Party Hardly

I was up early and with assistance from Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair, prepared the platters for today’s farewell gathering.

Adoring Husband drove me to work and helped set up the training room for said gathering, buying bags of ice and filling the buckets with ice and alcohol and setting up the small tables and chairs just in case of big numbers.

I vacuumed the floor and wrote a message on the white board.

It got incredibly busy at the shop and sales were amazing, especially for a Saturday.

Lots of people taking advantage of 50% off.

At 1pm AH pulled the chairs and signs inside and my hoards of fans arrived to say their farewells … all six of them!

It was a lovely intimate group of my ever reliable arty farty girls which made for a most enjoyable afternoon of laughter and drinking and story telling and eating and shopping!

Between them, they doubled my already amazing sales for the day!

Unfortunately one of those girls, who was stone cold sober, had a fall on her way to her car and returned 5 minutes after she left, with skinned knees, feet and hands. She promptly sat down and went into shock, trembling and crying as we all rushed around trying to find anything that would help.

She was ok after about 45 minutes and AH walked her to her car. She drove home and phoned us when she arrived so we knew she was safe.

We got home a bit after 6pm so it was a good 5 hours of farewelling little ol’ me.

BGWLBH, AH and I nibbled on the leftover plates of nibbles for dinner and by 7pm I was all done in an ready for bed.

I don’t even know how it got to be 10pm already and I am sooooooo tired.

Nite all.

Working It

Once again … exhausted.

There is so much going on in my head, I’m struggling to sleep soundly or for long periods of time.

Last night I slept from midnight til 3am, then from 5am til 7am.

I’m laying here making lists in my head of everything that needs to be done and who needs to be contacted, what needs to be packed, the time frame I’ve got to do it etc etc.

There is a very slight possibility that I could remain open.

There’s stuff happening in the global and national background that ‘could’ make all of these mandates and passports disappear inside the next two weeks. If that happens, I will strongly consider keeping the shop.

Wait and see.

Today was crazy busy and even at 50% off, I came close to my sales record.

I had a brief but nice visit from The Brains Trust. It feels like FOREVER since I’ve seen her!

A lovely couple from meditation visited just to see how I was coping and how things were moving along with the shop. It was nice to see them.

The lady who runs the art workshops at the Bowl’s Club popped in and enjoyed a spot of retail therapy after mahjong.

There was no time to record the individual items of each sale manually or electronically, so I could only keep a tally of the total for each customer. At times I felt like my head might explode 🤯 but I managed.

The Motivator brought the Fisher King to help her move the remainder of her stuff out of the shop and she also enjoyed some retail therapy while she was there. 

After closing time AH and I grocery shopped for tomorrow’s food platters. After 1pm I’ve invited people to come for farewell drinks and nibbles. There could be three people, there could be 103 people! Who knows?

What will be, will be.

I certainly required a nap this afternoon and enjoyed a very peaceful one hour doze in bed.

AH cooked dinner - the usual chicken wings - we followed that with trivial pursuit.

I came up from the rear and defeated AH in the paused game from two nights ago. Now I am ahead in the next game that is now paused until probably Sunday.

Here we are at 10pm. Let’s see how well I sleep tonight.

Nite all.

Slow and Steady

Slow again in the shop.

Passed my happy minimum in takings and had a few social visitors, which was lovely.

In between customers I packed some more of my belongings ready to bring home and found yet more stock that I had put aside and forgot about. How annoying!

I’m now preparing for the 50% off sale which will start tomorrow and hopefully that will bring more people into the shop.

I posted the notice in a couple of local community pages on Facebook and have had a few responses. 

Fingers crossed (again) because there is still lots of stock to move.

There have been some lovely comments about the shop and how much it will be missed - they won’t miss ME, just the shop haha.

Adoring Husband visited the butcher and then we closed the shop.

BGWLBH and I draped ourselves over the lounge discussing news of the day and then we found some great trivia questions online and competed against each for the quickest answers. First it was AH vs me and then it was AH vs BGWLBH. 

AH beat me by 2 points and BGWLBH beat AH by 2 points.

I cooked up a chicken and vegetable casserole with pasts spirals for dinner and enjoyed watermelon for dessert.

We each went to bed early all trivia’d out and feeling weary, but for me, it has already reached 10.15pm. Once I land in bed, time seems to fly!

Tomorrow I have to start preparing for my farewell on Saturday afternoon.

There will be so much happening over the next couple of months with finalising everything in the shop, then travelling down south to help finalise everything for BGWLBH.

I’m taking over the double garage as my art studio, so we need to have a garage sale to clear a lot stuff we currently have stored there. Then we have to clear the bedroom that is currently my art studio and turn it back into a bedroom.

It will be fun decorating and styling my new studio.

Just when I thought I needed to figure out what to do next, the universe decided to hand me something completely different and now both BGWLBH and I both have new beginnings that we will support each other through.

Now AH has two wives. BGWLBH is the caring compassionate one and I am the one that delivers tough love! He’s in for a good time haha.

Gotta get some sleep.

Nite all. 

Aussie Aussie Aussie

It’s Australia Day!

Or

It’s Invasion Day

Or

Australian Natives’ Association Day

Or

Survival Day

Whatever you call it, it’s a public holiday, so I did not open the shop today.

I stayed in bed til 10am.

I tried on my new togs/swimmers/bathers and went for a swim and a float in the pool.

I lounged under the Bali Hut with BGWLBH reading and relaxing.

I joined BGWLBH in the kitchen to put together a large grazing platter so that we could sit at the dining table to play trivial pursuit and eat … all afternoon.

BGWLBH won the game that we had on pause from yesterday and Adoring Husband is winning the game we currently have on pause.

Dinner was “fend for yourself”.

I reckon this Australia Day hits my top five. Relaxing, fun and spent with two of the most important people in my life. No alcohol. Healthful food. I felt the love. It doesn’t get better.

Some of the questions in trivia were from the ‘Friends’ trivia box. Vegan Chickie and Mr Perfect are ‘Friends’ fans so I texted some of the questions through to them. That added another dimension to the game and it kind of meant we spent time with family too.

Now it’s almost midnight!

Nite all.

Not Today

My prospective buyers didn’t show today. 

I am not discouraged because they did ask my hours this week, so they could still turn up any day. I’m convinced that they are genuine so I have not lost hope.

I have to say that it was nice to have the space clean and tidy.

There weren’t many people out and about. I passed my happy minimum in takings, but I still need to reduce a lot of stock so hopefully this Australia Day holiday will bring more people into town.

The Happy Hippy came today and did some dusting for me. We had a good chat.

This afternoon The Motivator appeared. It was so good to see her after 9 months and 4 days! We had about 90 minutes to chat and catch up and she’ll come visit again on Thursday.

We were a little late getting home this afternoon and BGWLBH was lazing by the pool and reading a very large book.

We chatted for a while before I decide to have a nana nap.

I made chicken and vegetable patties for dinner and BGWLBH made the accompanying salads. We also remembered the fruit salad for dessert which was lovely but we were very full from dinner.

Yesterday’s Trivial Pursuit game was continued until BGWLBH won … again. We started another game but haven’t finished it yet. It’s now on pause until tomorrow … but she is winning that one too.

I’m looking forward to having Australia Day off and hopefully enjoying my time around the pool with my gang of two.

Right now I’m ready for bed because I had another restless night last night and it would be nice to get some deep sound sleep.

Nite all.

Still No Rest

Well, maybe a little rest.

It was a restless night of sleep but I slept soundly from about 5.30am until 9am.

We all got dressed and drove to my shop at about 10.30am.

Maggie Mae knocked on the door as soon as we entered and stayed for about 20 minutes for a quick catch up.

Then we all got to work.

Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair vacuumed the floors and scrubbed all the paint off the sink and tiles in the kitchen - it was pretty messy from the art classes, but it now looks shiny and new. I think she did the most manual labour out of the three of us!

Adoring Husband took all of the art work that I’ve had stored ‘forever’ and loaded it into the car. It was quite shocking how many pieces I had and now they are piled high in six different stacks in my studio at home. I have to say that my studio looks more like a hoarders junk room right now.

We cleared a lot of stuff out of the change room because The Motivator is picking up her chairs, floor mat, cube drawers and wall hanging on Tuesday afternoon.

I tidied off the table behind the counter, cleared a lot of stuff that I had stacked on the floor behind the counter and neatly stacked all the paperwork on my desk.

We emptied the bins and gathered the next car load of boxes and personal items ready to take home on Tuesday morning.

So now the shop looks more presentable for the potential buyer who’ll be arriving first thing tomorrow morning.

BGWLBH made lunch for her and AH and then we all rested for a bit over an hour. I know I had a nana nap before meeting her outside by the pool. The water was quite chilly but I swam a few laps and then floated around while we chatted about all things Covid and Vax related.

Bangers and mash were on the menu for dinner. AH cooked the snags on the barbecue and I did the veggies and gravy inside. BGWLBH made a fruit salad for dessert but we got so involved in Trivial Pursuit that we forgot to serve it!

We didn’t finish the game yet so no winner to report. The game is on hold until tomorrow night. We knew it was time for bed because we were becoming hysterical over ridiculous things! Tears in our eyes, cramps in our stomach hysterical!

It’s already after 11pm! 

Nite all.

No rest For The Wicked

I was up and at it by 9.10am.

Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair was arriving this afternoon and there was still much to do to prepare for her arrival.

I cleaned the bathroom and toilet, made her bed, vacuumed and dusted in her room, vacuumed the hallway and my bedroom.

My bedroom was a job and a half because I had bags of books and journals lining one wall, a guitar and pedestal fan in one corner, cushions and clothes hamper in another corner. By the time I’d pulled everything out, vacuumed, found new homes for what shouldn’t have been there in the first place and then dusted, time was running short.

I did a couple of loads of washing, vacuumed and dusted in the lounge room, cleared the dining table and then jumped in the shower to make myself presentable, by which time it was after 3pm.

Time to prepare the baked dinner. Chicken, potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, snow peas, broccoli and home made gravy.

BGWLBH arrived at about 3.30pm and it was a very emotional greeting.

We have both suffered from verbal diarrhoea and haven’t shut up since she walked in the door. It’s been fabulous!

After dinner, we played our favourite - trivial pursuit - which she won (of course) but it was very close and all three of us played well. Lots of laughs. Lots of silliness. Lots of forgetting who’s turn it was. 

I’ve gotta say, I’m absolutely exhausted and tomorrow I start again in the shop to make it presentable for the prospective buyer on Tuesday.

So now it’s time to sleep … soundly.

Nite all.