Life Returning To Normal

Chickie arrived back home late yesterday and my life can now switch into the next phase - getting ready for Fall and the annual Minnesota Bead Stop Hops event. I'll be straight here - it's not my favorite event. Last year we had eighteen shops participating from all over the state, this year we're down to twelve shops. I usually have our cards with charms prepared and ready to go. I usually have the door prizes chosen and ready to display. I usually have the store cleaned and ready to go. This year I'm SO NOT READY! With Chickie on vacation for the past 1-1/2 weeks, nothing is ready at all. Half of what she was supposed to get ready before she left is still pending. She'll be back at work on Wednesday, my own day off, so Thursday will be our first shared day at work in two weeks. Time to crack that whip, for sure!

It's time to crack the whip. We'll only have two days to get the store ready
for this year's Bead Shops Hop. 

I want the windows and the floor washed. I want clutter cleared away and the display cabinets cleaned from the outside as well as the inside. I want jewelry polished and the front window cleaned up. In general, I want a clean store and I'll have two days in which to do it. Yeah ... right! I'll be lucky if the outside of the cases get washed. I'll be working on composing and getting our publicity email together and sent. It's going to be a busy week and tempers will probably flare.

We'll be cleaning everything we can, from the cases to the
floor. It all needs a serious clean and we're almost out
of time. 

Aside from that, I'm very happy to have kitty care complete. I did wear a mask on the final three days and that helped quite a bit. I was extremely happy to return her house key to the compartment where I keep it and say good-bye to the cats yesterday morning. They are sweet and adorable, but I just can't be around them without feeling horrid for the rest of the day. The next time any kitty care would even come up would be next year sometime, so I'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Could it have possibly been worse? I'll hear all of the important
sound bites today, but I'm not happy with either candidate. 

I suppose I should mention the debate. I didn't watch it. At this point, both candidates just turn my stomach and I felt it was going to be rhetoric piled upon steaming piles of rhetoric. I know that some of my friends and relatives will be upset that I consider this election to be a choice between bad and worse, but that's how I feel. I'll vote for bad, but don't need to listen to it. Ick ... just ick! What do I want? I want strict term limits of one term for offices with four-year or more election cycles, and I want two term maximums for offices with less than a four-year term. I think something is horribly wrong in a system when the re-election campaign begins the day after the candidate is elected, even before they are sworn into office. It seems that all politicians care about is getting re-elected, not the job they are supposed to perform. Politics - "I hates it," I hiss ...