Southern Exposure

(and a really long list)

I know that Santa Rosa must have had some pretty amazing sunrises, but I rarely saw them. It must be having a southern exposure that has given me so many gorgeous skies to wake up to. Either that or the nature of the skies here (cloudy all the time) diffuses the light more beautifully. Either way, it's wonderful.

I love BBQ Sue. Except that she is distressingly thin. When I look at her I feel the overwhelming urge to stuff her full of frosted animal cookies. I'm serious. Women should not be as thin as she is. It should be understood that I have no desire to become her size. It bothers me that I couldn't find a thicker mannequin. Oh well, look at that gorgeous face and cute hair!

Color story: Red, Black, and White. They are partying. I still need to include a little story line for people to read. I also need to find some other shoes for Sue. I would wear this outfit, rain boots and all. I'd wear it to the store, I'd wear it to visit farms, I'd wear it to visit friends.


If I ever thought people weren't opinionated about other people's work before, opening a store has cured that misconception. Everyone has a few suggestions for me. Things I should carry, how to rearrange things, what services I should offer, and what new products I should develop (since I can obviously sew, and the world is therefore my oyster). Partly people share their opinions with me because I appear to be fairly open. (I actually think it's because I seem like a novice and carry around with me a fat naive baby face full of fear.)

One woman told me I needed to put a purple and red something in my prosperity corner. Another woman said I should carry Dr. Hauschka products. Everyone has told me how much more merchandise I should have in my store. How the signs need to be bigger, how I need a sandwich board out front, how the furniture should all be for sale. I should sell kids clothes. I should join the Chamber of Commerce. I should fill a niche. I should carry consumables. I should get another job. I should...

Some advice I have solicited such as getting help with the window displays. But most of it is unsolicited. All of it is meant to be helpful. Yesterday my friend Lisa and her husband's cousin Stephanie (who both really want to see me succeed) had a couple of suggestions for me. I cannot deny that they were good suggestions. Stephanie has a framing shop/gallery in Ashland Oregon and has been in business for eleven years. You listen to people who are successful. The lighting in the store needs to be diffused (it's all florescent bare bulbs) and I totally think they're right. They also mentioned the huge wall of wood. Wood doesn't compliment my merchandise very well. I already knew that. It's already an irritation to me that I haven't been able to find time to paint some MDF board and cover it.

But here's what I want to say: I let loose a flood of fears, a list longer than the bible of things I have to do, I unleashed on my good friends a tirade of surprising length about how overwhelmed I am with everything I have yet to accomplish. I'm pretty sure I made them regret having given me a couple of sound suggestions. I felt pretty bad about it. I could tell by the somewhat stunned looks on their faces when all their soothing tactics failed to stem the tide of Angelina's impossibility of life speech...and they backed away slowly and left. (I'm so sorry Lisa and Stephanie! Believe it or not, your suggestions were not offensive to me!)

I think everyone needs to be aware that if they make suggestions to me, this is what they're in for. You have all been warned. Yes, there is so much room for improvement in my store. Many things I have yet to do are super important. And that's the rub. I can only get to one thing at a time and there are about thirty things vying for my attention, things that might improve my business, things that might help to draw people in. All the while the clock is ticking on this venture because my overhead is huge. I knew it would be, but I didn't realize how hard it would be to get people to buy from me online.

So here's my list, recorded for posterity. Also, if anything you wanted to suggest to me is already on my list, can it! I know. And bear in mind that many of these things are small and shouldn't take much time to accomplish, but there are only twenty four hours in the day and I have already been working for eleven of them most days:

1. Get covers for all of the florescent lights (there are about twenty of them!)

2. Get shelving to cover part of the wood panelling and also to maximise merchandising space.

3. Get MDF (or other) board painted and put up on wood panelling.

4. Get shelving for sewing area to clean it up

5. Put prices on all of the display furniture

6. Get a filing cabinet

7. Get more bins for storage of display items and seasonal merchandise

8. Make labels for pet gift sets

9. Make a dump run to clean out the packaging from the back room

10. Improve window lighting (higher wattage bulbs)

11. Design and make hang tags

12. Get a blanket rack for linens

13. Get signage made, big sign in window, sandwich board sign for sidewalk.

14. Get more merchandise tables

15. Find more card lines to carry

16. Find more bath products to carry

17. Start selecting garden items to sell

18. Design and have T-shirts made

19. Find good frames to carry in the store

20. Find a good line of coffee mugs

21. Get sew-in tags made for the aprons

22. Put a package together for "Left In Stitches". (a sewing contractor)

23. Put a package together for "Mary Jane's Farm"

24. Send an apron to the costumer of "Desperate Housewives"

25. Get a rep for wholesale items

26. Put together an official wholesale catalog

27. Work on new apron pattern

28. Put together a binder for the store of all of our suppliers

29. Register for January trade shows

30. Put the light kit together for the display case

31. Develop the bread baking kit

32. Fine tune our google adwords

But that's not all. No. Then there's the house stuff. The house we have to live in while we get all this other stuff accomplished.

33. Fix the fence so the dog can't get out front to scare the neighborhood

34. Fix the deer fencing that fell in the storm

35. Start composting so that we can clean out the chickens hen house and have a place to put
poop where Chick can't chow on it.

36. Get two tall baskets for recycling to keep in the kitchen

37. Get a filing cabinet for the office

38. Re-work the front closet to make it easier to use (cubbies, shoe racks, pegs, etc.)

39. Organize office shelf so it doesn't take five hours to find mortgage information

40. Get rid of all excess boxes and recyclables (dump run)

41. Paint the living room, dining room, kitchen (which requires the removal of wallpaper)

42. Lose 70 pounds

43. Get Max involved in some kind of sport

44. Make lots of food ahead of time to reduce the amount of money spent on mediocre lunches
bought from Harvest Fresh, or expensive ones bought from Luigi's Daughter.

45. Send pictures of Max and the house to all the relatives who've been bugging me for them
for three years

46. Look for jobs

47. Get scooter fixed

48. Become a born again Christian and let God take care of it all like they say he will if I stop
making pacts with the Devil

49. Schedule bone graft surgery for Philip's arm that hasn't healed after a year


There are some Feng Shui things that could be on that list too, but I'm not a believer. I know, BIG SHOCK. I could go along with it all on the theory that it can't hurt to put something purple in my prosperity corner, but I already go to great lengths not to attract the angry eyes of the devil (whom I happen to not believe in), if I let myself follow other practices on the principle that it can't hurt, I may end up spending all my time warding off evil and trying to attract goodness, rather than trying to tackle my already sizable list.

A part of me feels certain that I'm on the right path, that somehow all of this hard work will materialize into an income of five thousand dollars a month. I feel like things are going to come together for us. Something in me tells me that we are at the start of good things. But there's another part of me that knows that hard work alone does not guarantee success. Just as believing in God doesn't protect you from evil until you're already dead. We can spend the next two years working our asses ragged and still not quite get there. That's real life. That's a life I'm very well acquainted with. I have never been afraid of hard work or challenges. But what if we don't have that something you need to make people want what you have to sell? What if we are always just a little bit off? I'm afraid that no amount of hard work will pay off in dividends for us, that we'll always be inches from liquidation.

The truth is, if I had it just right, if I was doing everything the way I should, people would not be trying to think about how we could be doing it better, they'd be too busy enjoying what we've put out there for them. They wouldn't see the things we haven't done, they'd only notice what we have done. Because if we were doing it right and I wasn't overwhelmed with what I have yet to accomplish I wouldn't unconsciously invite so much advice. Did Martha have so many people telling her how to make her catering business into a corporation? Do you think anyone dared tell Martha how she could be doing things better?

Maybe Martha didn't have so many people who loved her either. I'm lucky that so many of my friends want me to succeed and are willing to brave the Angelina-tide-of-fear to help me get there.