July 29, 2012—Minor Accomplishments (accolades welcome . . .)

This week has been as crazy busy as any other, but I feel like I am actually getting things done. Don’t you hate those wheel-spinner days/weeks/months?

I feel like real progress was made in several areas—including the house, garden and shop—but mostly the shop. I have been able to pull together a summer sale, the likes of which I have never had before, at least one new window display (as of the writing of this column) and I was able to do some painting. I finished some small projects and put a few new things on the floor for sale.

The beauty of getting stuff done at the shop is that I will have virtually hundreds of people walk through and notice the changes. Regular customers will comment, “Oh! You’ve changed the window—let me go look again!” New customers will compliment an arrangement or a particular vignette. It’s all very satisfying. Not so much at the house. At the house, if anyone notices a new arrangement or newly hung picture, I am lucky. It is much more likely that someone will ask, a month down the road, “When d’we get that?”

That’s why I find it so funny when I over hear people saying, “Oh, I bet her house is wonderful.” Basing this supposition, naturally, on the attention to detail and display they see in the shop. My response, when they actually make this comment to me, is generally, “Not so much.”

I generally explain that I spend more time at the shop than my house and, when I am at the house, 7 of the approximately 10 hours are spent with my eyes closed. I don’t pay much attention to decorating my house anymore. Of course, the shop not only gets my attention, but also that of my friends/staff that help me; they do not come to my house, neither to arrange displays nor dust. (I’ve asked, they won’t do it.)

There was a time when the house and the décor filling it was all I thought about and did. I was constantly working on projects—whipping-up a couple throw pillows, making curtains, dinner and doing laundry, too; now . . . not so much. If I do have a novel idea for my house, it usually doesn’t happen until the relative season has nearly passed; bunnies arrive in May, patriotic bunting in August, you get the picture.

I guess that’s why, minor successes such as walking the dog AND pruning the Nandina before my chiropractic appointment makes me want to climb on the chicken coop (that I wish I had time to build) and crow!