What's Going On Around Here

Oh. My. Gosh. Ai. Yi. Yi.


With it being the last day of our Make Way for Market Sale, I'm officially at the head spinning, hands flapping, word stuttering point in the summer. My hair is frizzy, my tongue is tied, my brain is addled, my glorified flip-flops and printed canvas wedges are already looking worn out and I need a VACATION!!! I know so many of you out there can relate to just being too busy. Now, busy-ness in business is a good thing--I would much rather have too much going on around here than nothing much going. But eventually you get to the point where the phrase "I'm only one person" takes on a very, very real meaning.

And yesterday, I developed a twitch in my right eye. It came on every time someone asked me how I was doing. Ringing up a sale, for instance. Customer asks, "How's it going?" Meaning, I think, the sale, the store, our preparations for Market, life in general. "Great!" I replied, my right eye pattering a little off-tempo beat inside its socket. And more twitching with each successive customer who asked me the same question.

Later, I tell my boyfriend, "My eye keeps twitching. But only when people ask me how I'm doing." Twitch. Twitch twitch. "See? Here!" I point to my eye. "Can you see it? I just said the words 'how I'm doing' and it's twitching! Can you see it?"

"No." He says. "So how are you doing?"

Twitch twitch twitch. Twitch twitch.

But to keep this from devolving into a "woe is me" post (the likes of which I've sworn I'll never write), let me recap a few highlights of our week at THE BLISSFUL:

1. Our Make Way for Market Sale winds up today, this Saturday the 21st, at 5 PM. It's felt great to move so much merchandise out the door over the past two weeks--lots of it at truly insane prices--but I am ready to get the store back in order, do some general cleaning, and allow a fresh vision to take shape. It ends today. It ends today. Thank God, it ends today. (Twitch.)

2. I'm in a madcap race to complete my office reorganization and transformation before leaving for Market on July 9th. So not feeling like making things tidy right now. Long, long ago, I promised on this blog to show Before & After pictures of the office once the project was completed. That day is coming. Unlike some of you, I am one who has a dubious penchant for being able to live with things out of order for a long time before doing something about it. I'd rather live in frustration for a while than begin without inspiration. Not touting this as a virtue.

3. One of our concepts for an upcoming display has involved extensive sessions of lighting the edges of paper on fire. I should add that this was all accomplished outside of the shop. For those who know me well, I should add that none of the actual fire handling was performed by me.


4. Did I mention that preparations for our summer trip to Market in Atlanta are underway? To tell you that I'm dying to commence our "vacation" week of madcap searching through the world's largest international tradeshow for home accessories, gifts, and apparel is to let you know just how frazzled, fraught, and fried I feel around here. To have this week in July solely to focus on buying product will be a heaven of concentrated delight. (Maybe the twitch will go away.)

5. Blogging and the Online Boutique. Lord, have mercy. After almost four months in business online, it's now become an implausibility to run my brick-and-mortar store and my Online Boutique with only one computer. Long gone are the days when I could blog a little, take care of customers, ring sales, and still sneak in time for photography and writing product descriptions. We're having to adjust how we work around here and we're glad for it. So a laptop for the office is in short order. This might even allow me the occasional luxurious afternoon at a coffee shop to blog (writing is my No. 1 passion and, sadly, one of the first things to fall off my list when things get hectic because it feels like an indulgence, kind of like eating dessert). I'm toying with the idea of writing 30 posts in thirty days, between this blog and my other one. Not making any promises just yet, though. I'll let you know when I commence that personal challenge. And the Online Boutique? Just want to say thank you to those persistent blog readers and web surfers out there who e-mail our Sales Desk daily inquiring about products they've seen on the blog but are not yet included for sale in our Online Boutique. We fulfill these orders via PayPal and are happy to do so. We promise that our current online mix will be recharged very shortly. Time has been the issue. So next week, we're putting the Online Boutique on project status. We're beginning a mad dash to upload new product to the Online Boutique before our Shopkeeping feature in the August issue of Romantic Homes hits newsstands in early July. Expect lots of new finds in almost every online department by the end of the month. Yay!

6. Today, I'm off to a baby shower for a dear friend. Tomorrow, I'm off to our regional Market in Columbus for one final tweak of our Holiday orders (they'll begin arriving at the shop in July and August!).

Another update coming soon, hopefully one less twitchy and harried than this one!