A Shift

I walked to the front porch tonight looking for a break from indoors once I noticed through the windows while eating a room temperature hot dog that the wind was picking up, promising a breeze.  And it is here.  The breeze.  I haven't once watered the garden this Spring and Summer.  Not one single time.  We have gotten such a lot of rain, and I am so glad for it.  Glad for it in spite of my perennials and the weeds engaging in a fight to the finish.  I have barely slowed down since we got Craft South opened here in Nashville at the end of May.  There is so much that I want to write about the process of doing that.  So much that I want to write about a lot of my processes over the past so many months.  I am being patient with that.  I am appreciating how full, and stressful and exciting life is right now.  Yes I am appreciating the stress.  It is a signal that I am trying something that I want to work.  And fortunately I am surrounded by people who love me and want it to work too.  Want it to work just as much as I do.  I will admit I am pretty stinking tired though.

So much has shifted.  The biggest shift seems to be the online store that I have been running out of my house since December of 2007 is no longer run in my house.  That is happening at Craft South.  That is a huge, wonderful change for me and my family.  I can't even begin.  The first day after completing the giant task of getting of all of the inventory, boxes and people out the house, everything changed.  I was driving home from the grocery store that day (but, really, when am I not driving home from the grocery store, I ask you?) and when I passed over the one hill where I always seem to begin thinking about what is waiting for me at home, I was not thinking about my employees or the orders or what they might need my help with.  I realized that I was only headed towards home.  Home. Only.  Just the place we live.  In that one moment I felt such gratitude for having been able to do all that I have from that place.  From this place.  So bring on the stress.  Will I make my rent each month?  Can I keep the inventory coming just the way I want?  Will enough people walk through our doors to justify all the beautiful, new and shiny expense of it all?  Bring it on.  We know how to be poor.  We know how to hope for more and work hard to get it.

It feels odd to say, because I have certainly been losing a little sleep, keeping this whole new thing on my mind....but there is an ease that has come with this new venture.  I believe it has everything to do with reclaiming home for us.  I might be too busy to do much about the weeds nearly winning the fight.  But the cardinals, yellow finches, doves and cicadas- each of whom I hear right this very minute- do not seem to mind.  My calendar might be so full that getting to write this here and now meant sneaking to the front porch after dinner to steal a moment.  The little powerhouse of a girl who followed me out and moved that big chair into position to be right across from me does not seem to mind.  Business as usual to that one.  Just glad to be near me.  And I her.

I hope you are well friends.  Enjoy your holiday weekend!  xxooAM