), that I should have known all the ins and outs of their paperwork myself so that I could have prevented this myself, and that she thought I was lying. It was very frustrating. As we left it, she said she was going to try to talk to the driver who picked up these packages to see what his side of the story was.

I would like prayer that this man, if she gets to talk to him, will remember what happened and be honest about that with her. I am not sure if he would be in danger of losing his job or some other penalty if he admits that he did not handle my order properly, but I would also like protection for this guy. I’m sure he needs his job just like everybody else needs theirs.

Also, I need prayer that DHL would give me some good customer service and give me the partial refund I am asking for. Thankfully, because I run my businesses debt-free, this hasn’t been the huge blow that it could have been, However, it is very discouraging to have an extra $400 taken from me and kept away from me for months.

Last, I could just use some prayer that my spirit could be peaceful while I wait and walk through this. I have not been so upset about this situation until yesterday, because the person was so rude to me. I do not do well with things like that, and tend to have stuff roll around in my stomach and head, stressing me out. My family and I had a fun stress-buster evening last night, watching our new Tim Hawkins DVD. He is the comedian in the video clips a few posts down. It felt good to laugh. But, this morning I’m up early and am already feel that stress creeping up on me…

Catching up

I've been busy lately....my new books sold well on the official opening day last week, so that was exciting! Unfortunately I discovered that my web site is not working as it should be, so the process was not as reliable or simple as I expected it to be. Of course we always find these things out on the day when we have more sales than ever before! ugh. Nevertheless, it will get straightened out eventually.

We had good news this week. My grandmother had been given a preliminary diagnosis of breast cancer, but the biopsy results came back negative. Needless to say, the entire family is very relieved about that.

In the past I mentioned my desire to play cello again (I played for 2 years as a child). Well, the opportunity presented itself recently, so I have decided to give it a try. I got "my" cello this week and have had fun practicing and getting reacquainted with such a wonderful instrument. I'm not entirely confident that this is going to be the best opportunity for me, though. The timing for the classes is not turning out to be very good, I am not feeling very sure that the teacher is going to work out well for me, and I am having some pain in my hands that I have struggled with for probably 10 years. Glucosamine sulfate has helped the pain in the past, so I will try it again. Right now when I use the bow my hand starts to hurt and cramp up. It may be related to the way I'm holding the bow (possibly not doing it right) but it's a familiar pain that I also get if I have to grip small objects and so on. I have paid for the month of November so plan to at least stick with it for these weeks and see how things progress and how I feel about the entire situation by the end of the month.

My next musical adventure that I am looking forward to is playing the bodhran. I first learned about the bodhran by reading about it in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, and then got to watch and listen to a bodhran in a video that we have, and then live at the Glasgow Highland Games in June. I have fallen in love with this drum! Here's a sample of bodhran playing:


If this 10 year old can do it, surely I could learn. Right??

Today at church I had the funny experience of finding out that
1. a friend there had also just gotten a cello this week (I had no idea he was interested in cello)
and
2. another friend there has taken bodhran lessons while in Ireland for a semester in college. How fun!

Bodhrans aren't expensive and I've been told by my friend at church that it's not difficult to learn the basic techinque. I am thinking about buying one this week and giving it a try. I have been dreaming of this for months and it seems like a fun thing to work on during the winter months. My businesses have actually been profitable for the last couple months so we've not only reaped some financial rewards for our family, but I have some wiggle room to enjoy these little musical bonuses as well. What a nice feeling! And a good experience for me, because I often have difficulty spending money on non-essentials.

I read this interesting article about a couple that is married but chooses not to live together. I haven't heard of many people that do this, but honestly--I kind of like the idea. What appeals to me about it is the ability to maintain a little more mystery in a relationship. Sharing the bathroom and hearing somebody fart just doesn't translate into romance...you know? I have imagined that once the kids are grown it might be kind of fun to have my own apartment someplace else. The idea of having my husband pick me up for a date, come over for dinner, or get a sexy invite to spend the night sound like very appealing novelties to me. Of course, the fun might wear off after a few months, but the idea of an experiment like that interests me. What do you think? Can you imagine a scenario where you might enjoy being married but not living under the same roof?

Two Books Down!

I found my groove and got two of the books done!! Yay!

Now I have to peel myself off the computer chair and go take a shower....

Bits and Pieces

I challenged myself to spend one hour working on my book tonite. Did it! I would love to get it finished this summer, but it seems like a huge goal even though probably 80% or more of the book is already written in rough draft form. How do you know when it's good enough? When do you stop tweaking??

Finishing my book is just weighing on my mind, so I've told myself that I need to treat the project like a school assignment and just force myself to work on it until it's done.

My husband worked over 120 hours this week. I'm so thankful for a man that's willing to work! But it's been hard for him to be away from home so much, and although I am pretty good at keeping things going here on my own, I do get tired. At times when my husband has been away for a couple days or longer I often think of single parents and wonder how they manage to keep all the plates spinning without any of the relief that comes with a partner in the process.

My businesses are growing, so that's great! The growth is causing me to have to figure out how to handle various issues like when to reorder items, when to bring in new products, etc. Also, how to keep it all going plus add in homeschooling once August arrives. Ha! Should be interesting, to say the least.

We apparently have a leak somewhere in our water line on our property, which means that we have to fix it without any help from our water company. Ugh! I have been boiling our drinking water for over a week now, we have been waiting for days for someone to come and start digging up our yard, and my husband spent time in his smidgen of time at home trying to dig to the water line (3 feet under ground) in hopes that maybe he'd find the leak easily and we could fix it ourselves. Now we have piles of dirt in our yard, and have transplanted hostas that needed to move out of the way.

At least one of our chickens has now laid two eggs! This is quite exciting for us since we were not expecting any eggs until October at least. Today's egg laying was even witnessed by my daughter, husband, and myself. Cool and gross all rolled into one! :)

I have several (at least) organization and household projects that I would like to get done before I start homeschooling. My suspicion is that these may not get done until public school starts up and I have some quieter time during the day. School will be in session for at least 10 days before my preschooler will be going to school, so I was kind of thinking that I probably wouldn't start homeschooling until preschool begins. So, there's a time buffer possibility there.

That's about the size of it. Til next time....

Enjoying the party and getting better

The Ultimate Blog party is still going on and it's not too late for you to get involved. There is a huge long list at 5 Minutes for Mom of participating bloggers, which makes it easy to start clicking around and finding out about some new blogs. I've found some that look particularly interesting to me that have been added to my blogroll. Maybe others of you will find winners also.

I'm feeling somewhat better today. Not 100%, but probably 80%.

I've been brave and did launch my new project that I mentioned a few days ago. The behind-the-scenes work is being done now, and the letting-people-know work will come a little later. (not sure how much later, but not yet) (I keep singing this song to myself as I go through the day, sometimes feeling a little woozy and nervous about the new project. I've put it off long enough--today I'm buying this CD collection as a gift to myself. I love it so much.)

I've also been working hard on my business site. I've been learning more about search engine optimization, and one of the things I had been putting off is some special HTML coding of every. single. page. on the site. That means I had to go into the back office of my site and open up every individual product page and enter coding, tweak keywords, and improve copy. It needed to be done, and because of the couple hundred products I sell I thought it would take until the end of next week. Thankfully I got it all done earlier today! It is so nice to have that finished up. Now I can get my other side done as well, and then I'll be ready to add some more products and do some more good things to make it easier for people to find my businesses. Onward and upward, I say!

A friend of ours from church was in a car accident this week. His car was totaled, but he was ok, and fortunately his infant son was not in the car at the time. As I was thinking of seeing him tomorrow and of course asking about the accident, I remembered reading the book Bless And Be Blessed. This book talks about the importance of speaking blessings to people in your life. So often we say wonderful, amazing things about how great people were when we are at their funerals, and it's a shame we don't let people know these uplifting, encouraging thoughts about them while they are with us. So, I am going to take a few minutes tonite to put together some thoughts and write a note to him and his wife to let them know some of the things I appreciate about them. I am so glad I have the opportunity to tell them and be happy they are still in our life!

Though it's been a weird week with being sick, I'm feeling good about accomplishing so many things, and feel like several goals are coming together for me, which is exciting. It's a good way to end the week. :)