All Or Nothing

The Boy World

I've always been one of those girls who is equally comfortable hanging out with either gender.  Throw me in the middle of a super girly shopping and spa day, or cram me in the backseat of an all-boy truck, stopping for fast food on the way to a football game, and I'm equally happy.  I don't fare as well once you get to either extreme; for example I'm almost never fluent in female TV talk because I don't really watch Grey's/SYTYCD/Bachelor(ette)/etc, and I get uncomfortable pretty quick when it's just a bunch of guys sitting around a table drinking beer and waxing eloquent on what the best possible Cowboys defensive lineup will be this season.  But anywhere in the middle?  I'm down with it.

I have also always sort of prided myself on knowing how to do some things that have not been traditionally "girl world" activities.  I can change a tire, change my own oil, drive a standard, tell time on a analog clock, figure out which way is north, follow directions, make minor repairs (using tools!), etc.  But there's always been one glaring absence from my boy world repertoire - I have never mowed a lawn. 

Actually, scratch that - I have never even started a lawn mower, never even really looked at one past a two second "yep, there's the red lawnmower, in my way to park in the garage yet again" type of glance.  I know nothing about how they work, whether or not you can run them while they're on the driveway or if that will, somehow, tear up the concrete?  What if I run over a rock?  Will the blades somehow spin the rock violently around inside and then shoot it out directly into my face, causing irreparable damage and all sorts of self-confidence issues?  How do people mow those lines into the grass?  What about piles of dog poop?  Do you just mow right over those or avoid them?  Will the dog poop get caught in the same spinning vector of death the hypothetical rock was in earlier, and also end up on my face? 

The process seemed fraught with potential disaster, and I was content to avoid it altogether.

However, I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about cliche male and female activities, and it became clear, once again, that I could never really take a super proud stance until I rectified my mowing deficiency.  So last night, I told Cody that I would mow the lawn today while he was at work.  He said ok, but apparently did not believe me because once I started sending him a barrage of text messages this afternoon, requesting different bits of mowing information, he seemed to lose a lot of confidence.

Elise (4:18pm): Any new hints on getting the mower to start?

Cody (4:22pm): I am planning on doing it when I get home

Elise (4:23pm): But wait!  I am trying!  Just give me some steps 2 start it

Cody (4:26pm): (gives me some instruction) and watch out for sprinkler heads along the road and for my gopher things

Elise (4:27pm): Ok. Thanks!

Cody (4:28pm): I would feel better about it if u would wait and let me show u this time...

Cody (4:32pm): Don't run over my gopher things!

Cody (4:39pm): Did you see my gopher things?

Elise (4:42pm): I won't!  Geez...

And you'll be glad to know that I DIDN'T run over Cody's gopher things.  At least I don't think I did.  I did, however, run over a pile of dog poop AND a rock, both accidentally, and neither one ended up all over my face.  Lucky break, or status quo, I still don't know.  But I feel good about it, either way.  In fact, I was feeling SO good about my new-found mowing independence, that I decided I would even go get gas for the mower because I mowed so much (and it took me so many tries to start it) that I ran out of gas.  So off I went to the gas station, covered in grass and sweat and smelling just like a boy.  Take that, cliche!  I am a grass-mowing girl! 

(Sidenote: I see women, ALL the time, mowing their yards.  So believe me, I am well aware that this is not any kind of huge female accomplishment.  I only mean that it's an accomplishment for me, as I have always been completely clueless to the process.)

Anyhow.  I get my little red gas container filled up, drive back home, refill the mower, and begin the rope-pulling, mower-starting process.  Surely I'll be quicker at that now that I am so experienced, right?  Well, it's still taking me forever, and actually the rope won't even pull but I figure out you can't be on an angle or it doesn't work...so I straighten out, start pulling my rope, and hear "Elise?  Hey Elise!  Is Cody not around?"  It's my neighbor Scott, the reigning Lawn and Landscape King of our subdivision, and so I stop yanking on the rope and give a little laugh and try to explain that I am attempting to mow for the experience, and to do something nice for Cody.  Scott turns to survey my progress as I'm explaining, and as I look at the freshly-mowed lawn through his eyes, I start to see less "yay, mission accomplished, shorter grass!" and more "super crooked lines with random patches of long grass in between".  Scott, whose lawn is never anything short of pristine, looks somewhat horrified.  I think we can be pretty confident that he won't be asking me to mow for him anytime soon. 

He's a super nice guy though, and as I ask him if he doesn't think it's just awful that I've never mowed a lawn before, he placates me with a story about how his wife hasn't ever planted a plant.  Now I know this is A) probably not true and B) a story just to make me feel better, but the truth is, even if his wife WANTED to plant a hundred plants, Scott would have that whole project diagrammed, engineered, and perfected to the point where all she would need to do is dig the actual hole over the pre-measured X Scott had drawn in the dirt, drop the plant in, and walk away.  He's seriously a landscaping ninja.  Cody and I are...not so much ninjas with the landscaping.  We're more like landscaping sloths, lazy and producing a lawn full of clumsy attempts at passable neighborhood standards.  So it's not like I'm totally ruining this gorgeous green heaven Cody's slaved over, but in glancing back at my crooked stripes, it's clear I'm not really adding anything to the overall effect, either.

But like I said, Scott's nice, and so to save me from my (probably palpable) embarrassment, he walks over to the side of a small hill we share and pulls on this coat-hanger looking wire that is sticking out of a little mound of dirt.  Suddenly my nasal canal (which is notoriously sensitive anyway) is filled with the most rancid, gag-inducing smell I have ever encountered.  And on the end of this wire, this coat-hanger thing that Scott's just pulled out of the ground, is a dead, rotting gopher. 

"Huh," Scott says.  "Look at that."

I'm having a hard time looking anywhere else, because this rotted half-corpse is crawling, absolutely CRAWLING, with the hugest maggots I've ever seen.

"Wow," I say, trying my best not to gag and run away.  "Are those...um...are those maggots?"

"Yup," says Scott, as he kind of shakes the wire, flinging giant maggots and gopher particles into the air.

I honestly don't remember exactly what happened next, except that it involved me making some excuse about having to go inside so Lydah (who wasn't the least bit interested in the gopher corpse) wouldn't try to eat it or anything.  Scott was saying something about how he should have checked that trap earlier, and I was saying yeah, sure, I'll bet, I'll be back in a minute...and then I ran inside with the dog and slammed the door behind me.

As I sat on the floor, just inside the doorway, I took a deep breath and exhaled.  Gone was the stench of rotting, maggot-ridden, rodent corpse.  In its place was Downy, and laundry detergent, and the basil I have growing in a pot on my windowsill.  I wiped the sweat off my forehead, looked at Lydah (who was giving me a look loosely translated as "are you kidding me with that jab about me EATING that nasty thing?") and thought, not for the first time, that I'm glad Girl World is my natural habitat.

The Rearview Mirror Comes Through Again

In the interest of writing about things that, you know, are actually happening in my life right now (I know, such a novel concept!) I decided to go back and see just what, exactly, I had told y'all about the store I own.

In my memories, I had written page upon page about the intricacies of the business, the people from whom we bought the store, the total overhaul we did, the struggles, etc.  In fact, I was so sure that I had unleashed a store-related barrage of posts upon the public that I was almost loathe to do another.

Turns out I haven't written much at all.

As I was re-reading some of the entries I have written about that lovely, sanity-shredding boutique, I found one that dates back to early August of 2006.  A little over a year after we bought the place.  In fact, the bulk of my store-related posts are around the year anniversaries of starting the business, and this year I have thus far failed to mark that date. 

Consider this the celebration post.  The start of the 5th year, the 4 year anniversary, however you wanna look at it.  I've detailed the way I prefer to look at it (don't short me one brutal day of ownership; it's the START OF THE 5TH YEAR), but if you're a very close-minded and cruel type (hehe), you can say it's the 4 year anniversary.  And in honor of starting my 5th year of business, I am going to re-post some excerpts from that 2006 entry, with new commentary (of course!) in blue.

*****

There's not much I can say to concisely explain the Store Situation, but in an attempt to sum it up, I will say that it has been an Experience to out-experience all others.  It has been awful, it has been wonderful, and above all, it has been DIFFICULT.  Difficult to the point of being basically impossible; an uphill battle that we could never win; a web of deception from which we are STILL trying to extricate ourselves.  That's the wordy emotional short-descript, the logical numbers-based explanation is that the previous owners told us, our accountants, our attorneys, and the IRS that the store was grossing a certain amount per year in sales, and we bought THAT store.  You know, the one that was grossing A CERTAIN AMOUNT PER YEAR IN SALES.  Actually what we got though, was some other store completely, one that was NOT EVER grossing that certain amount per year in sales.  So we bought a dying business, one that the previous owners were trying desperately to get out from under, and when they discovered that no one wanted to BUY a dying business, decided that hey, I bet people might want to buy a thriving business!  Let's just lie! 

And it worked.  I (shockingly) don't have much to add to this - yep, that's what happened!

We are dumb.  But not really, that is one of the mindsets that got me OUT of the saddle in the first place.  That and truly believing that the store and all the misery it has caused was all MY fault, that somehow I could have known what two accountants and an attorney and the US government didn't know, that I convinced by so much arm-twisting my father and brother-in-law and his wife to participate in this business endeavor, and that now that the business is failing that it is ALL MY FAULT, EVERYTHING IS ALL MY FAULT, I HAVE CAUSED SO MUCH PAIN FOR EVERYONE AND I AM A TERRIBLE, STUPID PERSON.  Still think this, all the time, ALL THE TIME.  I don't know how to stop myself from thinking it; the nasty little thoughts sneak in when I'm unaware and pretty soon I look up and that's what I've been dragging around for months.

Isn't that an impressive amount of self-confidence?

But the facts of the matter (when I choose to recognize them and step out of my world of self-depreciating guilt) are that I never convinced anyone to participate in the business, they all saw the same numbers I did and WANTED to do it.  The fact is, I didn't go to school to be a CPA, our accountants did, and I, although I had plans to go, have not been to law school either.  But our attorneys have!  And they all believed in the business as well.  We all saw the same balance sheets, all saw the same financial statements, and all researched and believed the made-up statistics. It was a good trick.  And we all equally bought into the business, AKA the Lie-To-End-All-Lies.  Yes!  Pep-talk!

Another fact is that we have now had the store for over a year (now over 4 years), and our sales have been excellent (some years have been good, some years have been - well, 2008 was rough).  We have done better this past year than the previous owners had done in quite a few years.  Everyone told us to expect our first year to be the hardest; to expect lower sales; to give ourselves a learning curve.  But we went ahead and blew all of that out of the water, bringing in new merchandise, giving the store a major and much-needed face lift, and adding an entire GENERATION to our demographic.  We have kicked proverbial ass.  And as much as my brain, who apparently hates me, wants me to forget, even in the worst months of the worst years, we have STAYED IN BUSINESS.  When I wrote this I thought we were on our last leg, and this store either has about 600 legs or I have somehow - gasp - succeeded thus far.  Dragging and limping along, but STILL HERE.

But it isn't enough.  We started in such a hole behind such a boulder up against such a wall (of cliches, apparently) that we would have had to do better than the previous owners EVER did, by quite a large margin, to even BREAK EVEN.  What a great deal, right?  This still remains true.  We have been ensconced in a situation where we really, truly do have to do better each and every month than the previous owners ever did just to break even.  This is mainly due to a completely disproportionate loan we took out to start the store, and is a SOUL-CRUSHING reality that I have been dealing with for over 4 years now.

So back to the Last Hurrah, the one I had last week in Los Angeles.  Basically, unless something miraculous happens (i.e., the legal system actually WORKING) (or, now, people actually spending money - lots of it - in the middle of one of the hottest summers we've had in years and all my lenders deciding to conveniently forget that I owe them lots and lots of money that I don't have), the store is going down.  And I have been in quite a funk about it.  I have had a really hard time understanding how to be happy about a situation that has been nothing but bad, worse, and even worse.  How can I not live a life of stress and misery when nearly every day I get MORE bad news?  How am I supposed to smile and gracefully accept no paycheck, no respite, no justice for over a year now?  Over a year now.  HA!  TRY OVER FOUR YEARS, 2006 ELISE.

Well, the answer is that I was seeking the wrong answers.  There are no answers to those questions.  (This is always a supremely difficult and frustrating conclusion for me to come to.  I like for there to be answers.  Things have to have solutions!  Be wrapped up neatly!)  Or maybe those answers exist, somewhere, but they aren't known to me or anyone else on this earth.  The questions I should have been asking are not WHY or HOW or WHAT DO I DO.  Who cares why this happened to me, or to my brother-in-law, or to his wife, or to my dad?  Who cares how I am supposed to be happy in these circumstances?  Who cares about what I'm supposed to do with no paycheck or any of the financial security that it might bring?

I drove myself into a very dark place by asking those questions, and the only way I have FINALLY begun to see the light again is by my brother and his girlfriend (now wife - hi, Mary!) telling me to get over myself.

What's the big deal? they asked.  Why are you letting yourself be so miserable?  So you bought a business, and it's not going so great.  Well, you must be the first person who's had that happen, right?  Oh, well, then, you MUST be the only person who has ever had financial struggles.  No?  The only person ever who has wondered why God placed them smack in the middle of a mess?  Hmmm.  Then maybe, just MAYBE, it's not that big of a deal.  All so true.  And things I really needed to hear again.

So what, if the store goes down?  Have you tried your best?  Have you done everything you could possibly do?  So what if you have to face your worst-case-scenario: filing bankruptcy, corporately?  That will almost certainly NOT happen, but even if it does?  So what!  Are you dead?  Are you going to ever be able to recover?  Are you, at the ripe old age of 25 (well, now 28 but still), going to ever be able to build your financial history back up again?

I am going down with the ship, people.  I have tried my best at the store, and I will continue trying my best as it either thrives or fails in these next few months.  Because it might thrive, it really might.  We have a great shop, great merchandise, and a year of really good sales to build upon.  But if it fails, I will be the last one on the helm of that ship, standing proud, knowing that there was absolutely nothing I did wrong, and nothing I could have done differently to prevent the sinking.

*****

It's a good thing that we aren't allowed to see the future.  Because if I would have seen, with my 2006 eyes - if I would have known that midsummer 09 I would be re-reading that and thinking oh my GOSH this has been going on for over four years now - I might have re-routed my car straight off a cliff. 

Or at least re-routed my plane to Mexico and changed my name and all identifying information.  I could be writing this from the beach in between teaching surfing lessons.  Of course I'd be a wanted felon, but still.

Hmmm.  :)

xoxo

If you got a hundred thousand dollars for each person you've kissed (not counting kids or pets), would you be a millionaire?

My Parents: A Glimpse

Mom (to me):  So anyway, that's why I didn't have a profile picture on Facebook for a while, I just...

Dad (coming home from work and interrupting the conversation):  Hey!  I sent you, like, 10 text messages today and you never responded to any of them!

Mom:  I did too, I responded to one of them and said that I was busy and didn't have time to text message.

Dad:  Yeah, but what about after that when I kept sending them?  You just ignored all those.

Mom:  What I wanted to text back was 'Clearly you aren't working hard enough if you're text stalking me all day'.

Dad:  I was waiting on a message like that, that's why I kept sending 'em.

:)

If You Were In My Head

• Is this song by Pink?  I think it's Pink.  Do I even like Pink? 
• If I put on mascara right now, it's a guarantee that someone will come in the store when I only have one eye done, rendering me the one-eyed wonder
• Maybe I do like Pink
• Am I hot enough to turn on the A/C?  I'm not actually sweating yet
• No one's walked by for a while, maybe it's safe to start Operation Mascara
• I wonder if makeup really makes us look better, or if we're just so used to how we look in makeup that we think it looks better
• If it does actually make us look better, score one for girls, because you guys have nothin'
• Aww man, of COURSE someone is coming in right now!  Unbelievable
• Oh good, it's just the mail lady, she'll be too busy complaining to notice my lack of left eye lashes
• This is the most confusing rant I have ever heard, I think she is saying her manager has given her too MANY hours in which to complete her deliveries on this route...
• I need to change the dress on that mannequin stat
• Yes, mail lady is definitely telling me that she has proven to the higher ups that her route takes less time than what they have given her to do it in...I still am failing to see why this is a problem
• Definitely A/C time, starting to feel like a sauna in here
• Is this song lyric saying I want to taste all the chemicals inside?  That can't be healthy
• Do most people use their dominant hand for all eye makeup application?  Or do they use right hand on right eye and left hand on left eye?
• Ooh, Kings of Leon, much better
• I need to change my voicemail to be more like the one I heard the other day: "hey, this is Mr. X, sorry I missed your call, leave me a message if you'd like, OR you can send me a text, that seems to be the best way to get a quick response".  Genius!  I hate voicemail
• Is this dress too short?  I think it's definitely too short for 28.  Wow, when did I start thinking that way?
• I hate almost nothing more than hurting people's feelings
• Fire ants, I do hate those more I think.  It's at least a tie
• Ha, if I had to choose one, being bitten by fire ants for a good portion of every single day, or hurting someone's feelings every day, I wonder which it would be?
• I think I'd start getting immune to both after a while. so maybe it's a bad question.  OR, maybe extended exposure to fire ant poison would kill me, thus rendering the entire experiment moot
• Doubt it, those suckers aren't taking me down like that
• Maybe I should start carrying ant poison around in my car with me, and every time I see a hill, just wage war right then and there
• Is that one of those things that would make me endearing, lovably eccentric, or just plain weird?

After reading this post, you may advise me to go back to my old plan of NOT blogging :)

Vanished

WHY:
I think I forgot how to type.  My shoulder is injured.  My keyboard is dirty.  Typepad won't let me login.  I didn't pay Typepad to renew my blog because I wasn't sure that I wanted to keep writing ever-increasingly lethargic posts.  I thought I'd miss it more if I stopped.  I am a terrible commenter and didn't want to run around commenting on 87 different blogs per day because it took me way too long and started to feel like a job requirement.  I don't like blogging politics and internet cliques.  No one wants to see pictures of Lydah every single day.  I got really busy.  My keyboard is REALLY dirty.

But guess what? 

WHAT:
Separated from writing for long enough, I did start missing it.  And I have been reading blogs again, sans commenting.  I even got up the nerve to open my long-neglected feed reader the other day, and went ahead and marked everything read and now you know what I do?  I just read the ones I feel like reading.  No pressure!  How about that? 

AM WEIRD:
Look, I realize that I am possibly the only person any of us know who is neurotic enough to self-impose all these regulations and requirements on what is, 100%, a hobby.  But there it is. 

I'm neurotic!  And my keyboard is gross!

IN CONCLUSION:
But I'm back.  I paid Typepad, I cleaned my keyboard.  And I'm giving myself a break as far as my self-inflicted blogging guilt.  14 posts in 28 days.  Count it.

OH LOOK, IT'S LYDAH, AFTER ALL:

A Question For The Ages

So, the alphabet survey/meme/whatever is fun, huh?  This post isn't meant to replace that one - if you still wanna play, just comment on that post and I'll assign you a letter.  So far lots of you are doing it and I've had a great time reading all the lists.

Okay - I'm gonna try not to show my hand on this one, so I'll just ask the question and shut up.  However, let me IMPLORE you to answer - it won't take any time at all, you'll remain completely anonymous, and (most importantly) you will be HELPING ME PROVE A POINT TO MILLIONS.  Well, maybe thousands.  Okay, okay, hundreds.  Or maybe just to this guy.

Feel free to comment as well, if your passion for or against the Brazil nut transcends the poll answers provided. I know mine does.

This Post Brought To You By The Letter T

T, as in THERMOMETER.  And I can use thermometer as the word du jour, because I don't have any strong feelings towards thermometers, one way or the other, and therefore that won't mess up this meme I'm about to do.

Yeah, yeah I know.  A meme.  Or survey, or quiz, whatever you wanna call it.  But don't worry, this one is decently entertaining and easy.

The rules:

You leave a comment on this post, and I’ll assign you a letter. You write about ten things you love that begin with your assigned letter, and post it at your place. When people comment on your list, you give them a letter, and the chain continues on and on.

And then you each send me $25. 

What?  That isn't on the other people's rules?  Well I'll meet you halfway, you don't have to do cash, you could just do a gift card or something.  Geez.  Where's your holiday spirit?

1.  Tea.  Yeah I know, it seems a little bit cheaty since T and Tea are basically the EXACT SAME THING - tricky phonetics - but I genuinely love tea.  Green tea, specifically.  I drink probably 2- 4 cups per day, and yeah yeah I know all the good stuff about moderation, but it's better than soda and my tea tags say cute little things like "grace brings trust, appreciation, love and prosperity".  How can you find anything wrong with that?  I DARE YOU TO TRY.

2.  Tree pose.  Balancing poses in yoga are my kyrptonite and yet I can always count on tree pose to be a real winner.  Steady, easy, natural - it's the one thing I can count on when every other balancing sequence sends me toppling in all directions.

3.  Tiramisu.  Mascarpone cream, chocolate, espresso, ladyfingers... does it get any better than this?  No, no, it does not.

4.  The Raconteurs - namely, their newest album Consolers of the Lonely.  Honestly my favorite album, start to finish, since Radiohead's In Rainbows.  And this is my list, so I can consider "The" as my T-word, NO COMPLAINING.

5.  Travel.  I get super antsy if I am stuck in the same place for any real amount of time.  Even a couple of weeks, and I need a day trip or something.  I love the adventure, I love airports (even after being stuck in way too many of them for way too long), I love watching other people and wondering where they're going and what their stories are, and I love finding myself in a completely different place.  It kind of gives you a fresh start every time.

6.  Texting.  I confess, I am one of those people you probably hate.  Unless you're like me, in which case you would LOVE to be my phone buddy.  I have gotten to the point where, unless a seriously complicated conversation needs to occur, I almost won't ANSWER the phone, preferring rather to send a quick text after the missed call: "yeah, what's up?".  I just can't stand all the small talk, and if all the person needs is to say "I'm running 15 minutes late, meet me then?" then I certainly don't need to spend 5 minutes on the phone discussing THAT.  Ooh, I almost hate myself for being such a snot.

7.  Turtlenecks.  And turtleneck sweaters, especially.  There's something about being bundled up in a cozy, oversized turtleneck sweater that I just can't beat.  However, I know not everyone feels this way; I had a boyfriend for a long time who HATED turtlenecks in all forms, and when I had to give him some particularly bad news one day, I dressed in the biggest turtleneck I could find.  My best friend had dubbed it the "Queen Mother of all turtlenecks", and I guess our reasoning was that the less appealing he found me, the easier the news would go over?  I dunno.  Remember that, Amy?

8.  Tequila.  You know how sometimes when you have a really bad experience with a particular type of liquor it makes you want to swear off it forever?  Yeah, I had that experience with tequila, a few Mardi Gras ago, and I think it only drew us closer.  Tequila + Elise 4EVA.  I have become a bit of a snob as of late thanks to a friend of ours, and a few months ago, I told Cody I would only be drinking Patron.  He said (and I quote): "HA."  And then he bought NOT Patron.  Can you believe him?

9.  Tall people.  I hadn't considered this as something that I LOVE, but to be perfectly honest, I got to 8 and kinda got stuck.  So I started asking around and apparently, I love tall people.  To hear others tell it, I am actually somewhat obsessed with tall people; always going on and on about their incredible height and how impressive I find it.  So, there you go, we both learned something with this list.

10.  Time to myself.  This one is definitely true.  In fact, if I don't get time to myself, I go a little bit crazy.  You know how for some people, being surrounded by friends makes their energy level go up?  Yeah.  That works in the opposite for me.  It wasn't really until college that I figured out the necessity of me being able to get away from everyone, even if it was just for a few hours.  There was more than one Friday night when I told everyone who asked I had plans with someone else and went to hide out in a big, cozy chair in Barnes & Noble with a book and a big cup of tea.  Anti-social?  Perhaps.  Sanity-saving?  Absolutely.

So there you have it, ten things I love that start with T.  Wanna give it a shot?  Like ATW, I promise not to assign you X or Z, unless you're just one of those people who like a challenge.

The Season Of The Witch

I love Christmas, I really do.  I like all the decorations, adore the music, definitely get into the gift-giving spirit - so that's not really my issue.

I'm just in one of those seasons where the store, and all it entails, is really starting to wear on me. 

I honestly believe that EVERYONE, regardless of their job or position in life, goes through these types of seasons, where everything they're doing and all the activities of every day add up to one seemingly pointless total.  And we all look at someone else's life; someone else's job, and think "oh, if ONLY I could be doing that.  That would be SO MUCH BETTER."  And then that person, the one doing THAT, they are looking at you and thinking the same exact thing.

What I'm saying is that I know this is normal (at least it better be), and so I'm not like, rushing out to fire-sale the store or anything.  I am just going through one of those times where every little thing I have to do regarding the store seems like a big, annoying task - and there are a LOT of "big annoying tasks" for the store this time of year.  Even when I have a day off, it never feels like one at all.  I'm either filling out some form (for the store), going to some event (for the store), spending hours trying to book a cheap plane ticket to market (for the store), updating mailing lists and working on a direct mailer (for the store), etc.  You get my drift.  And even when I push all that aside, telling myself it can wait 'til tomorrow, nothing will fall apart overnight (a stress-management technique I had to employ after I spent nearly every waking hour of my first year of ownership AT the store), I have to deal with the phone calls from vendors, telling me that I owe them money.

Yeah, because that's the new and exciting thing that's been happening ever since our economy took a nosedive.  Companies who are hurting just as badly as I am are going through invoices from YEARS back, literally, and calling on them.  Aggressively calling on them.  And the lady who owned the store before I did, when it was a whole different entity, basically - well, apparently she didn't pay some bills.  And now the companies are after their cash, and while I can't blame them, really - I mean I am as desperate as anyone these days - they really don't seem to get the concept of "SHE DOESN'T OWN THIS STORE ANYMORE, AND WE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF YOU".

Not to say that I don't owe anyone money.  Because I do.  Oh, I do.  I am constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul, and sometimes when I get called on an overdue invoice, or something from three years ago that everyone, including me, forgot about until just now - I have to tell them "sorry, I don't got it".  And Internet, let me tell you - I'm not a "sorry, I don't got it" kind of girl.  Well, I WASN'T, anyway.  But it's the truth, and at this point, on a lot of things, the truth is the best I can do. 

Two of the stores in my center went out of business in the past two months.  Things are not getting much better.  And the RIDICULOUSLY SHORT-SIGHTED MEDIA keeps on and on with their doom-and-gloom, predicting that 2009 will be the "weakest economic year in recent history", whatever THAT means (how recent? how weak? what's your definition of weak? oh, to answer all of that wouldn't be NEARLY as sensationalist, would it?).  And the general population, your average Joe who just watches the evening news over dinner, hears the media blathering endlessly about how the economy is falling apart, and he decides that he better pull the purse strings a little tighter.  No more frivolous purchasing!  He's putting his wife on a budget!  And with that, there goes my $200 per month interaction with average Joe's wife.  And if enough average Joe's make that identical decision, well, $200 x 1500 adds up REAL fast.

So when I see a mom pulling her stroller out of the trunk in the middle of the day to kill some time out of the house, I miss the dark circles under her eyes and the look of desperation on her face.  I only see the immense appeal of focusing on ONE task instead of ten million.  Raise your child, keep your house decent.  If you don't have a house-cleaner to do that second one for you, that is.  If your kid has a bad day, no one's gonna lose their job.  You aren't going to file bankruptcy if you can't get potty training down in three months.  And I know - of course that's an unfair comparison - I not only have no idea what all goes into being a stay-at-home mom, I honestly don't even WANT to do it right now - I know it's a super hard job, and when (if) I ever do it, I'm sure I will look back on my store-owner days and think OH MY GOSH, WHAT WAS I COMPLAINING ABOUT?

But maybe I won't. 

And the former scoffing I've done at 9-5 desk jobs, with all their boring monotony and personality-killing sameness - that now looks like blissful regularity, beautiful certainty.  I would go home at 5pm, maybe stop at the grocery store for dinner supplies, and NOT THINK ABOUT MY JOB ANYMORE UNTIL THE NEXT DAY.  Oh, and I'd also be getting a paycheck, which would be awesome.  And I know, I know - I get to have a super flexible schedule and fly to LA all the time, and I'm on like, the MOST INCREDIBLE concert-seeing streak ever - so again, if I was, say, working in a bank or accounting office somewhere, I might be wringing my hands over what I gave up.

But maybe I wouldn't.

The best thing to do when I'm feeling this way seems to be to remember that the store is NOT my life.  So if things at the store aren't going well, I don't need to extrapolate that over my entire life and have this all-consuming cloud of guilt and failure hovering over my every moment.  The store is NOT my life; the store is one aspect of my life, and if I am doing my best at the store, and doing everything I know how to do, then whatever happens, happens.  I have to be okay with that.  And most of the time, truthfully, I am.

But sometimes I'm not.

Thank goodness I'm only 27.

The Seven Year Itch

I get email on my phone now, and maybe that's the problem.  The easy access, the siren call of the flashing red light, the immediate notification - I was drawn in to the cycle without even realizing it.  I don't even have to get online anymore to check Facebook, that amazing time-suck of a social media site.  Yeah, that's right....my phone lets me know of any relevant changes or postings on there as well.  This burgundy piece of equipment is singlehandedly destroying my relationship with the World Wide Web.

Or is that just an excuse?  Is it easier for me to blame the demise of my long-term love affair with all things Internet on this sexy little newcomer in my life?  Or does it run deeper than that?  Perhaps it was inevitable - all good things must come to an end, or so they say.  I don't know if it's similar to the New Car Phenomenon, where you decide you MIGHT be in the market for a new vehicle and then suddenly you seem surrounded, INUNDATED, by new car ads, specials, promotions, enticements...but the few times I have gotten online lately and clicked through to some of my favorite blogs, I have been met with goodbye messages.  So it's not just me, I tell myself.  See, other people are having this issue as well. 

What is it with blogging lately?  I'm just not satisfied anymore.  I don't need you like I used to, blogging.  It's not you, it's me.  Or is it?

Maybe it's that many of the top bloggers out there, the ones I read all those years ago and made this whole endeavor seem so appealing, have turned "corporate" - they write for the money, whether that be product placement posts or merely for the increase in traffic that fuels their ad revenue.  And something about that just hits me as SO disingenuous.  Not that I am against the free market or capitalism or making money with your talents - because I'm all about it.  But mainly because what drew me into blogging in the first place was the rawness of the expression, the naked openness of saying "this is my story, and I want you to know it".  And that theme gets lost rather quickly in all the recipe contests and giveaways and corporate sponsorship of 3-year old birthday parties that I feel like I read about more than anything these days.  As such, I haven't even OPENED my feed reader in probably three weeks.  If I am online with an itch to read blogs, I click through my page to about 4 or 5 different sites, and (imagine this) NONE of them are sponsored by anyone or anything.  In fact, most of then net less than 10 comments per post and seem to be genuinely unconcerned by that fact.  It's refreshing.

So what to do?  I don't really want to stop writing.  I like writing; like the stringing of words together to create coherent thoughts and occasionally funny anecdotes that I would otherwise probably forget.  I enjoy the catharsis of putting swirling emotions in order and organizing them in written form on a page, and then hitting publish and feeling like the whole situation has been solved.  I'm not giving that up.  But what I AM giving up is the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak.  I'm not going to host recipe contests, or jump around seventeen different social media sites and seventeen HUNDRED blogs just trying to up my traffic or stats.  If I don't post for a week or a month, I'm not going to concern myself with what my readership is doing, or if they're going elsewhere for their fix.  Let's be honest, I obviously haven't concerned myself with that last issue much in the first place, since my last Project Runway recap has been up for over a month at this point.

And you know what?  It's not because I don't love having people who read my blog, and even less because I don't love the individual people who read my blog, because guess what?  I DO love you guys.  I know many of you in real life already, and I have gotten the chance to meet a couple of you that I otherwise knew exclusively online, and there are many of you who (and you know this) I am DYING to meet.  Much like my store, which gives me no end of grief on a regular basis, my favorite part of blogging has got to be the friends I have made through doing it.  And so there's another reason to continue, because I'll never believe that I've met all the amazing people there are to meet in this world. 

So what's my point, you ask?  Well, maybe there isn't one.  Maybe this is one of those cathartic posts, and now that I've expressed to blogging how I'm falling out of love with it, we can get back on track.  Or maybe blogging has changed, and we do need to break up.  But since I'm still writing, and you're still reading, it looks like we're still on.  Maybe all I wanted to say is that 2008 has been one of the weirdest years of my life; in some ways one of the best and in some ways one of the very worst.  And yet, even though this year has been absolutely packed full of experiences and changes, my blog reflects almost none of that.  I am tired of not getting to tell the stories I want to tell on here because I am constantly afraid of who I'll inadvertently offend with MY story, with MY life.  And maybe I'm not going to be afraid of that so much anymore. 

So maybe this isn't a breakup, blogging.  But I gotta tell you - things have got to change a bit for this to work out for us.  You have to be a little less commercialized and popularity-contesty, and I am going to be a little less scared of offending those few people out there with something I say that has nothing to do with them.  I mean let's be honest, they were going to be offended by SOMETHING, anyway.  Might as well be me :)

Also, Lydah wanted to say hello.  She says that if she doesn't care about laying in a dirty fire pit, then everyone can just get over...well, just about everything.  She also wants to add that her ears are just perfect, aren't they?  And also that she would very much like to go camping again, and if any of you can make that happen, please drop her a line at [email protected].  Yeah, she really is THAT conceited.