I did end up going to that party

So I did finally find a black bra, though not the best one. Still, after I found that I was able to wear a certain black dress that I haven't been seen in for a while.

Somebody said I looked slinky.

Okay. Anyway, not much of a costume, but something I was happy to wear anyway. So I did not win any awards, though I wish that there was some way of finding out if I even got any votes. Marvin won two awards, but of course, he is Marvin. And I didn't see him even take off his mask the entire evening, so for a while I was wondering if maybe she was Marvin.

I was one of three people who got all the correct answers on both of the table games, but I didn't win a prize for either. After spending about four dollars on raffle tickets and the silent auction, I came home with an Erin Grey picture, a Klingon bird of prey model kit, and some sort of homemade liquor. I do not drink alcohol, so I will either find something to cook with it, or else I will give it to my brother. I am strongly anti-drug, so I think that giving someone alcohol is a bad idea. Still, he'd probably just put it in his collection and not drink it for a long time anyway. May end up giving him all three items for Christmas or something. I have to think about it a bit.

I feel somewhat guilty that I did not put a scarf up for auction, just to see what would happen. The last one only got 23 dollars, but that would have been an extra 23 dollars for charity. Someone else put a scarf in as a raffle prize. That I wouldn't do. All that work for not much money, and you don't even know if the recipient even wanted the scarf.

We have our own auction next month. But that is for the club and not a charity, and I've donated two scarves to that in past years. I think that I've done my bit there.

Note to self: if you really want sodas at the next party, bring your own. Also, the spaghetti from the Mexican market was probably a good thing for the donation box, so look for it again next year.

The party broke up at a bit after eleven, about two hours sooner than some of us wanted to go home. I am thinking that we have to be out of the building by twelve or something, or else some people would stay longer as at other events. Still, getting home at a bit before twelve is a lot later than I would normally stay out, so I was a bit tired on the drive home.

After I got to sleep, I was still in the mood for a party. I met some actors. A fun dream, and it felt so real I'm afraid that I would say something stupid if I ever met these people in real life.

So I must have gotten a lot of sleep if I was able to dream, but I don't feel rested. I would just go back to bed if I could.

Today will be an odd Sunday, as my husband works today. He almost never works on Sunday. And while he's actually making some money for a change, he was happy to hear that this particular account was cut short by two days. The customers are buying, but they're a bit strange. The salesman who bailed on us two weeks ago is working on this account, so the sales are good, and we need the money.

The salesman is back to being his friendly self. But he's suggested to my husband that the next time he gets his own account that they should work together. He's apparently acting as though nothing has happened. Anyway, as nice as it would be to have him work on the new business, we don't trust him now. We don't know if we should give him another chance or what. I would think that he needs to do something to show he's committed to the project, like buy his own laptop, but then that wouldn't work either because he'd have people's credit card numbers on his computer. And someone would still have to watch him to make sure that he didn't have people write checks directly to him. So I don't know what to do about him.

I got almost nothing done yesterday. I spent some time looking for my black bra and trying on clothes and such, and I went to the library, and after that I pretty much sat around watching TV while waiting for it to me time to get ready for the party. So I'm not sure why I feel so bad. I didn't eat that much, I didn't overdose on soda, and I didn't spend all night on my feet. But I still feel pretty strange, like the day after I go to a party and do all that stuff that I'm not supposed to do.

Glad that I went anyway.

I seem to have forgotten what I was doing

This whole new business thing of my husband's has me distracted from what I am supposed to be doing. A friend of mine had told me about a job I might have been interested in, but somehow, I forgot to even look at it. When I should have been looking into that and doing other things, something came up about the business, and I just put everything on hold. At least, I put everything that required thinking on hold. So I didn't look into the job that week, and then I forgot to look into it later. It is probably too late now. And I'm too embarrassed to tell my friend that I forgot about it.

The things that did not require thinking also got put on hold after it was decided that I would do the sales job part of the business instead of that actual salesman that was originally supposed to do the job. So three weeks ago I was doing a lot of work, making space in the living room area for the rental equipment, and the usual laundry and washing dishes and such, and I was even doing a bit of gardening. It is too hot to do much gardening, but I got most of a certain project done. So that was something, and it made me feel better to get something done.

And then I had plans to do some other stuff, and I put them on hold until this first business account was done. So that was almost three weeks ago that I stopped doing whatever I was doing and seriously started worrying about the business instead. So I did the job the Saturday before last, and again this past Saturday. And we were both too tired to do much of anything on Sunday, though we did attempt to go shopping and did a few fun things. We have since eaten out at several restaurants, seen a couple of movies, gone to the park, and gone shopping some more, etc....

And I've pretty much spent the rest of my time watching the X-Files or something like that. I've done very little work. I have yet to even catch up with washing the dishes or doing the laundry. And as for the garden or working in the living room or the rest of the house, I've forgotten now whatever it was that I was going to do next. Three weeks ago, it seemed very important and I was glad to finally have the time and energy to get started on it, and now I can't even remember what it was.

Some of that is just an excuse for basically being lazy. It is like after I don't do something for a while, I can't seem to get back to doing it. So while I might not remember exactly what it was that I wanted to get started on, I should just get started on something else. I should just find something to do and do it, and not really worry about if this is the best thing to do right now, because doing any of it would be better than doing none of it. But it is like I've forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other.

I tell myself that I am waiting for my husband to go back to work at his "real job", which is partially true. I can't seem to get much done while he is here, unless it is the two of us doing something together, which is usually limited to running errands. So today he was supposed to be back at his real job, only yesterday he was told that the account didn't start until five in the evening. So he won't be leaving the house til two or three, and probably by that time I'll have lost interest in trying to do very much.

I am also dreading a phone call from my mother.

I should just not talk to my mother anymore. I know that. I should never talk to my mother except when it involves other people in my family, or maybe only talk to her during those times when the whole family gets together. Other times, it just doesn't end well. So she has been wanting to know when my husband goes back to work, which is today, and she knows that it is today, so I suspect she will call and want to go to dinner, or worse, that she will have something she wants to talk to me about.

And I can't just refuse to talk to her without hearing what it is. I suppose that I could have, but I opened the door for this sort of thing when I called her a couple of weeks ago about the new business thing. I should have kept my mouth shut, but in a panic I didn't know who else to call.

And now I think that my brother wants to talk to me about something. If my brother wants to say something, he would usually just blurt it out. So now I am suspicious.

Maybe I shouldn't talk to either one of them.

Anyway, I should find something to do. I can't refuse to talk to them, but if I look really busy, I could at least limit the time I have to talk to them.

Oh, and I seem to have injured my leg, though there isn't a bruise or anything, and I can't remember doing anything to it. So whatever work I am going to do is limited, so I can't do some of the stuff that really needs to be done, like I can't get down on the floor and scrub the floorboards. Luckily, I can do both the dishes and the laundry without doing much to bother the leg. And I need to do the laundry anyway, so I can decide what to wear on Saturday.

Unfortunately, one of the things that I really have to do is clean out the fridge. I have to go grocery shopping, and what I am planning to buy will not currently fit. So I have to clean out the fridge, even with the injured leg.

The second weekend of the new business

Okay, as you may recall, my husband started this new business.

At my husband's "real job" a bunch of people tend to sit around and complain that on a good day the three of them take in over three thousand dollars for the company, and of that my husband earns a bit over three hundred dollars, and I would think that the other two also make around that. If they had their own company, they could split the profits from the three thousand dollars three ways instead of getting a paycheck of about three hundred dollars.

But that's on a good day. On a bad day my husband only makes fifty dollars. On a less than average to not so good day, my husband makes between ninety and maybe two hundred dollars.

There haven't been a lot of good days lately. There have been not so good days, and a lot of bad days. And there have been a lot of days that he didn't work at all, but apparently there have not been enough days that he didn't work to qualify for more than four hundred dollars from unemployment, and he was out of work for three solid weeks when they paid him that much.

So my husband was talking to one of the sales guys. This guy has sales of two thousand and even three thousand dollars a day on a regular basis, so almost any day that these two work together is a good day, or even a great day. So this guy says that when my husband starts his own company he wants to work with him and split the profits. He doesn't want to start the business himself, but he wants to work with my husband.

My husband thinks this is a good idea, seeing that this guy has such a high sales average. They could split the profits of two or three thousand dollars a day, instead of just getting a percentage.

Of course, when it is your own company, no one pays your expenses. And if you have a bad day, no one pays you fifty dollars. And if you really have a bad day, you might even lose money. And you have to rent or buy your own equipment, and if it breaks nobody fixes it for you, you have to pay to have it fixed or pay to have it replaced.

And then of course, there is the cost of buying or renting the equipment in the first place, and that has to be paid before there is any profit.

Okay, so there were a lot of expenses to get this thing started. We bought a laptop. We went in to get a four hundred and something laptop and ended up buying a six hundred and something laptop. And we bought a printer, and we bought some other stuff like office supplies. I think we spent like a thousand dollars or maybe a bit more. I really don't quite remember. I just remember thinking that the major expenses were over, except for renting the equipment, which was about two hundred dollars per weekend, while I had somehow gotten the idea that it was only fifty per weekend.

And then there was the computer program, which was another five hundred. I had no idea that it was going to be that much. I know that it has all the bells and whistles, but when I had the job before I did it without all the bells and whistles...so...FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS??? But, there was a free trial period, and I calmed down a bit.

Oh, we are past the free trial period. We actually bought this five hundred dollar program.

And then he would be out some of his paycheck for asking off those two Saturdays. The first week this probably cost him a good account, and so we don't know how much money that cost him. All we know for sure is that not working on Saturday cost him at least fifty dollars. The other four days he worked were bad days. The second week, he didn't work at all, but maybe there wouldn't have been a full week for him to work anyway. Since he asked for Saturday off, they offered him two days, which he ended up not being able to work cause they were out of town. So that cost him a hundred dollars, maybe more, but there's no way to tell (unless maybe he runs until his replacement and he tells him).

Anyway, this is really starting to add up. But I was trying not to worry, cause he was supposed to work with this really great sales guy, and maybe they were going to split the profits of two or three thousand dollars each day.

Of course, if they had a bad day, they would lose money for each potential customer who didn't buy anything. I was originally told that this would be four dollars for each customer, in addition to losing the two hundred dollars per weekend for the renting the equipment. Later, I found out that the amount was eleven dollars per customer, not four. So while I had in my head that we might come out of this with an additional debt of almost six hundred dollars, the real amount was over a thousand. Still, we were hoping for sales between four and six thousand, cause this other guy had such a great sales average.

At the last minute, the other guy started to ask strange questions, and wanted to have the checks made out to him instead of the business. And while we had paid for everything so far, except for two hundred dollars of samples the other guy decided he needed, he suddenly wanted to be a full partner and have his name be on the business account.

We didn't know why he had suddenly changed his mind, but we decided we couldn't put his name on anything with that short notice. If the two weekends went well, they could talk about it, if he was willing to pay us for half of the equipment we had already bought, but we weren't going to do anything like that before the first day of business. The other guy said that he wasn't going to do any work without being made full partner. So we had to wait til the guy came back to town to get the computer from him and the samples.

Now we owe this guy another two hundred dollars for the samples. If I had known that we would end up paying for them, I wouldn't have bought as many, and I wouldn't have bought these in particular. I would have spent far less and bought things that I personally liked better, just in case the business didn't work out and I got stuck with them. I can't use most of this stuff for my personal use. I have no use for most of it except as part of the business. And now we owe someone two hundred dollars for it.

So I ended up doing the other guy's job, rather than giving him access to our bank account. I feared that we would lose a lot of money. The first day I worked I had sixteen customers, we took in a bit over a thousand dollars. We were supposed to see our last customer at five and hopefully be done by six, but it took a little bit longer than that. The other guy is probably better at this stuff, but it takes me about half an hour per customer to do my job.

We were supposed to have thirty-five customers that day, but a lot of them called to reschedule for the next weekend. There's no way I can handle that many people. I might get a little better with time, but I'm thinking that even if I speed up a little bit, twenty people is about my limit.

The second Saturday, we had another thirty-five customers scheduled. I couldn't do it.

So, we went and bought another forty dollars worth of equipment, hoping that we would be able to use our old computer in addition to the new laptop. So, in theory, this would allow my husband to be the salesperson for one or two people an hour, while I would sell to the other two or three people per hour, and that way we might be able to handle the five people per hour that were scheduled. And then we thought that maybe if that wasn't enough that maybe we could have an additional sales session on Sunday afternoon and see some of the people then.

We redid the sales book. We took some stuff out and added some other stuff. We had hopes of taking in two thousand dollars or more.

The lady we were working with on location didn't return our calls or emails. We didn't know if we would be allowed to work on Sunday afternoon. But, with the new equipment, maybe we wouldn't have to.

When we arrived at the location, no one was there. A few minutes later, someone arrived to unlock the building for us, but the rooms were not ready for us. Furniture needed to be moved, but no one would do that without authorization. We were just standing around doing nothing. I started to worry.

The woman showed up and had the furniture moved. We got everything set up in time.

No customers showed up for almost the first hour. Then they started to come in, but the sales weren't even as good as last weekend. Well, I suppose that is better than having all thirty-five people show up and buy nothing and lose money for each one.

And after a couple of hours, we had enough people that I needed for my husband to use the new equipment and do some of the sales. The new equipment had worked at home, and the new equipment worked for the first customer.

And then the new equipment not only didn't work, but it made us have to redo some stuff, which made us about half an hour behind schedule, and we ended up giving a couple of people some free stuff so that they wouldn't get upset. We tried the new equipment again, and it was sort of half on and half off, so we stopped using it at all.

At about two o'clock I stopped to have lunch. The equipment failure had caused me to panic, but as it turned out several people cancelled their appointments. We really weren't making any money, but on the other hand people weren't showing up, so they weren't costing us money if they didn't buy anything either. I calmed down. Our last customer was scheduled at five, and then we could go home. It wasn't good, but at least we hadn't lost money.

And then a few more people came in, and they didn't buy anything. But it was nearly five and I only had one more customer. Then I could go home.

Some people came in late. And then some more people came in late.

The lady we were working with looked happy, and didn't know why I was upset. I'm working late for people who aren't buying anything, and I'm going to lose eleven dollars for each person who doesn't buy anything.

Maybe she went and talked to the people still waiting. The next person bought something. He only spent twenty-five dollars, and he took forever to pick what he wanted, but at least I didn't have to give him stuff for free just because he showed up. Some more people bought stuff after that, but not all.

We ended up staying til eight o'clock. We had twenty-two customers. My husband only did the sales part for one of them, and that one didn't buy anything. I had twenty-one of those customers by myself. I worked a whole twelve hours with only maybe fifteen minutes for lunch.

We didn't quite take in a thousand dollars the second weekend, but the expenses were a bit less than the first weekend, so it looks like we made right at five hundred dollars, or about nine hundred for both weekends.

That isn't an actual profit yet. For it to really be a profit we would have to have made more money than we spent on the laptop and other equipment and supplies, the money he lost from his "real job", and the two hundred dollars we now owe the other guy for samples. So we are a long way off from really making a profit, but at least we didn't end up with additional debt or give the other guy access to our bank account.

So, I don't know what would have happened if the other guy hadn't bailed on us. I don't know if he would have had similar sales and instead of my husband and I having this nine hundred dollars my husband would have had to split the nine hundred dollars with this other guy. Or maybe the other guy would have had sales of four to six thousand dollars, and he would have split profits of three or four thousand with my husband. I don't know. I think that there's no way to tell, other than just I don't think he could have made less sales than I did.

Anyway, I had forgotten how much I really hate doing this job. I mean, I tell people how much I used to hate doing this job, but it has been seven years since I've really felt how much I hate doing this job. And there's no way to tell if we would even do this well on a regular basis. It might get better, but it might get worse. We might lose eleven dollars a person.

I'm trying to figure out how to make things better. Another laptop would make things better, but since we didn't make enough to pay for the first one, I don't think that we should buy another one anytime soon.

I don't think that he should try this on Saturday again, unless maybe he knows that he's going to have a certain Saturday off, well in advance, like maybe around Christmas time. But, the problem with trying to sell stuff around Christmas time is that people actually want to buy stuff for Christmas, not buy stuff that won't arrive until maybe three weeks after Christmas.

We have found out that while we like all of the rental equipment, we can replace some of it with stuff my husband already has. It isn't quite as good, but it should work. That would cut the rental equipment down from two hundred dollars per weekend to a hundred and fifty dollars per weekend. That helps some, but not that much.

And I'm trying to think of a way that the money we would lose if a customer didn't buy anything would be closer to the four dollars I was originally told instead of the eleven dollars it ended up being.

Also, we need to make arrangements so that people can buy stuff later if they change their minds. We need to have a way that people can buy stuff and pay the website instead of just in person. It can be done, we just hadn't thought that we would need it so soon.

We hadn't thought about a lot of things. But mostly I am tired and don't really want to do this again.

I had hoped that we would get to see if my husband could make money doing this by himself without the extra person doing the sales. But we didn't get to find that out Saturday because the new equipment didn't work with the old computer. I hate to have another test of it. It would cost another hundred and fifty dollars to rent the equipment again, he could only see maybe fifteen customers, and unless he can find someone who wants to do this on a Sunday afternoon (which would mean even fewer customers), he would have to take off another Saturday, which would probably mean he would make little or no money at his "real job" for a whole week.

I'm still not sure if this was a success or a failure. I just know it isn't even close to what I'd hoped for.

It will take a while to recover from this

My next blog post will be number six hundred. I usually try to write something special on the double zero numbers, but I don't think that will happen this time. Nothing wonderful has come to mind, and I don't think I want to write about anything bad either. So I think that I will just skip this time and the next blog will just be a regular blog day like any other.

Yesterday was kind of a mess. We did make some money over the weekend, but we can't spend any of it yet. I had all these worries going into the thing. One worry was that people wouldn't buy anything. Another worry was that they would buy stuff, but not much, pay with cash, and need lots and lots of change. I had this worry that all of the costumers would end up needing four pennies, a nickel, a dime, three quarters, four ones, a five, and a ten back in change, and if they paid with hundred dollar bills they might also need back a few twenties.

Well, that didn't happen. Only two people paid with cash. And after going back to the office supply place to get the special pens that check for counterfeit money, I forgot to use them. In fact, I think that I forgot and left them in the house. So, anyway, we made some money, but we didn't have much of it in cash. Only about a hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and the rental bill was due before eleven. Most of the people paid with a credit card, which means that it will take a few days before we have any money in the account. We have only a few dollars here and there of our own money left. So we took the one check that we were paid with and went to the bank to cash it.

Only they wouldn't let us cash it. Business checks are for deposit only.

So we deposited it, only to find that we had a minus sixty on the account. If you don't use the account five times or so (which we didn't this month cause we didn't have any money) you get a fee, and since the account was mostly empty we then were overdrawn and got another fee for that. (I haven't even looked at the other account, so I don't know if there is the same situation there or if it is just empty.)

So that meant that we only got thirty dollars out of the ATM from our hundred dollar check. So we went home and got our quarters and other coin change, and then we went to return the rental equipment. The bill was just a bit under two hundred, and we had just about that in dollars, so we didn't have to break into the change.

We spent the last few dollars on a gallon of milk and a Little Caesars pizza. Anything else I want to buy for a few days will involve counting out quarters and such.

So we did not go to see District 9 yet.

The credit card people called and wanted a post dated check, but I refused, because that is what got us into trouble last time. The car people can have a post dated check, but the credit card people will have to wait till I can actually see the money in the account.

So we are just sort of waiting for the money to show up in the account. And even then we can't spend much money. We only had a "profit" of four seventy-five or so, which is now down to about four hundred because of the bank fees. The car payment will be due on Friday, as will next weekend's equipment rental, so if he doesn't get paid anything from his regular job, we will be short and have to delay some of the business stuff. I think that we should delay business stuff til Monday anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, that sucks. My husband is out of money, and his car is out of gas. He called and said that he couldn't work this week, or at least, that he couldn't work out of town. They called back and asked him to just work Thursday and Friday in Fort Worth instead of Oklahoma. If the money is in the account tomorrow, that will be fine. If it isn't, I guess we will be buying some gas with quarters.

Saturday or Sunday, assuming we make some more money, we are going to Olive Garden. We are going to have a never ending pasta bowl, and we are just going to sit there and eat for about two hours.

Friday night I wasted my time putting my hair up in curlers so that I would look nice Saturday morning. Only Saturday morning it was already so hot that my hair started going limp even before we left the house. I never bother trying to curl my hair anymore, but since I haven't even had my bangs trimmed in a while I thought that I should make the effort, or else I would just have long bangs covering my face. It didn't work out. After working a couple of hours, I gave up and put my hair in a ponytail. So as soon as we get some money, we both need haircuts. Like before Saturday, we need haircuts.

I am still a bit ill from the stress of the whole thing. But it was good to get the business stuff done for a while and do normal stuff like gardening. I picked a squash and almost got done with the wildflower bed, and I even went for a walk to collect some seeds. I tried transplanting some stuff Wednesday or Thursday, but I think that most of those plants will die of shock. It just isn't the right time to transplant stuff, but I hoped that if I gave the plants enough water that it would work out. I guess it didn't.

The above was written on Wednesday. The husband needed the computer for something, and I meant to come back later and finish what I was going to write here in this post. Only when I came back to the computer, I couldn't remember what it was that I was going to write.

It is now Thursday morning. We should have that money from the credit cards today. And we will be able to see how much he made from his "real job", though that probably won't be much, and we won't actually have it until Friday. And maybe, we won't even have it Friday, because in spite of calling the bank and turning off the overdraft protection thing and telling them to put everything on hold, another check he forgot about went through, and now there is a balance of minus a hundred and fifty. So I don't know if there will be enough to cover that and the one post-dated check that we do write, which is for the car payment. There are about four things that we just cannot do without, the first being the rent, the second being the car insurance, and the third and forth being car payments. So we sometimes write post-dated checks for those four things, because those four things are the most important, and even the smallest paycheck should cover one of those. But this will be a really small paycheck, so I'm not certain that it will cover the car payment and the hundred and fifty dollar overdraft.

This all makes me worry about the rent. Since it is the first thing that we pay, I very rarely worry about the rent. I worry about everything else, but not that. But now I am thinking that even though it is not the end of the month, since he gets paid every other week, we won't be getting another paycheck before it is the first of the month. So the car and the rent will be taken out of the money that we make on the business this weekend. Which makes me worry just a little bit, because now I don't have this cushion of not having to worry if twenty-five people don't buy anything. Next week, all of the orders will have to be processed. Will there be enough money left to do that and pay the rent and the car payments?

As for the business this weekend, the list of things we will need is now haircuts for both of us, a cable for the new printer, a card reader for the old computer, and a keyboard for the new computer. Only the lady who organized this whole thing hasn't called us back, so we aren't even sure how many customers we will have this weekend, so I'm not sure if we should buy all this stuff. Maybe a bunch of people canceled? Or maybe a bunch more people want in, and she overbooked? We don't know, cause she didn't call back. I had started to calm down about the whole thing, but now, I don't know why she didn't call back.

So while we have spent all this time just sitting around at home waiting for there to be actual money in bank, today and tomorrow should be a bit busy getting haircuts and buying this and that and picking up rental equipment.

My husband's schedule at his "real job" has changed again. They have known for two weeks that he didn't have enough money to go out of town this week. So they were going to change it so that he only worked Thursday and Friday in Fort Worth. Then they called back and said that wouldn't work out, could he go to Oklahoma for just one day? Without me standing over him reminding him of all the reasons he said that he couldn't go in the first place, my husband said something like, I guess so. I got him to call back and say that wasn't a good idea. They finally called back and said they found someone else to work Friday.

I just could not handle him going out of town Friday. We have to work early on Saturday, and we have to pick up the equipment on Friday. When was he supposed to drive back and forth from out of town? And what if something happened out of town? What if he got a flat tire or something? I just couldn't deal with it, and it was going to be a major amount of work for which they would probably end up paying him only fifty dollars or so. Not worth it.

So, as you can see, despite feeling better about the whole thing for a few days, I am now back to pulling my hair out.

The first day of the new business

And possibly next week will be the last day, but we will see.

People sit around and talk about starting their own businesses. Wouldn't it be nice that the three of us would get all the profits for the work that we do instead of sending the money to the company? Wouldn't it be nice that on a day that the three of us take in three thousand dollars for the company that we actually split the three thousand dollars between us, or at least, split whatever is left after expenses are taken out? We should just start our own business.

People sit around all day and talk about this stuff, maybe in some lines of work more than others. But the people my husband works with do this a lot. And once in a while, some of them actually do it.

And then they have to do not only the job that they normally do, but also some other parts of the business that they don't normally do. And they find out that they don't like doing that part of the business, or that it takes more time than they thought, or they just aren't very good at it, or whatever. And, when you have your own business, nobody has to pay you some minimum amount when business isn't so good, and there is no one signing expense checks, so if there is a business expense it just comes out of your pocket.

And there is always the possibility that the expenses for an account will be more than an account is worth, and you might actually lose some money. This doesn't happen very often, or there wouldn't be a business in the first place, but it does happen once in a while. In a big company, that doesn't matter too much, the occasional losses are made up for in other accounts. But when you have your own business, a loss means that instead of getting paid for your work, you have debts for your efforts.

So of all these people who sit around talking about wanting their own businesses, most probably never start one, and many of those who do probably have to go back to their old jobs or maybe just have the business on the side of their "real job".

So Saturday was the first day of the new business, and for the first day at least we did not lose money. I suppose that there is still the possibility that we could lose enough next weekend as to eat the profits of this weekend, but I feel a little more confident that will not be the case.

And of course, I suppose that it isn't really profit yet, just that the specific expenses for the day did not go over the money that we took in. To actually be profit, the money will took in would have to be more than the expenses for the day, plus the other money we had already invested, such as the money for the laptop, and the money for the computer program. I had forgotten about the money for the computer program, being five hundred instead of three hundred like I thought, and it no longer being in the free trial phase. So we are a long way off from having an actual profit.

But while it wasn't great, it wasn't as bad as I feared that it might be. I went in thinking that in addition to the two hundred dollars for rental equipment, we would be out four dollars for every person who didn't buy anything. And I was thinking that we would have about fifty customers for the two weekends, and that if no one bought anything we would be in debt two hundred dollars in addition to the two hundred dollars for the rental equipment each weekend. So I went in being a little afraid that we would we would end up with an additional six hundred dollars debt. I had it in my head that we wouldn't make any profit until after we had taken in a bit more than six hundred dollars, but after that everything would be okay.

I wasn't given the correct information. While I had in my head that we would lose about four dollars per customer if they didn't buy anything, my husband knew it would be closer to ten dollars. I would never have agreed to do any of this if I knew we were risking ten dollars per customer in addition to our other expenses. So while I was thinking that the break even point for this account (not including the computer and all of that already invested) was a bit over six hundred dollars, the actual amount is more like a thousand dollars.

When I had this job seven years ago, my sales average was right around fifty dollars. The other people my husband works with make about twice that. I'm just not good at sales. And it isn't really something that I want to be good at. I don't like this job. Taking orders is fine, but trying to give people the idea that they have to buy stuff just isn't me. And of course I would rather not even be taking orders on a Saturday when I could be out with my friends instead of working all day without even a lunch break.

And I was totally panicked when I heard that I would have thirty-five customers on Saturday. I just can't handle that many. Twenty or twenty-five is a better number for me, when I am used to doing the job. When I am this out of practice, even that is too many.

As it turned out, a lot of the people called and asked to move their appointments to next Saturday, so we only had sixteen customers. It takes about half a hour per customer for me, so it ended up that at the end of the day we had to work about an hour and a half longer than we were scheduled. There were only four or five people who just didn't want to buy anything, so I got a little more than my usual fifty dollar average, but nowhere near a hundred dollar average either.

According to the spreadsheet, we made almost five hundred dollars, so once we pay the rental fees for next Saturday that will leave almost three hundred. Except that after looking at the spreadsheet I see that he has forgotten an expense of a dollar per customer, so that amount will be closer to two hundred and seventy-five.

So I think that if we don't have more than twenty-five people who don't want to buy anything, we at least won't have additional debt. The problem is still that I can't work with that many people in one day. I think that I could probably do a little better next Saturday, now that I am not totally scared out of my mind about doing the job after a seven year break. But I cannot possibly get it down to twelve minutes per customer if there is any chance of the customers actually buying anything. Getting down to the twelve minute average involves just deciding ahead of time that certain people are not going to buy anything anyway and that they should be rushed out of the room as soon as possible. I just don't see that being an option here.

And it is especially difficult to figure out that some of the people don't want to buy anything and would be happier if they were rushed out of the sales room, if they are talking among themselves in Spanish and you don't know if they are discussing spending a lot of money or if they are just wanting to leave anyway.

So I think that I might get it down to twenty minutes per customer, but not twelve. If we could split it up so that twenty people came on Saturday and fifteen or so came on Sunday, that might work out. But I didn't have time to suggest that, and my husband doesn't want to upset anyone, so he didn't suggest it either.

He will just have to call someone and suggest it today. Having all of those people show up on the same day is just not going to work.

Anyway, I am just glad it is Monday and the weekend is over. Most people don't say that, do they?

So I will now go and do some of the gardening that I wasn't able to do last week. And we might go to see District 9 or The Time Traveler's Wife. And we might go get a pizza or something. But we still can't spend a lot of money, cause we still owe for two car payments and all of that, and by the time this is over all of our regular bills will be due again. And my husband probably isn't working again this week at his regular job. They had him scheduled for only two days this week, and they are out of town, and while we did take in some money Saturday, most of it was credit cards, which means we do not actually have money in our hands yet. So we have no money to go out of town, and they probably won't have anything else for him, especially since he can't work on Saturday or Sunday, and really shouldn't go anywhere on Friday either.

Anyway, it is still a bit of a mess.

Another fine mess you've gotten me into

Okay, the business thing starts tomorrow, and I could just throw up or something. I haven't done this in seven years. I don't really remember what it is that I'm supposed to do.

We have the laptop back, but I didn't really have time to do anything with it before my husband had to go to work.

It has been a busy morning. First, he had to talk to someone about the business. Then, we had to meet the guy to get back our computer and such. We had something to eat, and then we had to go to get the rental equipment. Then we stopped at a store on the way home to get something for my hair. (I haven't done anything special with my hair in so long, I couldn't find anything. Maybe the last time I did my hair was last Halloween, and I threw stuff away after that.) Then we came home and listened to our phone messages and he decided to go back to the rental place to trade something. It seems obvious now, but we got a few things wrong.

My brother called and wanted me to call him back at work. He wanted us to meet with him after work (and my husband usually works too late to do that). Can it wait til Sunday? I really can't think about anything but this business stuff until Saturday is over.

Well, he wanted to talk about the business.

I don't want to talk about the business. I don't really want to talk to anyone about anything for the rest of the day, but I especially don't want to talk about the business. I really can't explain the whole business thing to someone in one day anyway, and I especially don't want to try it the day before I have to get up early and work.

My mom sounded friendly this morning and wanted to know if she could do anything. At first I had said no. Then I thought if she went and got about six hundred in change from the bank so I would have someone to call if I needed any, that would help. And she probably wouldn't even have to bring me any of it, just know that someone can bring me change if I need it helps. No one wants to sell you any change on a Saturday afternoon. Just go buy some change, and if we need it we'll call, and if we don't call just take it back to the bank on Monday. Or maybe we'll buy some of it for next weekend.

Other than that, I can't think of anything that would be helpful. Everybody leaving me alone til Sunday would be helpful.

I keep remembering things that I forgot, and then we have to go and get it. Yesterday I remembered that we didn't have any of those pens that check for counterfeit money. So we were off to the office supply place. This morning I needed hair stuff. I forgot about needing lunch stuff tomorrow.

My husband couldn't find a file that he needed to print some forms from.

Okay. Can't you just copy some?

Yes, but I can't find it. Everything takes too long when you are in a hurry. I can't find it.

But if it is like the one in your hand, can't you just copy it? The printer makes copies.

Okay.

So he told me to make copies and enlarge them if I could figure it out. Okay. That takes some guess work, but I think I've got the right size on the third try. He said he needed five copies. That can't be right, unless he already has five copies somewhere else. Better make ten copies.

Stuff like that went on all yesterday and this morning. You forget that you need something, and you go to the store, or you forget that you have something or don't know where to find it.

I should be practicing, but he didn't have time to show me much of anything new. So I'm probably not going to practice much. I'm going to put my hair up so that I don't have to do it later. Then I'm going to eat and watch the X-files. Then I'm going to eat some more and watch more X-files.

I hate to even answer the phone. If something is wrong, I can't fix it. And I don't want to explain more about the business to my mom and brother. Whatever they have to say cannot possibly help today. I will just get upset from talking to them. We have the rental equipment, and we have lunch stuff, and we now have copies of forms and I now even have hair stuff. There just can't be anything else. There can't be. I'm done.

And I don't want any more pep talks about I'll do fine if I'll just smile at people.

I'm going to have a nervous breakdown

Sunday when we were at the movie theater, I excused myself and went to the ladies room. While I was washing my hands I looked in the mirror.

Hell, is that what I look like? My hair was completely flat, and this looks even worse as it has been a while since my last haircut, and I haven't even had the money to get my bangs trimmed. (I suppose that I could ask my mother to do it, but we really don't want to go there.)

So a few hours later, I am lying around in bed, mostly watching the X-files. And I get up to get some water from the bathroom sink, and I look at myself in the mirror.

Now I look just gorgeous. My hair looks a bit wavy or something. Why do I look so good now when I looked so awful a few hours ago? Why can't I look good when someone will see me?

But enough of looking gorgeous. It is hot, and I have work to do. Better put my hair in a ponytail. I go outside and get the area of my future wildflower bed ready to dig. I don't get started with the actual digging, just sort of mark off the area and move everything out of the way so I can get an early start on it Monday morning. Then we watch Friday's episode of Eureka with my brother.

So that was Sunday. Things are tense, but we feel a little bit better after we watch a movie and I make plans for the rest of the week to work on the wildflower bed.

Monday morning I actually get up and start digging the wildflower bed. It is hard work, and I give up on it before noon. Working after that is out of the question. It is way too hot. But I get about half of the hole dug. Major progress on the project.

The thing that sucks about doing a lot of serious physical labor in the morning (okay, one of the things) is that you just sort of wait around the whole rest of the day for it to be time to go to bed. I'm too tired to really do anything, but if I actually give in and take a long nap that means I probably won't get any sleep at night.

We watch True Blood and Hung. The opening titles of Hung have the main character doing a Reginald Perrin into a lake, which is kind of funny seeing that the new Reginald Perrin does not do a Reginald Perrin into the ocean.

And what the hell kind of name is Sookie anyway?

So after we watch that stuff, it is back to the X-Files, and waiting for the day to be over so that I can go to bed.

The guy that my husband works with who is involved with the new business thing calls. The two of them are talking a lot, cause the business thing is supposed to get started for real on Saturday. Anyway, the guy says some odd things.

Like he wants the credit card payments to be made out to the business, but he wants the checks written to him personally. He says that it is time that they started running the business like it was a real business.

So that doesn't make any sense. Why should the checks be written out to him, and how would that make things more like a real business? Writing checks to him is the exact opposite of running things like a real business. And the reason that we got the business account in the first place was so that the checks could be written to the business instead of just written to my husband, cause we thought that would look bad.

But even then, the checks could be written to my husband, since his name is on the business. The other guy's name isn't on the business or on the business account. There's no way the checks are going to be written out to him, and he's just not making any sense.

Okay, so that was Monday.

Tuesday morning I got up and dug more of the hole. I got most of that done. I had a bath.

The guy who works with my husband called again. He wants to have his name on the business and on the business account and all of that. And if my husband doesn't agree then he won't work on Saturday.

This is nuts.

These guys are always talking about going into business for themselves and how it isn't fair that when the company has sales of three thousand dollars or so, three of them get about three hundred dollars each while the company gets the rest of the money. Not that the rest of the money is pure profit, there are expenses to take out and a lot of other people at the company still need to get paid, but sometimes it just doesn't seem like a fair split. If only they could start their own companies, they could make more money.

So for three years this guy has said that if my husband ever starts his own company, he would like to work with my husband. And for the last eight months, they have seriously talked about starting a business together, only the guy usually says that he doesn't want to start a business himself, he just wants to work with my husband if my husband starts one.

So that is what was done. My husband started a business, as sole proprietor, and this other guy was going to work with him. My husband bought the computer, bought office supplies, created a website, paid for an advertisement, etc.... The business and the business account only has my husband's name on it (though I believe I have access to the account in an emergency). So all the money put into the business has been my husband's money, and most of the work done has been done by my husband.

Until recently, when we just totally ran out of money.

There were a few more things needed (or at least wanted) to get the business started. Like they needed some samples (or some more samples, I'm not sure which). And I don't know whose idea it was to buy the samples, just that we didn't have any money left, so either this guy would have to buy them himself or we would just have to do without them. So the other guy bought the samples.

And the business is going to start Saturday, and we need to do a few more things, like we need to rent some equipment. Only, we have no money, so it was either call to cancel their first account, or this guy would have to rent the equipment with his credit card. The guy agreed to use his card. He was supposed to meet us on Friday so that we could pick up the rental equipment.

Hopefully on Saturday they would make a lot of money, and then make a bit more the next Saturday. Then they would take out the money for the rental equipment and some other expenses (not even the expenses we're already out, just money we will actually spend for the two days that they work together), they would split the remaining money. The expense money would be at least six hundred dollars (more if business was good), and they were hoping to take in two or three thousand dollars Saturday, and a bit more the next Saturday.

As exciting as that sounds, that wouldn't even get us caught up on the bills, but it might at least get us caught up on the car and such.

Anyway, they were either going to lose some money if business was really bad on Saturday, or if it was good, they would split a thousand dollars or more. Since this guy usually sells something around two thousand a day (and on a regular basis he brings in three thousand or more), they were hoping for something in the four to six thousand dollar range for working the two Saturdays, taking out a thousand or so for expenses, and then splitting the remaining money. I'm not sure that they had discussed whether or not they would equally split the six hundred that they would lose if they made no money at all, or if my husband would be totally responsible for that. Maybe the guy was worried that he would get stuck with the total rental bill of four hundred dollars. I don't know.

But anyway, out of nowhere he wants to be a legal partner and he wants his name on everything, and if we don't do it he won't work on Saturday.

Well, I don't even think that anything can be done with less than a week to go anyway. And if we wanted to do that, he isn't here to sign anything. I suppose that we could make some arrangement to give him access to the business account, but I don't trust him after this stunt. So I said, don't do it. Either cancel the whole thing or maybe I'll try to do his job Saturday, but don't put his name on anything. Something is up. This just doesn't make any sense.

I asked how many customers were expected. My husband said about thirty-five. Thirty-five each Saturday? He said no. So, I thought, if not thirty-five each, thirty-five total. Which probably means twenty customers or so on Saturday. I convinced myself I could do that, even though I haven't done this in about seven years and don't really want to do it ever again. But, it would be better than putting this guy's name on the business account and making him a full partner, when he didn't want to be a full partner until two days ago.

At this point, we started to worry about him working with us at all, even if he apologized and said that he did want to work Saturday. I mean, he would be there with the customers, and he could just say, make the checks out to me, and then he could just go cash the checks and leave us to pay the bills without any money. So if he did want to work on Saturday, I would have to babysit him and deal with all the money myself, cause we just don't trust the man anymore.

Oh, and this is the guy who is out of town with our computer.

But at this point he says that he will meet with us Friday morning to give everything back.

I am wondering if there will be a fight over these samples. I will have to have some to work with, but we still don't have any money and can't pay for them Friday. If he says he's going to keep them until we pay, we can't pay now, and the samples will be of no use to us later, so we shouldn't pay for them later if we can't have them on Friday.

I'm picturing us in front of Judge Judy.

Anyway, I agreed to work Saturday, thinking that I would have twenty customers or so. But again, my husband wasn't clear about that. There are thirty-five customers on Saturday, but he doesn't know how many there will be on the next Saturday because names are still being added to the list.

Crap.

Okay, when this used to be my full-time job seven years ago, and I used to know what I was doing, I could handle about twenty to twenty-five people, and on a good day I could take in about a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars would not be so great on Saturday, cause that would only leave us about four hundred dollars profit (plus whatever we could make on the second Saturday), but compared to what we expected the other guy to bring in, that's just not very good. But I used to do that level of business, and I used to be happy with it.

On my very busiest day, when I was used to doing this, I had thirty-nine customers and brought in more than two thousand dollars. But it was very hard to do that, and I didn't have time to eat lunch or anything. That sort of thing makes a person panic, even when that just means that they'll make twice as much money.

I don't think that I can handle thirty-five people in one day, after not having done this stuff for seven years.

And I don't look good.

And what am I going to wear?

I could just be sick.

But, I agreed to do it, and my husband told the other guy that we didn't need him.

That left us short one credit card.

Well, we do have one credit card that we've kept up with, but right now it is totally maxed out, so we can't buy anything with it. So I doubt we can use it at the rental place either.

So we're back to borrowing from my mom or his brother again, after we haven't paid back either of them from last time.

So my husband goes to work, and he's like, you'll talk to your mom about the money, right?

So, I call my mom. I don't really feel up to talking to her at all, and here I am calling to ask for money.

It doesn't go well. At first she sounds pleasant enough and is interested in the whole story, even though I am up front with her that the point of it all is that we need to borrow money and if she doesn't want to we can skip the whole rest of the story. Just say no, and I can go back to gardening or something, and he can try to borrow the money from his brother.

But my mother gets on to other subjects, like why don't I like being a salesperson? Like she wants to talk me into being a salesperson. It doesn't make any sense. It just makes me feel like I'm a bad person. Just let it go. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. I don't want to go back to this full time, but I'm so desperate to not have this guy involved with us anymore that I've agree to do something I really hate for two days. That's all that she needed to know. We did not need to have an argument about it.

So, she can't decide without talking to my brother first. And then my brother can't decide without knowing just everything about the business. I can't really see how that helps. Just say yes, you're in trouble and I'll help you out, or no, I can't loan you any money cause you haven't paid me back for last time. The details of the business don't really matter that much.

My husband comes home and he talks to my brother. They seem to have a much more pleasant conversation than my mother and I did, even though my brother seems to start out saying this is a very bad idea and we should just cancel.

They finish talking, and we try to go to bed and get some sleep. Only neither one of us feels good. I keep waking up. I almost get to sleep, and then I feel sick and have to get up again.

As long as I am awake anyway, I should go outside and look for meteors.

Dallas is on one side of us, and Fort Worth is down the way on the other side. And at the time I go outside, the almost full moon is directly overhead.

No meteors for me. I go back inside and try to sleep.

So that was Tuesday.

Wednesday I don't get up early as I have been. After feeling sick and waking up several times during the night, I finally get back to sleep and don't wake up until about eight. I'm trying to drink more water, but this time I go straight for the cola. I get very little gardening done, but that is all that it takes to make me hot and tired. I have more soda and a bath and then watch an episode of the X-files.

My husband calls the place with the rental equipment and finds out that while you need a credit card number to leave with them when you take the equipment, you don't actually have to pay with the credit card. That's just supposed to insure that you bring the equipment back in good shape. (I'm not sure how that is, since even if the card had any credit on it, that wouldn't be enough to replace the equipment, but whatever.) And then you don't actually pay for the rental fees until you return the equipment, cause you might bring it back late and have to pay for an extra day or something.

So it doesn't appear that we have to borrow a credit card or money or anything, as long as we make some money we can just pay the rental fees on Monday. The long conversations with my mother and brother were unnecessary.

At about eleven I feel up to having a look at the computer program I am supposed to use on Saturday.

It has been too long. My husband tries to show me a few things, but he goes too fast for me to follow the simplest things. What have I gotten myself into?

It goes a little better once I am sitting at the computer instead of looking over his shoulder. I can work some of it. We go to lunch at Arby's, and then come home and see if I remember how to do anything.

Okay, I think that the part we practiced isn't that difficult, but I'm just going to be slow no matter what. I have to stop and think about things that I used to have memorized. It isn't fun.

And then there are parts that I just can't practice with on this computer. I need the laptop, but the other guy has it.

And I haven't had customers in seven years. I can't practice that part either. I don't know what to say to people.

I might not know what to say to these people anyway. Several of them don't speak English. There will be translators hanging around, but that will slow things down even more. But I used to have this whole speech I was supposed to say, and I thought that it was rather long, so I cut it down to what I thought was important and then slipped in this little bit about the sales making the program possible (and then I tried to just be nice about it after that and not bully people into buying stuff). I don't have a speech this time, and I don't know how to politely suggest that they need to buy something or we won't be back to do this sort of thing again. Just the most basic information that used to roll off of my tongue will now be very awkward.

My husband went to work. I have been alternating playing with the computer program in between watching X-Files and looking at other stuff on the Internet. I get the basic idea of the thing now, but there's just some stuff that I don't know how to do and I'm not going to get to be any good at by Saturday. So, I don't know what to do at the beginning of the day to get started. And then once I get started, I don't know what to say to the customers. And I don't know how to finish up with a customer, and if he's paying with a credit card I don't know how to do that, cause we have to do something with the phone cause we don't have a card swipe thing on the computer. And then when I finish with the customer, I don't know what to do to move on to the next customer. And then if I don't fall apart and run home, I don't know what to do at the end of the day to wrap everything up.

And I'm hoping that part doesn't take too long. I was supposed to see my friends Saturday afternoon, which now I'm not, but maybe some of them will wait around for me if I can meet them by six or so.

Anyway, I don't know what else to do. I try to figure out how to do something, and then I go watch some TV, and then I come back and see if I can remember what I was doing. And I know that I'm not doing much, and I should be doing more work and less watching TV, but I'm not sure what else to do without the laptop and/or a practice customer.

F^&*ing thirty-five customers in seven hours. If we get started on time and finish when we are supposed to. And no lunch break. That's like twelve minutes per customer. (Less than that if I'm ever going to go to the ladies room or get a soda or something.)

I'm not in a happy place.

Going to have another soda and watch more TV now.

With the start of the business thing still being one week away

We are down to one hundred dollars. Okay, maybe a hundred and twenty, cause he gave me some of it. But we went and paid the car insurance (which was more than he told me it was) and then we took what was left of the money out of the bank. Just before we went to pay the car insurance, the bank charged us another fee of about forty dollars for being overdrawn, even though at the time the fee went through we actually had several hundred dollars in the account. So we ended up with a hundred and twenty dollars instead of the almost two hundred he said that we would have.

Yesterday, he actually asked me if I wanted to go to the movies. We had planned to see Julie & Julia this week, and then later see The Time Traveler's Wife and District 9. Even at our cheap theater, that is still twenty-one dollars. We can't spend twenty-one dollars watching movies when we are behind on a car payment and don't even have enough money to go on the trip next week. But yesterday morning, like the first thing he asked me was when does the movie start.

Okay, so we went to pay the car insurance, and then we went to the grocery store to get some sodas so that we could get the hundred and twenty dollars out of the account. Only, the store would only give us forty of it. It has been so long since I tried to get more money than that, I forgot there was a limit now. And then we remembered where there was a bank ATM that wouldn't charge us any fees, so we went there to get the other eighty dollars. Then we went to another store and spent about three dollars on food, half of that being for potato chips.

We are this low on money, and he still wants potato chips. I feel bad about the little bit I still spend on soda, but I have a bit of a caffeine addiction. Potato chips are just flat out unnecessary. And of course, since we have potatoes, he could just try to make his own chips, but he hasn't done that yet.

Okay, so we went someplace to buy cheap potato chips, and we bought him a six-pack of root beer, and I bought some spaghetti or something. He already had sandwich stuff. So now he's all set for lunch for the next few days, and if he still goes on that trip.

He finally had to call and tell them that he didn't have enough money to go on the trip, if they don't have some way to advance him some money, which he new that they didn't from the last time we were in trouble. So he called, and they said that it didn't look like they would have enough business for a two day trip anyway, so if they changed the schedule so that it was just the one day could he still work? So he thinks that a hundred dollars would pay for just one day, and he agrees to do that, and now we are just waiting to hear back from them to see if he is working Wednesday or Thursday, or if they are going to leave it the way it is and get someone else.

I have mostly cleaned the living room enough to make room for the equipment. The room still needs to be cleaned properly later, but for now I have moved enough stuff around that there is floor space.

It was too hot yesterday to go out and do actual garden work, but I did water the plants and just go out and look at a few things. And of course, while I was out looking, I was attacked by fire ants. And I haven't really recovered from the last time. But this time really upset me, cause after a time you figure out where they are, and you stay away from them until such time as you can poison them or something, but this time I wasn't anywhere near where they had been, and I wasn't even standing in one place for a long time. I was just walking around and turning on the hose, and they got me anyway.

Stupid fire ants. I would leave them alone if they would leave me alone. So instead of hiding so that I don't know that they are there, they come out and bite me, so now I have to kill them.

I have three yellow squash in my fridge and one left on the plant. I thought that I was going to get more than that, but some of them died. Not sure why, cause I was pretty sure that those got pollinated this time. Maybe not. Anyway, I have four squash, which is twice as many as I've had the whole rest of the season.

The sweet potato plants are really nice looking. This probably means that I have watered them too much and that the roots will end up being too small to be worth eating, but I don't really care too much. They are still nice to look at. I think I'll grow more of them next year. On the other hand, the best thing to eat is the asparagus, which pretty much just looks awful. Not that the plant is actually ugly, but it just sort of gets too tall and then falls over. I didn't remember that it did that, or I wouldn't have planted them right in the middle of everything like I did. Anyway, next year I need to build something so that the plants can be contained somewhat and not fall over onto the pathway like that. Trailing sweet potato vines are attractive, but falling over asparagus somehow are not.

Anyway, I cannot wait for the next two weeks or so to be over. There is all this stuff going on, and I can't do anything cause I don't have any money. Like there is a party at the end of the month, and I would need at least fifteen dollars to go, plus I'm not sure that I have anything to wear. And tomorrow a lot of my friends are going to dinner, which is sort of a send off for a couple of them as they are leaving next month and they are not sure if they will be able to see us next week. I'm not particularly close to these two, but I would have gone to say goodbye anyway. I don't get to see them much, but they are a lot of fun when they are around. So I hope that they make it next week, cause I can't go out tomorrow.

So in a week or so it will either be really good, or it will just be okay and get us out of the current difficulties, or it will be a total disaster and leave us being even more in debt. But the not knowing is starting to get to us, and I will be glad when it is over.

Stuff must all be done by Tuesday

Today we will have to go and see about paying the car insurance, and then we will have to withdraw whatever is left in the account and pay cash for everything. My husband has canceled the overdraw protection on the account. I am thinking that is a mistake, but he did it anyway.

This could get ugly.

So he will take cash with him on this trip (if there is even enough money left for going on the trip), and I am still not sure if I am going with him. The originally planned three night stay is now only a two night stay, cause there just isn't enough money left to drive up there the day before. It is unpleasant to have to make a long drive before having to put in a full day of work, but he has done it before. The reasons for me going with him are now down to possibly having a swim (if we can get a motel with a pool), going to a free museum, and looking at a historical building Thursday morning before lunch, which he might not feel up to anyway after all the work and the driving on Wednesday. The motel without the pool is ten dollars less, so we would probably not bother with the pool anyway.

Maybe I will just stay here. I don't know.

I have now had a look at the scheduled week after next, and it involves two days in Oklahoma, but not two consecutive days. This usually means that we would just stay in the motel for the extra day and find something fun to do. But with the way things are now, we might just have to drive all the way home and then drive back the next day, cause we might not have the extra money for the extra motel stay.

In fact, if the business thing does not work out, I'm not sure we will have any money at all. I know that we don't have anymore paychecks coming in before then, and I'm not sure that any expense money would be reimbursed by then either.

And of course one of the days he is supposed to work in Oklahoma is the day before the second thing with the new business. So that is bad anyway.

For my part, I have to clean the living room area.

Of course, I am always having to clean something and making a big deal about it, but this is different. It isn't so much that I have to make anything clean, and it certainly isn't about making anything look neat and orderly. It is about just needing some temporary floor space. When my husband goes to pick up the rented equipment, he will need to put all of that stuff in the minivan, which means that all the stuff that he normally carries around in the minivan will have to go someplace else. So I'm trying to make room for it in the living room, which means not only doing the normal cleaning and such (which needed to be done anyway), but now I'm also pushing stuff against the wall and stacking things on top of each other.

I made a start on that yesterday, so I hope to get finished with that today. If I don't finish with it by Tuesday, I will have to stay home from the trip whether or not I want to go.

The good news about the cleaning is that I did find the weedblock fabric that I had misplaced earlier. And it wasn't even under a pile of stuff, it was just leaning against the wall in a dark corner where I didn't see it. So now I can go out and finish that little piece of the garden path and see how it looks before I buy anymore gravel.

Not that I will have any money for buying more gravel anytime soon, but it would still be nice to see how it looks.

So that is what I am doing today. Anyway, I should feel a little bit better after we go and pay the car insurance. I have gotten behind on bills before, but never on the car insurance, and the idea of being without it really makes me nervous.