Quiet Sunday

Oh, blessed, quiet, day of calm.

I think I'm finally downgrading from code red to code orange. The flood was cleaned up and the studio reorganized. Bellingham was restocked. By Thursday I had caught up with all the current mail orders. Friday I worked at Collage and spruced up and restocked them too. I even got a few hours off in the evening to socialize! Do holiday stuff!

And then, wonder of wonders, I took a day off yesterday to decorate the tree, string the outdoor lights and deck the halls with a little holiday spirit. But it was sorta of slow and apathetic, because I'm so darn tired. My sweet kitty, Dora, is having a love affair with the tree - batting off all the lower ornaments, rearranging the light strings, and sleeping under the branches in her little fuzzy blanket. It's adorable, most of the time.

Today is quiet - a day of cleaning, laundry, catching up on extra stuff. I feel like it's the first breath in a long time, like I've been underwater, holding my air til I'm blue, and I've just blasted to the surface. I'm working ahead on getting all the new orders out tomorrow, right on time. It's by choice. I don't really have to work today, but I want to do some shopping and errands tomorrow. That's one of the good things about being self-scheduled. I don't have to fight the crowds on weekends. I can wait until the weekday and head out early to avoid some of the craziness. So today I'm staying home and getting things put to rights and hopefully taking a long nap.

I'm also making more batches of soap almost every day. Just to fill in holes, and get all the flavors back on the list. As of now there are several scents that are sold out again. I had made small batches of all of them - just to get me through that last little hump of shows, but they sold out almost immediately. The next round of little batches will be ready Dec 18th. What's missing is: Cedar Musk, Citrus Basil Scrub, Breakfast, Lavender Pear and Red Currant. They WILL be back in stock. I am working on it as fast as I can. Everything else is good and ready for last minute Chrismas shopping.

When I finally get a bigger chunk of quiet time to catch up on paperwork and bookkeeping, I'm expecting that the mail order and web site have finally outgrown the show money. I hope so. That was the goal. Or at least get closer. I want to make changes next year - yes, like make a ton more soap earlier so this running out thing doesn't happen again. But also change up the show schedule, maybe do fewer little ones anyway. Concentrate on the internet sales more because it's a much more effective use of my time. Can it be? Is it already time for resolutions and new year planning?