The Intense Wee Hour

Why is it that everything has more intense meaning and significance at 3:00 am, but only if you were sleeping and woke up to it? You don't have panic attacks at 3:00 am if you've been up all night. At least I don't. (Note that it is significantly more difficult to type at 3:00 am because of the active, purring presence of Ernie demanding one hand all to himself for pets.)

Judy had jury duty all last week and had it not been for Debbie and Becky H. helping out in the studio, everything would have completely fallen to pieces--me included. I have *got* to become okay with telling people no! Of course one of the people I am not (and should not be) saying no to right now is J who will be nine next week and who would like an old-fashioned birthday party with pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, a treasure hunt, chocolate cake and vanilla cupcakes, a dart and balloon game, and a pinata. I can hand the food bits off to Dave, but I need to get cracking on the rest. She has a swim meet all weekend so the party is going to have to be right after early dismissal on Thursday afternoon.

Looking back on the (really-should-have-been-but-wasn't) terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week, probably the biggest snafu was caused by UPS shutting my account off yesterday, Friday, and me discovering it at 5:55 pm as I was trying to schedule and process for same-day pick-up and shipment an order that absolutely, positively had to go out RIGHT THEN. And why did they do this? Because they have been trying to pay my invoices (I have auto-draft set-up) against my old checking account in spite of the fact that I changed the information back in August in their on-line billing center/account management interface AND faxed them a cancellation request. I still have not been able to get an answer--satisfactory or not--as to why I can change my information on-line in their system and have the new, correct information show up *for months* and yet that's not what they have and use for billing!!! (Yes, it's really worth three exclamation points.) It was almost 7:00 when I got the right department on the phone and got everything straightened out with them culminating in the assurance that my account would be back on and functional...by midnight. It's now just after 4:00 am and I don't have the heart to check.

Later this morning I have my first official beginning kiln-forming class in the studio. I ran a special at our birthday/anniversary party offering a 10 hour open studio card free if you signed up that day for a class. Of course I forgot Judy has the day off today AND I am running a special for the Atlanta Glass Artists Guild today... One of the people I really have to work on saying no to is myself!

Okay, I'll update the firing schedule for tomorrow (today!) and go back to bed. I feel like I can sleep again.