Endless activity and irony

So I'm currently reaping the rewards for slacking off most of the last half of 2008. I've been at my computer for what feels like a month straight (although it has actually only been a few days). It has been seriously cold out, so I haven't braved the bike. Not to mention, I totally jinxed myself by saying it wasn't going to snow again until next winter. The day after I posted that, this is what I woke up to:



How karmic! And yesterday, as I was feeling guilty about not wanting to bike Owen to school because it was too chilly for delicate little old me, fat flakes started to fall. By the time we pulled out of the driveway, there was a couple inches on the ground. It's all melted now, but we've seen more snow this winter than we did the previous four years we've been here combined. Love that global climate change! Portland might actually have to buy a few more plows if this keeps up...

Not that the snow has affected my activity much. These past few days have been all about pattern formatting, printing, putting more paper in the printer, printing, putting more ink in the printer, printing, putting patterns in sheet protectors for a couple hours, checking the printer to make sure it's still going, endlessly cropping photos in Photoshop for the website, coding and recoding the web pages (all the new designs are up now - yay!), discovering that my pdf versions of the patterns had "printed on 100% recycled paper" at the bottom and deciding that that wouldn't do, opening all 50+ InDesign pattern files so I could recreate the pdfs with a cute little line about not printing or printing on recycled paper (which I'm hoping is indeed cute rather than annoyingly preachy), then when on "Walk in the Woods Socks" (after working through the pattern list alphabetically) discovering that instead of "pattern" I had put "catalog" in the footer necessitating a revamp of all pdfs created so far to include the appropriate wording...

It goes on and on. I haven't showered or changed in days, I'm begging Bill to take the kids to school and cook dinner (we broke down and ordered Thai food last night because I didn't make either the split pea soup or quiche I was planning to - which reminds me, I need to get the split pea soup in the crock pot or we're going to have the same problem tonight...). I see the light at the end of the tunnel now, but it's still distant. Not to mention I still have the regular household maintenance tasks of cooking, baking and laundry, and I need to start planning my garden so I can get seeds ordered in anticipation of the fast-approaching "last frost" date on the calendar at the end of February...

This morning my list of tasks includes shipping a trunk show featuring 10 of our lace designs off to Sticks & Strings in Scarsdale, NY (it will be there for the first 3 weeks in Feb - if you're in the area, be sure to check it out!), after figuring out how to laminate hang tags for all the samples and getting the remaining patterns in sheet protectors. Then I need to reformat several patterns to say "Distributed by Cascade Yarns" and print out a *large* order to ship up to Cascade. Of course I've nearly run out of sheet protectors, so that means I'll need to make myself presentable and head over to Costco to pick up several more boxes. I'm also trying to get the rest of the website updated to talk about our trunk show program. It's not enough to just add a blurb about the trunk shows on my wholesale page - no, I somehow decided last night that I need a new page for prospective retailers as well as a new page only for trunk shows. And I'm probably going to feel the need to add a page on the consumer side so that knitters know where the trunk shows are going to be so they can go visit them. Whew! I need an assistant (know one who will work for free or for yarn?).

But enough of my whingeing. I've got split pea soup to make! Can you believe that my daughter who won't touch most healthy food with a 10-foot pole actually loves split pea soup? She's an odd duck, that one...