Z is for Zilch

I got nothin'.

Actually, I've got so much, I don't know where to begin which has me stumped.

I'm so tired I can't see straight. I've been getting up an hour earlier every day and going to bed 1/2 hr.- 1 hour later every night in order to get all my hooks done by my deadline. I figure I'll ship everything to Oregon for the Sock Summit and I want to ship by July 28th at the latest. That way, they'll get there in time and I can fly there with no worries.

That means I have to complete, roughly, 142 a day. Now, that doesn't mean I drill one, cut it, sand it, put it together, add a keyring and bag it. I'm trying to spend 2 hours a day making them (drill, cut, and/or sand) and 2 hours a day putting them together (jump rings, beads, keyrings, bagging). I've enslaved my husband and he puts on the keyrings and bags them.

But there's all this minutia that's killin' my time limits. Labeling bags. I have to label 7000 bags!! (5000 for the show, 2000 for another thing) Dave won't label bags. I got him to do it once but he was doing it wrong (improper placement which would result in the label popping off when the bag is opened) and when I pointed it out he acted like a typical guy (which he usually is so not) and got all butthurt and won't label anymore. sigh.

And stamping. As I said, I got my biz cards but forgot to put Stitch Savers anywhere on them. So I got a custom stamp and am stamping the back of 5000 cards. I can do a box of 250 in about 7 minutes. There's 20 boxes.

AND, I have to do all this while still paying attention to my "real" job as a recruiter for Medical Device Sales. Thankfully, this is in my basement and I have a headset, so I label bags and put together Stitch Savers while I'm on the phone.

And watching movies. When I'm up earlier, I'm watching movies (in the basement) to entertain me while I make labels and stuff. Endless movies. I was going to do some reviews but I've watched so many and so back-to-back that they're starting to run together in my head a bit.

Let's see, what else...
I'm going to lose most of this weekend's production time. Sunday, I have to take Davis to a birthday party from 2-4 and then we go to the Grandparents for Sunday dinner every week. So I have until about 1p to work. Saturday is Parker Days here and we're taking the kids to the carnival rides in the morning. Then I'm driving with my boothmate, Donna, to the Estes Park Wool Market Saturday afternoon. We're going to scout out booths and see how people set them up to get ideas for our own booth in August. (Anyone else going? If you are, email me and maybe we can meet in real life!) It's a long drive, so I suppose I'll be making labels on the way up.

Which leads me to my knitting. Or lack, thereof. I was knitting every day for awhile there and it was making me very happy! I haven't been able to do that now and it's making me irritated. Likewise, blogging. I have one FO which I'm saving for a future post and it's irritating me, too.

Likewise, reading. My planned reading has gone completely off the rails. I haven't even started the sequel (prequel?) to Mists of Avalon. I was actually planning on putting that on the back burner and getting started on The Hobbit. Haven't done it. I read The Last Lecture (which I spoke about a post or two ago). I finished The Shack (big post on that later. For now, suffice it to say I was going to call this post Z is for Zion. Be forewarned.) I'm reading this book called The Girl She Used To Be because I read the 3 Question interview Joshilyn Jackson did with the author (scroll down to April 15th). It's pretty good. At least I think it is. I started it 2 days ago and have only read the first chapter which is to say, 10 pages.

I'm losing my slave labor (Dave). As of Monday, he goes to work! Yay! He's been home for nearly a year and it's been nice having him around (he always cooks dinner and feeds the kids breakfast and lunch!). After working for 15 years of 12-14 hour days, it was good to see him have a break like this.

I wrote previously about how Citiwide dicked us around for nearly 4 weeks, then turned us down for the SBA loan Dave was trying to get to buy the landscaping business he was looking at. If you remember, they said we didn't have enough collateral, turns out the collateral we didn't have enough of was the fact that we rent. They require real estate to back up any SBA loan they give. As I said, they knew from day one that we didn't own our house. Stupid. Well, the biz broker usually works with a bank in Korea that specializes in "small" SBA loans (under a million dollars - ours is about $200,000) but with the economy dive, they aren't doing those loans anymore. So friend of biz broker told him to send us to Citiwide and we know what happened there. Then someone else told the biz broker to send us to US Bank. That guy was so much better! His name is Ryan and he told us that Citiwide doesn't even do our type of loan and shouldn't have wasted our time! With the economy, Citiwide is trying to get in on these smaller SBA loans because of the government incentives given for them but since Citiwide doesn't do any SBA loans without real estate as collateral.... they shouldn't have even been talking to us.

So! Long story short, (too late) - Dave got his loan! Yay!

That's about it for now. So much for Zilch, right? And so ends this year's version of Alphabet Soup. Last year, I finished in March! I'll try to do better again next year.

Suck it Citiwide, Ruth!