Nice to see you!

Three major events occurred for me last year (2010), all in the space of about 2 weeks. I turned 50. The following day I got married. Two weeks later, my oldest daughter became pregnant with her first child and my first grandchild.

Most middle-aged people will tell you that in their minds, they still feel 20 something. It's the same for me.

Wasn't it only yesterday that I was planning a night out with guys from the surf club? That gorgeous new perm. Flaired, cuffed denims and the red t-shirt with the off-the-shoulder frill. Corked platform wedgies. **sigh**

Suddenly I'm looking in the mirror and wondering how 30 years can flash by so damned quickly!

So here I am in cyberspace, sharing my genuine shock and horror with anyone who'll listen and maybe I'll even meet some other over 50s who find themselves in the same predicament!

Welcome to my dilemna!!

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Slow Start

It was a slow start to Saturday morning at the shop, but it ended well. Some late customers who walked through the door just as we were about to close all excitedly chose some snap jewellery to make our total for the day look quite healthy.

It was nice to have The Motivator and her SIL drop in for a chat late morning.

Mid afternoon the Blond Bombshell and her visitor dropped by after they had been to the movies.

Adoring Husband was kind enough to come to the shop as I was closing to help bring everything inside and to play the role of security for me.

I spent some time working on the 'vision board' workshop, which includes creating my own vision board for 2018 to use as an example. I'm making some minor changes to the way I designed last year's board with my word for the year taking pride of place in the centre.

There is still much to do.

Adoring Husband and I took down the tree, all the Christmas lights and the decorations today and this evening - 12 days after Christmas - as it should be.

Primrose is suffering through 40C+ temperatures at home as we speak. Sounds dreadful!

I'm considering opening the shop for a few hours on Sunday, so I think I'll head to bed and see how I feel in the morning.

I'm tired.

Nite all.

Friday, January 5, 2018

Friday Frenzy

There was no frenzy.

It was my first day back at work this week and I had a total of 5 people come into the shop.

One of them was a lady who came in last week, and today she brought some family members with her, including her sister who proceeded to take photos of a couple of things that she liked - her father then quietly told me that she would be unhappy to hear him telling me that she has her own shop.

I thought it was strange that she had been into the shop three times and hadn't bought anything. She has asked lots of questions and asked to look more closely at many stock items but always leaves empty handed.

Ah well.

Three others came in and looked around, had a short conversation about where they were from and how long they were staying and how they had learned about the shop, but also left empty handed.

One gentleman came in to tell me how great the shop was and then began to ask many questions about whether we'd had Feng Shui advice before opening the shop, whether we had burnt sage or used sound healing and if we have crystals for energy healing.

To look at this man, you would never believe that he was a new age kind of guy with any knowledge on this subject, but I was curious to hear what he had to say, including the fact that he had bought a book at a library sale that contained 'spells' for all different areas of your life such as business, relationships, luck, health etc.

He phoned me a while after he had left the shop to give me the name and author of the spell book lol.

So the majority of my day was spent checking off the new stock against the printed order page and then placing the buttons on display sheets so that I could photograph them for our Facebook page and THEN reorganising all of the buttons on the display sheets and THEN reorganising the storage drawers under the counter.

We have approximately 1000 different snap buttons which equates to 1000 plastic bags with any number of buttons in them to store and hopefully find easily when needed.

It took me all day to do that and tomorrow I need to do the same thing with all of the snap jewellery items. Storage will in the future, be a bit of an issue, so we have to be smart.

At least I got to shut the shop early this afternoon and Adoring Husband came to help me bring everything inside. We were driving away from the shop at 3.05pm - unlike last week when a customer came through the door at 2.55pm and didn't leave until 4.20pm!

It was a nice night at the club, but the same old people won raffle prizes as always and we losers sat and applauded their success, as always.

AH and I had another easy dinner and now it's almost 11pm and time for bed.


Nite all.

 

  

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Ciao Baby!

Primrose left early this morning. Quickly and without fuss.

She had to leave quickly because it would have been a sob-fest. Instead, it was like ripping off a bandaid. See ya bye GO!

While I originally thought I'd go to work, I decided that I needed a day to myself doing nothing, going nowhere, seeing no-one, sitting beside Adoring Husband on the couch and planning my upcoming week at work.

It was just what I needed.

I did get quite a bit of niggly washing done. You know, those annoying things that need to be either washed separately from everything else, or hand washed or soaked or whatever.

Primrose texted me mid afternoon to let me know that she would be in Armidale for the night and could I organise some accommodation for her. So I got online and booked a room for her and texted her the details.

Not long after that, AH drove me to the shop and told me to call him when I was ready to be picked up. So I got to spend some time with The Motivator discussing business and life.

A fabulous package of snap buttons and snap jewellery arrived today, so I began to check them off against the printout while The Motivator served customers.

By the time we shut the doors for the day, her family arrived for their week holiday, so we showed them around the shop and I called AH to pick me up. I left them all to catch up and The Motivator will have some time off work to spend with them.

AH and I had an easy dinner and he went off to bed early.

I too, am going to bed early! It's now 10.00am and my only coffee for the day was at 7am so I have no caffeine in my system to keep me awake half the night!

Hopefully, after a solid night of sleep, the shop will be very busy tomorrow and I will cope admirably. I'm a bit excited about sorting through all the new buttons tomorrow, so I'll be at the shop bright and early to do that without interruptions.

Meanwhile, you could try just a little challenge for 2018 ...


That's it for now.

Nite all.


Wednesday, January 3, 2018

One More Sleep

That is all, until Primrose climbs into her car and heads home.

She has packed her bags and cleaned her room, washed her bed sheets and done a walk through double checking every room and piled everything into the car.

There has been much 'accumulating' on the road trip and holiday. Many sales were attended. Many Op shops gave us joy. Many markets were visited. Many gift shops were judged. Therefore many more bags need to be loaded into the car to go home!

I did some more beading today. This is the mess that has 'accumulated' on our outdoor table while I'm creating my beading masterpiece...



Each night this week, there has been a mad panic as the storms approach to move the table in closer to the house so that my beads didn't get picked up and carried away with the strong winds.

Speaking of storms. This one came for a quick visit this afternoon ...


For her final evening here, we all played trivia at the Bowls Club with Tweedle Dee, The Garden Guru and The Blonde Bombshell. We came 6th out of sixteen teams, which we were pretty happy about.

I'll decide tomorrow whether I'll go to work or not. I'm not sure how I will be feeling after Primrose leaves. For now, it's time for bed.

Nite all.

 

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

More Broken Records

The Motivator worked the shop today while I had a day off.

She broke her previous sales record! By a LOT!

Obviously, she has the gift. She has a natural talent for sales and for people, among many other things!

She makes me proud.

Primrose, Adoring Husband and I saw TWO movies today.

We watched "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" and we all loved it.

There was ten minutes between when that movie finished and when "Pitch Perfect 3" started, so we came out and stood in the queue and walked straight in for the next one.

The only thing I didn't like about Pitch Perfect, was the terrible Australian accent that the American actor John Lithgow, who played Rebel Wilson's father in the movie, used. It was cringe worthy and totally distracting.

So that took up five hours of the day and left little time to do anything else.

We drove over to Stocklands and got a ticket in tonight's OzLotto draw and I bought a pair of blue 3/4 length pants. We also got some half price calendars from the the stand in the middle of the walkway.

Three coffees later (that's one each) and we were on our way home.

Having discussed buying fish and chips and heading to the beach for dinner, we realised that there were more storms about, so we stopped and got some grilled fish and decided to make a big salad and eat at home in the comfort and protection of the house.

Now I'm watching the new season of 'The Ranch' on Netflix and wondering if I can wake up early enough to catch the sunrise tomorrow. It would be a good opportunity to test out the new camera.

We'll see.

Nite all.    

Fearless!

That is my word for 2018.

"FEARLESS"

I am going to push through all of my niggling little fears and make things happen!


These have been my words since I began choosing:

  • 2015 - Peace
  • 2016 - Mindfulness
  • 2017 - Inspire
  • 2018 - Fearless

I'm proud of my 2017. I found lots of inspiration and I think I inspired others in various ways too. I was artistically inspired when I did the art classes. I found inspiration to create my website and even though I haven't maintained it very well to this point, it had to be set aside as I was inspired to create a new business with The Motivator.

There was inspiration bursting forth from all areas of my life and the 'journey' work that I did earlier in the year helped me find the courage and inspiration to really achieve so much. It was a year for 'me' and I'm feeling pretty excited about what is still to come.

Primrose, Adoring Husband and I spent the first day of 2018 taking it easy. We watched previews of all the movies that will be released in 2018 and wrote down a list of the ones we want to see. My top pick for this year and which I'm most excited to see is "Ocean's Eight"

"Mama Mia! - Here We Go Again" is another that I'm pretty keen to see!

By mid afternoon, we sent Adoring Husband to get coffee and while he was gone, we set up the Trivial Pursuit board. The entire afternoon and evening was taken up with two games of trivial pursuit, both of which Primrose won easily.

I cooked dinner in the middle of all that and we sat through a long storm that brought lots of heavy rain and a bit of lightning and thunder but no damaging winds. I haven't checked the rain gauge yet.

Psychotic dog Jack had another cramping episode this afternoon. It's been a while since I rubbed the magnesium oil into his little legs so I guess we need to do it on a regular basis to avoid those painful cramps that stress Adoring Husband to the max.

It's after midnight and I have the day off work tomorrow and Wednesday. We are going to the movies tomorrow to see Jumanji, so I'd best get some sleep!

Nite all.

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Sunday Trading

The weather was pretty disgusting this morning.

The heat was oppressive and the hot winds made boating/fishing dangerous, so people were stuck on land with little to do apart from swim and perhaps fish off the banks of the river.

I figured that there might be people around, looking for something to do so I decided to open the shop for a few hours.

The first hour was busy with people looking to spend some cash. The second hour was full of people popping in for a look - people who were out walking but not carrying money and who might come back tomorrow. The third hour had a couple of stragglers come in while they waited for their food to be ready at the cafe nearby.

After that, Adoring Husband called to say that there were severe weather warnings about and he was worried about me getting home, so I decided to shut up shop and head home. He came to the shop to help me bring everything in and carry some of my paraphernalia home in the car, which was very helpful.

I stopped at the supermarket to pick up some nibbles and fruit, figuring that we would spend the afternoon playing trivia and possible seeing in the new year over food and fun while the storms swelled around us.

I made it home with plenty of time to spare, but Primrose was missing and had been for quite a while apparently, so I changed my plan for the afternoon and decided to use the time to set up my new camera.

A massive storm hit at about 5pm. Strong winds and 80mm of rain in about 20 minutes. There was intermittent hail, the size of golf balls, hitting the roof which was of some concern for a while, but it didn't get heavy thank goodness and I don't think we copped any damage, although we haven't checked our roof or solar panels yet.

The back yard had some minor flooding and the psychotic dogs, as well as Adoring Husband were panicking a whole lot more than I was. I could still feel the fear inside me, but it was much easier to control after I closed the blinds all through the house.

I didn't feel the need to stack my devices in the walk in robe and I was able to stand at the back door and watch through the sliding doors with Primrose. Even though the tornado hit us five years ago now, I couldn't have stood at the back door even a year ago because of the fear.

Adoring Husband was called out on a job for SES and I cooked up some chicken which Primrose and I ate on toasted bread rolls with salad. The rest was put on a plate in the fridge for AH to eat upon his return home.

I've set up my new camera now, so I will take it out for a test run tomorrow. Hopefully the storms will have cooled the weather down a bit and we can enjoy some beach time. Crabs, turtles and eagles are on my hopeful wish list.

I imagine that a lot of New Years Eve celebrations have been cancelled tonight and right now, at 10.42pm, there are still a few storms about and heading in our direction.

I wonder how all the campers have fared in this weather ... I know that some friends were caught at Woodgate in the camp grounds and were evacuated after the first storm caused more than 20 trees to be downed and cars damaged. The weather looks pretty nasty north of us, from Bundaberg to Rockhampton.

As Primrose stated this afternoon, 2017 is ending with a bang!

So I'm off to bed now.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2018 full of love, luck, happiness and prosperity. For those of you who need the message ... take control and make it as you wish it to be! I plan on having an amazing 2018!

Nite all.