964 Miles From Home

Coffee in the Denver architect series mug, "3,000 Miles" by Tracy Chapman on iTunes. I'm off the melancholy playlist even though the spouse is still 964 miles away. But I made it through the first weekend alone, holding together home and hearth with adequacy if not grace and verve.

As the spouse likes to say, every scrap of cloth in the house is clean (or in the washer), and the Sprout is off to school--only a teensy bit late this morning. Shouldn't have tried to empty the dishwasher, move around laundry, fold laundry, make her breakfast (though cutting a couple of slices of danish and pouring some juice isn't terribly time consuming), make her lunch and supervise her chores (oh yes, and get dressed and teeth brushed myself) all on a rainy Monday morning before school.

Now it's 8:30 and thoughts turn to glass. A piece didn't turn out last week and I had to refire it over the weekend. Unfortunately the customer for it is driving down from Canada to one of my galleries up north to pick it up on Tuesday. I shipped the stand out Friday, but now I have to overnight the glass today and it's a big, heavy piece. I won't make anything on this sale other than the continued goodwill of the gallery and hope for more orders from them. Just the cost of doing business--and it wouldn't have happened at all if I weren't running the firing schedule right up to the wire.

BRB--got to take a break to fill the bird feeders in between rain showers. The little birds are out there right now and looking quite put out that they made the trek and there's no food...

Though I'm still behind from starting the year with three big shows and set-up of a permanent showroom (all before St. Patrick's Day!), today I finally feel rested and like I can see the tasks ahead of me in a coherent order. There are a daunting number of them from finances (invoice reconciliation, bills, taxes, sales taxes, oh my) to getting the Bullseye glass order in, to planning and promoting summer camp, but I can see them all now--no more too-swamped-to-see-ahead-past-next-week. Wow. It's a scary view! But there's coffee, quiet, peace and time--and only 16,571 minutes till Dave gets home.