SWEET

There's a guy here in Johnson, Mark Woodward.. used to be our state representative and owns a ton of real estate that he rents out to college kids and old folks. Good guy. Lives on a back road, works hard, has some livestock, reads good books and I guess he cleans out people's estates for a living. He spends the year cramming all the stuff into his barn three doors down (and probably barns all over town considering the amount of stuff he has out there for sale) and then, once a year he holds this huge lawn sale for two days at the end of the summer. That sale, sidled up with it being the weekend all the kids return to Johnson State College, proved to be quite the lucrative day for this little coffee shop.

The sale begins at 9am and people start flooding into town and cluttering like cattle on the sidewalk by 8am. Folks come from two hours in every direction. Directly across the street people are eyeing the digital bank clock and, as soon as the numbers blink to 9:00, some old lady rings a cowbell and it's like a scene from Christmas in 1985 when moms all over the country were beating each other up in department stores for the last Cabbage Patch Kid doll.

Ok... well, maybe that was just the funny little town of Wilkes-Barre. I'll have to look into that fact.

Anyway, the shop was full of new faces all day and I kept the pastry case crammed full of good lookin' goodies, the fridge full of iced tea, iced coffee and chai and the sandwiches just kept being ordered. I had a pack of twelve ladies on a bicycle tour come in mid-day and order lunch and when I came in to the living room to check on them...after they'd all gotten their food and had a chance to dive into it... they clapped. THAT felt good.

And when I Z'd out at the end of the day, what I read on that register tape and what I counted in my drawer definitely broke the record of all my nightly deposits thus far.

The next time Mr. Woodward stops in for a cup of coffee it'll definitely be on the house. I wonder if I can convince to him to hold his annual lawn sale on a weekly basis.......

Closing up Shop

Minutes after that last post, Annette came strolling into the shop. We were supposed to have a little milk frothing gala after closing tonight... experimenting with the degree and type of foam on various coffee drinks. I was trained a certain way when I came on here at the shop and, as it turns out, my foam has been a bit "off".

There's a great video out there about how to master the foam thing and the guy who presents it looks a little like Napolean Dynamite's brother... so needless to say, it's pretty entertaining. With Annette's help, I was going to practice getting the technique down and, if time and energy allowed, maybe even master the "Rosetta Latte" ~ a pretty little latte decoration made out of the foam on top of the drink. If I get really good, I can make a little heart on the top of the lattes.... how very appropriate for the cafe's name!

I had to cancel for tonight though. Bill is sick at home and I was way too wiped after trying to understand all that tax bullshit. Not to mention the fact that my head was still spinning with the register confusion that I learned about tonight... how, for some reason, the register is programmed with Virginia's tax rate instead of Vermont's tax rate.. which leaves the numbers off by a handful of dollars every night and lends alot of confusion when it comes time to decipher exactly what I need to paying out for quarterly taxes.

But there was Annette, hand on her hip, standing behind the counter like the old days and it was just such a wonderful sight to see. She pulled up her sleeves and dove into my two sinks full of dirty dishes while she talked to me about going through the menu and costing everything as we go along. She even offered to make her fabulous scones for three months for free... provided I buy the ingredients. I love you, Annette!

She also reassured me that Lisa, her partner in this business three years ago, knows my register on an intimate level. The two of them have been instrumental in building my confidence in this venture and I'm convinced at this point that I have the absolute best coaches and support team I could ever ask for.

I still don't know how I'm going to keep track of all the tax payments I need to make or why the hell the state and federal government take so much god damn money from small business owners but....... it's pretty validating to have this kind of support. Especially minutes after I felt like I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth.

Annette... that Rolex you left above the sinks.... you better come get it early in the morning or else I'll be out there selling it on the street corner. Life's tough for a business owner these days... gotta get it where I can, you know?

Bookkeeping

I just spent five hours with my pseudo-bookkeeper. She managed the previous owner's books and has signed on to help me get started doing my own payroll. We started at noon, sat for three hours plugged into the computer and re-arranging things as they should be according to this business. We went into Quickbooks Payroll and plugged in the employee's information and all the necessary tax stuff....

Then I had to jump behind the counter to relieve the morning staff so we tackled plugging in the nightly deposits, broken down between actual sales and Rooms and Meals taxes, in between dealing with customers. If I wasn't totally and absolutely overwhelmed already, I certainly am now.

I keep reminding myself that it'll be second nature eventually. I'm just taking a long, slow and arduous business class, that's all.

Rural Vermont

I stayed open late tonight to host an old fashioned ice cream social for a grassroots organization called Rural Vermont. Rural Vermont is a great group that works to raise awareness and support for local and sustainable agriculture. They speak out about the ramifications of corporate farming and have been working closely with legislation at the state house, in Montpelier, in support of the hemp bill everyone is working so hard on getting passed. It felt really good to be able to contribute my space to a worthwhile effort.

The milk they used to make the ice cream came from Warren's farm.. where Bill spent years working and where most of our cows at home have come from. Most nights, around 4:45pm, Warren and his boys come in... smelling like the barn or fresh cut grass and they order their single shot maple lattes in the tall glass.

The place was buzzing with alot of new faces. I've spent the past few weeks hanging flyers all over the place and it was nice to see that it's paid off. It was between 6:30 - 8pm so alot of folks came in for sandwiches and salads before the ice cream was dished out. There were tables set up with information and door prizes and raffle prizes.

The speaker was a local woman who started a non-profit a few years ago called Salvation Farms. Volunteers for Salvation Farms gather the extra produce that farmers won't use and deliver to places like Meals on Wheels, elementary schools, and food shelves. It's a pretty righteous thing she started and it's been amazing to watch it grow and take on a life of it's own.

There were kids running around and families in the grass in the yard out back. Roo, who has the health food store across the street came in and handed me a bowl of maple-vanilla ice cream... which I immediately dressed in a bit of iced coffee. Nothing better that coffee ice cream and here we seem to have a perfect marriage....

So, it was a great night. And hopefully some of the folks'll come back around in the days to come.

I gotta go to bed now.

First Week Over~ How Much Longer To Go?

The spans of time between my posts these days are a pretty good indication of what this first week in business has been like. I can't even believe I pulled myself to the computer tonight to make it happen. It's getting on midnight and I'm bone tired and I've run my course with the five cds in the player closing up shop, sweeping, mopping, counting the drawer and doing inventory. Now the place is quiet and the sky is dark and the bushes outside are blowing around in the wind.... tap tap tapping on the old windows in front of me here.

The first few nights of this first week in business were full of anxiety about the financial end of things. Would my nightly deposits add up to enough to pay all the distributors? Would I have enough for payroll? Oh shit, I didn't take out any working capital... looks like all the pretties I wanted to get for the shop will have to wait... some of them, anyway. What if... what if... what if...

Now, though, after seven days of making sure that orders are placed, pastries are on the shelves, chai is brewed, the drawer is balanced and the floor is mopped.... my hands are dry and crusty from bleach water and I'm way too fucking exhausted at the end of the night to lay awake worrying about my numbers. I have no choice but to save that anxiety for my waking hours.

People ask me how it's going and I smile. I remember asking a friend that question years ago when she was going through a tough time. Her response was "Do you want the honest answer or the polite answer?" I could respond similarly now.

"Precisely how much detail are you looking for exactly?"

I meet tomorrow with the previous owner's bookkeeper... the one who usually makes me see stars from absolute confusion. We're getting together so she could walk me through doing my own payroll. I spent time with my dear Annette the other night, loading Quickbooks Payroll into my computer and plugging my invoices, deposits and written checks into the program. I feel a little more on top of my game now and I might actually be able to follow the bookkeeper when we sit down together tomorrow. Maybe.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have some dinero left over after my pay my girls.

Bloodbath

Four days in as owner. Four settled drawers, four deposit slips, one Costco run, alot of urns of brewed coffee, even more drawn espresso shots......lots and lots of steamed milk. Lots and lots of steamed milk splattered everywhere.

I finished at the shop yesterday afternoon around 2pm, sat at the bar for a little while sending off an email and then went home to enjoy an hour or two of downtime before we drove up the road to have dinner with friends.

One of my employees was still at the shop, due to close at six and so I left her the number where I'd be since I knew I wouldn't get cell reception that far north. It was her first night closing the shop with the new credit machine and I wanted her to be able to get in touch if she had any questions about how to settle the slips at the end of night. Around quarter to seven, right before the southwestern eggrolls were plated up, I got a call.

"I don't want to sound like a wuss but..... I broke one of the espresso shot glasses and cut my hand and it..... it kind of won't stop bleeding. I've been trying to close up and count the money and sweep the kitchen but I don't want to get blood on everything...."

Yeah. Bad idea.
My first thought was....man, I'm glad I got that workman's comp policy lined up this week. I told her to hold her hand above her head for a while, which she probably already knew, and to go get stitches if she needed them and to not worry about settling the drawer or wrapping stuff up.

Then I started wrapping my head around the following morning. Sundays are kind of sweet in that we don't open till 9am... which allows for one extra hour of cherished sleep on that day. I started to realize that I'd be coming in at 6:30 am to finish the sweeping, take out the trash, mop, settle and then re-open the drawer. I thanked myself for opting to drink seltzer water and lemon instead of wine.

For the first time, maybe ever, I was the one who was gearing up to head home before 10pm last night. I was gathering Ella's many layers and lost socks and shuffling she and Bill out the door.

Until there's an oven at the shop, I've been brewing the chai and baking off the frozen, par-baked, kind of "shwag" baked goods at home. Ham and cheese croissants and spinach and feta croissants. Not all that bad but not entirely great either. It's what we've got till my new baker is on board.

Pulling up the driveway, I realized that, on top of waking up early to come in to the shop, I also had two trays of croissants to pull from the freezer, let proof through the night and bake before I came in.

In our mudroom we have a tall, upright freezer that holds all the meat from the farm. To make room for the boxes of croissants last week, I transferred all the meat from two shelves in the freezer onto the racks on the door. Coming in the door last night, I dropped the load of Ella's shit onto the kitchen floor and then dragged my exhausted ass out to the mudroom, wax paper lined baking sheets in hand, to load up the trays with baked goods that would need the night to proof.

I opened the freezer to find a whole door's worth of thawed packages of beef and pork, the bloody ooze having dripped out of the packages and then frozen in the goopy drip journey to the freezer floor... leaving chunks of bloody ice like a funky massacre all over the god-damn freezer.

My first reaction was the desire to shut the door and pretend that I hadn't seen a thing. Fight or flight? There was a warm bed upstairs that had been calling me for hours and now I had a Nightmare on Elm Street scene to tend to... and Bill's bitterness of having lost all that meat.

Ella took one look at my face as I walked back outside and followed me. I stood with one arm on the closed freezer and one arm on my hip, head down, bone-tired. She put her arms around me and made the world a better place for that minute and a half. Thanks Bean.

I loaded all the meat into a cooler with intentions of having a little beef and pork Christmas at the shop today... giving it away to all the meat eating customers I could find.... but it turns out (chef's advice) that we could pat it dry, repack and refreeze it. All has not been lost.

Surprisingly, my dreams weren't loaded with blood and gore but I will be getting a first aid kit for the shop and I will be eating a hell alot of tenderloin this week.

The Nightly Z

Ten minutes till closing time on my first day as owner of The Lovin Cup Cafe.

I came in early this morning to make sure that everything was prepped well, to give my head time to acclimate to being owner, and to kind of savor the calm before the storm. Ten minutes before 8am, I ran across the street to the grocery store to grab a newspaper, a bottle of seltzer and a couple of bags of ice. The sky was gray and overcast and by the time I'd made my purchase and came through the automatic door, it was dumping rain. I had a choice of taking my brown corduroy shirt off and wrapping it around my head but I thought twice about opening the shop on my first day as owner and looking like I was hosting a wet t-shirt contest. So I stuffed the newspaper into the shirt and buttoned it up and sprinted back to unlock the door. All my favorite bachelors were on the porch, some of them vying to be the first dollar spent on the very first day in business.... only because there's been talk of building an alter to it.... a bling frame....the works. For now, it's nailed to the wall above the espresso machine. Thanks Bob Wright! I knew it'd be you!

During the one lull of the morning, which was just amazing and supportive and encouraging, I decided to clean my cash register. I scrubbed months of funk and grime off the sides of it. I turned it off for a bit so that I could clean each key. I made a sort of sweet love to my money machine in hopes that she'll respond accordingly. All day, every time I had a transaction, I noticed how good it felt to be working with a fresh, clean register. It being my first day as owner, I enjoyed every dollar I filed into it. In a few minutes, I'll pull it all out, count it and see how this how coffee shop thing is gonna swing.

Chai Lattes and Star Charts

For the past year or so, Ella has been somewhat obsessessed with glow-in-the-dark sticker stars. Little by little they show up in new places throughout the house... newly noticed at night as we navigate our way through the dark. They now line the trim of windows and doors. There's a long strip of constellation along the top step in the upstairs hallway letting us, as well as houseguests, know where that drop off point is... should we come wandering into the hallway at night with something less than our full senses. Now there's a little halfcircle around the belly of the sink in the bathroom. Occasionally, in the middle of the night, when I wake up to take a wiz, I find a bit of the cosmos.... one speck of a star, usually.... clinging to my shoulderblade or maybe my hipbone. Sometimes when I lift the covers at night I'll find one or two or three giving off wee bits of light from within.

Last night I was at the shop, music blaring and buckets of bleach water everywhere, hogging out the backroom ...finally. I've entered that room sooo many times in an attempt to start that project but each time I end up walking around in circles like a dog trying to make itself a bed in the dirt... and then I find myself abandoning ship directly afterward.

I haven't had coffee for a little over a week and have been generally avoiding caffeine. I seem to have enough external stimulants right now to keep me on my toes. Caffeine, at this point, might just make me manic. I'd likely end up in the fetal position rocking back and forth... mind spinning.

But last night I made myself a chai latte when I arrived and drank the whole thing. I have a friend, and a regular customer at the bar, who comes in two, sometimes three, sometimes more than three times a day. He doesn't drink coffee and he doesn't eat wheat... which basically leaves him the choice of an italian soda or tea. He's a chai drinker. That, or Earl Grey. Most days, he comes in, downs two full pint glasses of iced chai, no ice. And then repeats that same routine every time he shows back up..... tallying him, easily, anywhere between 4-8 pints of chai per day. Each one loaded with maple syrup.

I had one pint glass at 8pm, cleaned the fuck out of this god-awful room, came home nauseaus with a bleach headache, crawled into bed at 1:30 and realized that there was absolutely no chance of sleep whatsoever... even with all that hard labor after all that caffeine. I'm now wondering how this friend's heart doesn't explode on him every day.

It was 1:30 in the morning and I was lying there thinking about picking up a check from the bank the following morning. I was thinking about my business account... about placing orders, about bills that would be popping up at the end of the month. Rent. Utilitites. Costco runs. I was thinking about the drawer's total every night and depositing that into the bank. Taxes. Thinking about whether or not all these figures will be leaving me upside down or right side up when it's all said and done. Thinking what a disastrous history I have when it comes to keeping track of dollars. I could feel my insides tightening and the little balls inbetween my shoulders blades screaming "stop stop stop".

I was able to see from the window last night that the sky was full of cloud cover but I knew that there was a meteor shower happening up there where I couldn't see. I also knew it'd be a long time before sleep would come and I could lay there in a panick about money or I could take myself outside and let the elements settle my nerves.

I followed Ella's star charts in the dark, dressing myself in warm layers and gathering our biggest fleece blanket, a pillow and my wool cape. I spread myself out on the hill in front of the house and listenened to the winds move through the trees in the valley. There were pockets in the sky where the clouds were stretched thin and little blinks of stars would shine through and then extinguish.... barely visible to begin with.... just a canvas of dim, random light.

I laid there for two hours....long enough for the winds to blow the clouds from the northwest to the southeast and, as soon as the canopy directly above my head was finally free and clear of cloud cover, a long, white streak jumped from the night sky and left a long, sweet trail as it fell.

I'd have been perfectly content with the little blinks of stars shining randomly through the pockets of clouds. There was a sweetness to just knowing that there were meteors falling up there, out of sight. It was just one more quiet, invisible mystery among many. But by the time the sky did clear, my nerves were settled, my bleach headache faded and the meteor shower that followed was like big bonus to the night.

When I followed Ella's treasure map of glow-in-the-dark sticker stars back to bed at 3:30 am I felt like thinks might be alright. Like maybe I might be able to balance the books. Like maybe I might be able to sleep.

Note to Myself :

Do Not Drink That Much Red Wine
Until That Late In The Morning
Before Having To Come To The Shop
The Next Day!
In Fact,
How About NEVER
Drink That Much Red Wine
Until That Late In The Morning
Ever Again?

Poets Old and New

The coffee shop is located around the corner from the Vermont Studio Center, an artist's residency where artists from all over the country (sometimes the world) come to spend time with their work. They usually come for one-month intervals and so we can rely on a somewhat transient "regular" scene at the shop. Just as I'm learning that this guy comes in every morning for a double americano in this specific mug with this much water, off he goes back to his everyday life. This past Sunday I had alot of folks stopping into the shop on their way to the Burlington airport for one last double mocha or one more dry cappuchinno. This week, even though I'm not behind the counter, I'm noticing new faces in town. I'm wondering what their drinks of choice will be. How talkative. How particular or engaging.

The Studio Center hosts regular lectures and readings by artists and writers and tonight, for the first time, I attended. I've written poetry for as long as I can remember but don't particularly enjoy reading poetry. I've never made a habit of attending poetry readings... I may have actually avoided them. I've never been interested in reading any of my own work out loud. But more than one person this week suggested I check out this week's reading by a woman named Jane Hirschfield... and I'm so glad that I did. I still don't know that much about her, where she's from, although I think it may be the Bay area in California.... I just know that every single poem she read resonated in some way, spoke to something, carried it's weight. I think it might be time to crawl out of the woodwork more often and see what's going on in the world of culture.....

More and more I have come to admire resilience.

Not the simple resilience of a pillow, whose foam

returns over and over to the same shape, but the

sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly

blocked on one side,

it turns in another.

A blind intellegence, true.

But out of such peristance arose turtles, rivers,

mitochondria, figs-- all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Jane Hirschfield

Oh, and Ella, who came along with me, became inspired to write some of her own poetry as well.....

A Dragon's Departure

Dragon's take flight

with all of their might.

They glide through the sky

as though they are swimming in water.

I am the daughter

of a king

in a castle.

I watch the dragons take flight

with might

every morning at dawn.

They swoop over the sea.

Wings go up and down in peace.

Lucky me, to see them soar.

I shut my door

and close my eyes

and hear them burst into song.

The moon comes up.

I sleep again.

Ella Loscomb:)

Waiting for the Pot to Boil

Signed a bunch of bank notes this morning to seal the loan for the shop. There's a three day "right of recission"... which basically gives me three days to change my mind and opt out. After the three day period, I'll be given the funds and I can write a check to the current owner and call the place mine. We're meeting Tuesday night to count up the cost of inventory and pass the baton.

I haven't worked at the shop since Sunday afternoon. I was in there anyway most of the day on Monday and then again on Tuesday, using the computer, shooting back and forth from the shop to the village library, trying to print things and then find someone to fax it for me. I woke up yesterday morning, knowing that it wouldn't be a bad idea to go in and hog out the unfinished kitchen space... maybe scrub the sticky floor, start getting things ready.... but the bed was so comfortable and Ella had crawled into it somewhere around dawn and she was so warm and cuddly and the final Harry Potter book was lying right there on the bedside table.....so, I stayed in bed till nearly 11am, soaking in the quiet and the rain and the down comforter. We had pancakes and hot chocolate for breakfast and proceeded to spend the rest of the day listening to loud music and cleaning the shit of our neglected house....taking long, indulgent breaks throughout.

I spent the later part of the day on the phone with DHL who, for some reason, has been sitting on my computer and printers in their Williston warehouse for six days. Dad always says that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" so I made a bunch of noise and they promised that it would all be delivered by 5pm today.

So, after the loan was processed this morning, I came home to enjoy my last bit of time with little to do. I made some jasmine green tea in a big, glass mason jar and sat at my kitchen table watching the leaves of the tea unfold, listening to even more new music and watching the cows outside eat grass and move about the pasture. A small yellow finch was gliding from the old, naked apple tree into the prickly bush of hawthorne in the barnyard... coming out unscathed every time... I'll never understand how they do it....how they weave through thousands of two inch long thorns... like a flea in a pincushion...it makes me think of Prince Phillip scaling the castle wall, cutting through hundreds of years of brambles with his Sword of Truth. But I sat and watched, unmoving, cows ruminating, bird flitting, and wondered when again I'll enjoy the luxury of stillness....

It got to be 3:30 and I started to wonder when the truck was going to be pulling up the driveway. It got to be 4:00 and I was getting irritated. I took Woody down the driveway to get the mail. On my way back up, I found Ella in an apple tree and we sat in the driveway looking at shoes in the Sierra Nevada Trading Post. It got to be 4:20 (4:22 to be exact) and I was growing skeptical. We danced a bit more in our clean kitchen to distract mom.....

The boxes came at 4:53pm. Seven minutes to spare.
I buy Quickbooks Pro tomorrow on my Costco run and hope for the best. Here goes.

Thanks Tom!

I had a brand new playlist this week at work. New music. Compliments of Euro-Mocha Tom...
Five CDs.... which is the exact number of cds that I can put into the player... how perfect!

Thank you Tom!

The mix, named aptly after the shop itself, is still in the player there. The other cds seem to shuffle between the shop and my car and one is playing right now, on this little bubble player beside my desk at home.

Golden Smog ~ Down by the Old Mainstream

SunVolt ~ Trace

Ryan Adams ~ Heartbreaker

Dido ~ No Angel

and then, of course, the mix.... so good.... but i haven't

plugged it into itunes yet to get the track by track list.

Yay ~ new tunes!

Another Scare

I got a call from our mortgage broker yesterday afternoon. She had a strong note of pity in her voice when she told me that our debt to credit ratio was high and that she needed the approval of another loan officer before she could process the loan. I asked straight out what my chances were and the hint of pity thickened.... she didn't want to imply either way.

I had just spent the afternoon online with the IRS registering an EIN (Employer Identification Number). I spoke with a rep from Comcast about transferring wifi service to my name. I was in the middle of looking at logo designs with my friend (who has Great Big Graphics) when the mortgage broker called. And the logo was soooo nice. There I was, sitting on that wrap around porch, totally visualizing that three dimensional sign hanging in front of the building, and all I kept thinking was.... "But I need this sign..."

I came home with another nervous bellyache, drank a couple glasses of wine and dove into Harry Potter.... figuring there was really nothing else I could do except wait for the call in the morning. Except I ended up calling the mortgage broker five minutes after the bank opened this morning and gave her a small but valid list of all the reasons why they should really approve the loan. I did my best to sound casually desperate.

I was doing my best to not plunge into a potential but possibly unncecessary depression about about the whole thing. There was a list of papers to sign and fax and calls to make but I couldn't summon myself to any of it without knowing, for sure, that the shop was actually going to be mine in a week. I couldn't stomach the thought of going to the current owner with shitty news.

So I crawled back into bed with a sleeping Ella and my Harry Potter book and into the alternate reality of the Deathly Hallows until my cell phone rang and buzzed itself off the nightstand and onto the floor.

I woke Ella up with my happy cheers, made a closing date for this Thursday at 11am and dragged her out of bed so I could head into town and start checking off the list.

My nerves cannot handle any more near misses.

Attention Phish Phans

Mike Gordon just walked into my coffee shop.

Slow Saturday

The weather finally broke. A little, anyway. It's the first day of many that I don't feel like I'm going to drop dead behind the counter. There's a small wind coming through the window by the sink and I'm not covered in a glaze of sweat and steamed milk.

Thursday was so unbelievably busy that if I came up for air at all in between customers I had to turn directly to the mounting pile of dishes. I left here in the evening with a long mental list of all the prep work that needed done the following morning. I let Els sleep in Friday and drove into the shop at 6:30am to cut eight sheets foccaccia and start the day. After work I made my first solo run to Costco, where I met up with miss Amy T. We cruised the big box store with our giantess carts and caught up with eachother while we stood in line for nearly a half hour. I think it's going to take me some time to wrap my head around the fact that I'm going to be shopping weekly at Costco. There's this eerie kind of comraderie in the milling crowd... a heavy sense of consumerism penetrating everything. Almost like an odd excitement..... more stuff. more stuff. more stuff.

I'm finally finding the time to look at incoming invoices, take note of regular purchases, quantities, prices, delivery dates, etc. I'm still waiting for my computer to arrive in the mail, at which point I can load up Quickbooks and plug all this info it. Amy uses the same bank that I'll be using and so I got to look at her business checks and see how it's all organized. Just that small detail has settled a quiet anxiety about the money side of things....

This morning's shift was really quiet. The church down the street is having their annual flea market and it's a slow kind of Saturday. Business trickled in all day and as a result I had a chance to dive under the sink and clean, prep more, and just enjoy the sensation of feeling on top of things for once.

Twenty Four Hours of Anxiety

The past twenty four hours have been just unbelievable. Some wires got crossed about closing (or not closing) on the first of the month, accounts were closed, had to be re-opened, roles redefined, schedules tweeked.....

I finally got the business plan emailed back to me yesterday afternoon, printed out at Kinkos and spent last night writing up the cover letter, cover page, table of contents, appendix and filing it all into a pretty little folder... the kind you might use to present an end of term paper.

This morning, on my way out the door to open the shop, I realized that the numbers for the loan and start up costs weren't plugged in correctly to the Cash Flow Chart and so I spent my morning, brow furrowed, dodging off to the computer in between lattes and breakfast paninis so that I could calculate the correct figures and plug them in to the Excel version. The next question that haunted me, an hour later and forty five minutes before I'm due at the bank, was how the hell I'm going to print this chart out before I have to leave for my appointment and hand it over to Mr. Loan Officer.

My friend Melissa, a golden halo hovering over her chic haircut and long earrings, came striding in with little Miles and suggested I email her the Excel spreadsheet and she would drive back up to her house, print it for me and bring it back. Bill, who was joining me at the bank, came over to the shop, took Ella up to a friend's house and came back to get me just as Melissa was pulling in and handing me the spreadsheet. It felt like a great relay race with a stressful paper baton being passed in the bumpy dirt parking lot out back.

Really, the whole Cash Flow Chart was null and void...for the bank's purposes anyway. I have zero working capital to put into this venture so it looks as though a home equity loan is the route we'll be taking after all. Had I known this two months ago, I probably would have just gone in and settled the deal with our very sweet mortgage banker lady and thus been able to enjoy the profits of the busiest month of the year. As it turns out, we'll close the deal in two weeks, hopefully less, and pro-rate the rent and the bills from the accounts we've already opened in my name. What mayhem.

The current owner is going to come in and work the mid-week shifts so she's not losing all her money to payroll and that will free me up to work on the unfinished kitchen space, sheet-rock the small office space and crawl under the back of this house, under the kitchen, in 90 degree weather so that I can stuff fiberglass insulation into the floor. Kinda like Tom Sawyer and white washing a fence... great fun. Who wants to come help? I'll provide the beer and protective eye glasses? Maybe even throw in a massage for good measure?