Squirrel Brain

Must prepare for winter. Must. Prepare. For. Winter.

Not quite but it seems that my Squirrel Brain is starting its seasonal rev up. My list of things to get done is continually growing even as I feverishly tick off "done" projects.

About a month ago I was asked to be on the Board of a volunteer organization here in my local area that supports a Mental Health Counseling service that provides much needed support to families and individuals. I was asked to help design and put together the quarterly newsletter because the woman asking me knew I had mad 'puter skillz. The newsletter is due Friday and I was up until 1am this morning working on it. This was in spite of the fact that as soon as I got my first contributions to this issue I started right to work and in theory should have only had a few final edits and additions to do yesterday. Yeah. Right. My first mistake was to use a handy-dandy software program that was supposed to make putting together newletters "drop-and-drag" easy. After having the stupid program crash my laptop 6 times last night, I got it all the way I wanted it. Or so I thought. Upon further examination this morning, I decided that I hated it and would just do it all in Word (so that it was compatible with the Director's computer too.) I was done and had the final-final copy printed out by noon. It is now at Kinko's and I'm off the hook until April. (Yes, I made blank templates of all the basic pages so next time it really will be cut and paste easy.) Or so I think...

Did I mention that I put a butt-load of old scrapping and other misc. stuff up on Ebay last week too? All my auctions ended yesterday and so I had a few hours of double checking payment, shipping, etc. etc. and then packing and printing shipping labels and all that fun stuff. Of course it also included a trip to Staples (that was easy.) for additional packing supplies. Did I actually make any money? Hard to say, there is a good balance in my PayPal account but I with what I spent at Staples, it was probably a wash.

I'm still in the information gathering phase of my BIG BUSINESS VENTURE! And man is it starting to freak me out. I'm at the point where the specifics and money matters are beginning to overwhelm me. I knew this would be the case. The old adage that "you need money to make money" certainly holds true. I'm also caught in that circle of not knowing where to find suppliers and being unable to find them because I'm not officially a retail business yet but being unable to move forward with my forecasting and planning because I don't know what my supplies will cost. If there is anyone out there that is already a member of CHA and would like to take me along to the next event or trade show I'll buy lunch!

In addition to those two big things I have the usual Mom things like Little E having morning band today. This meant that even though I was up until 1am, I still had to get up an hour earlier to get her up and out of the house by 7:15. The good part about that was that I was up and awake so I could get to work on my newsletter. Also yesterday was Mini-Me's 14th birthday. We did most of our celebrating over the weekend because Mr Mess on the road again this week. But I still felt obligated to observe the day in some way. So we made a trip to Best Buy with Grandma's birthday check in hand and got what every teen has on their gift list this year. We also stopped at Target for essentials. After a dinner at California Pizza Kitchen we came home and did homework and went to bed.

I've also been working on some new craft projects. I'm keeping them a secret for now because they will most likely end up being the main feature in my first issue of the web-zine. I'm also pondering putting them together as kits or patterns. Stay tuned.

Small piddly things that are floating around in the back of my brain include: getting the windows washed, dividing and moving perennials in my front garden, cleaning and reorganizing my guest room/closet before my in-laws visit in three weeks, coordinating a dinner party for our church Dinner Club on Oct. 20th, pool closing that is supposed to be scheduled for this week, and signing up for adult ed. classes for starting my own business at the community college.

Luckily I've been so busy and preoccupied that I haven't been able to dwell on the sad realization that we are most very likely down one cat. My darling little Tallulah went missing last Friday. We've looked around the neighborhood and watched the classified ads all to no avail. Whenever she went outside, she never ventured very far but I guess one time was all it took. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she got herself shut in someone's shed or garage and will be found soon, but I'm not very optimistic at this point. Tomorrow I'll type up a flyer and put it in mailboxes around the neighborhood and see if anyone has seen her.