Whoop here it is

It's like having a new baby.

The first day our drain stopped up and the production person was late. By Friday night I stood in the kitchen and cried, just out of pure exhaustion. By Saturday, my husband and I were able to step away to dinner. We can watch our store from cameras that feed to our iPads. We watched the monitor all through dinner.

Open! Open! Open!

Today we roll back that great big door and start selling. Happy birthday Store.

But most importantly, today is my son's birthday. Happy birthday Sunshine.

Grand Opening

The store opens in 2 days!

Thank God. I don't think anybody at my house has had a full night's sleep or three meals in quite some time. I'm not fooling myself - there are going to be extra hard weeks ahead after open, but it has to settle into some kind of system, yes? Yes. We're just going to go with yes.

We open on my son's birthday.

Thank God. Because I haven't had time to shop or plan a birthday. However, he has an entire store full of treats to choose from and call his own.

In The Gutter

I really have only so much brain power and it all gets used up at work (that is, the first job, not the store). Sometimes I leave work and I'll be at a stop light and I will have used up all my smarts for the day so I will have to doublethink what red means. Thank goodness for Louisiana public school drivers ed. Red on top means stop stop stop.

Does anybody else have this problem? It all gets used up at work. My family will try to hold a conversation with me at night and I won't even understand what they are saying. Also, since when did they all start eating so loudly and while they were talking?

This is going to be a problem since tomorrow night is new employee training at the store and lets not forget also bowling for team building starting at 8:00, also known as my almost bedtime.

However, tomorrow between 5:30 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. I will have figured out the entire Federal Acquisition Regulation system. What I am saying is that it is all downhill from there, finally ending up in the gutter.

The Butterfly Effect from a Bow Tie

My son is amazing. He is kind. He wakes up every morning smiling. He's crazy smart.

He also likes to wear blazers and bow ties. Every day. To school. I was thinking this would be like when he was two and wouldn't leave the house without a bib. Was that a fight worth having? No. And after about two weeks that phase was over.

So I thought maybe the bow tie phase would last two weeks. It has lasted months. Last night when we were at crewcuts because my son wanted to shop, he tried on pants and tucked his shirt way down flat into them. I told him that wasn't how it was done and he said that it was just the nerd in him shining through.

I asked him why he thought he was a nerd and he said it was because his dad said that. Being a mother is hard. I wonder if we would be here if I had said no to the bow tie - if I had insisted on jeans and hoodies. It's just a bow tie. But it's a bow tie. On a ten year old. Every day.

Bowling. Ewww.

My husband thinks it would be great if we did some team building bowling after the employee's first training on Wednesday.

Oh where to begin where to begin.

A. team building
B. bowling
C. Do you know what I would do with a spare hour in my life right now? Not Bowl.

Because do you know what I would do if my employer said we are go bowling to do some team building? Hate them.

It's interesting working with your spouse. Especially the lists of daily tasks that get assigned to you via spreadsheet. I have to draw the line at bowling though.

From the Inside

The entire front of our store opens up.