I’m feeling more time-pressed than I think I actually am; trying to be reasonable about it. When the Berwyn village folks approached me about the pop-up at the Berwyn Shops, they’d said Oct-Dec. And I’d always thought I might expand to the Shops at some point, so having a chance to try it out in the prime shopping window seemed like too good a chance to pass up. Then they asked if I could start two weeks earlier — two more weeks of selling sounded good to me, so I said yes. Which means I open this Friday. At least a soft open.
On the academic side, I think I’m fine — teaching two sections of the same class, and it’s one I’ve taught before (new preps are MUCH more time-consuming), so that feels pretty under control. We’re heading into week 4 of the semester, which is mostly a steady time of continuing to read and discuss stories — next week, we’ll start working on their first paper, but I won’t need time for grading those until week 7.
I should be well set up at the Shops by then, and since they’re only open Fri / Sat / Sun, I think staffing them should be pretty do-able. If sales are busy enough that I feel like I need more time to make product, then I should be making enough that I can afford to pay for staffing. And if sales are slow, then needing to staff the store should be an excellent way to force myself to sit at the computer and deal with e-mail backlog, essay revisions, maybe even drafting new stories.
But this is also the fall when Kavi is applying to college, and there’s a whole mess of stuff to keep track of there and help her with, and she and Kevin both tend to get hit hard by allergies periodically, so need more help then (very grateful that Anand and I don’t suffer from allergies!), and of course, Kevin’s had a very hard year, and so I’d like to not put too much on his plate…
…all of which means that I probably shouldn’t get too ambitious with things like paint and wallpaper — if I can work with what’s there, at least initially, that probably makes more sense. And I have a fair bit of stock on hand, and my space at Sprout is crowded, so I can definitely bring things over from there, but if I do have extra time, probably it makes more sense to just focus on production rather than decor.
Although it’d be fun to design the space more intensively. Trying to be sensible here. We’ll see.
For today, I mostly caught up with cleaning and laundry, so the family can have a good start to the week (assigning chores around as appropriate), made Kevin’s birthday dinner, helped Kavi make some progress on her mountain of laundry — but I did do a resin pour and unloaded the flower press, and made some cards, as I was running low on them at Sprout. That one at top right is my current favorite.
Tomorrow, get up at 7 and make sure the kids get off okay for school (they’re mostly self-sufficient, but it’s still better if a parent checks in), prep for Tuesday’s teaching, deal with any urgent SLF e-mail, water the sadly neglected garden before everything starts actually dying, meet with a student and give them feedback on their novel…
…and then I can do Shops stuff. Take the rent check ($575 / month) down to the Berwyn Development Corps office and get my keys, return a dress form that was kindly loaned to me (I’ve bought one of my own now), have Kevin help me move a large table down to the shop and re-assemble it, measure for rugs and bring some down, take down a chair and some stock, and then probably in the evening while half-watching TV, make some resin and paper bookmarks, which I’m also running low on.
It’s all do-able. I don’t have to make myself frantic. Slow and steady, that’s the ticket…
