My cats are druggy freaks. I suspect Stella was the one to jump up on my desk and discover the bag of catnip I had forgotten there. All I know is I came out from the kitchen after starting a new loaf of bread to find the two of them rolling around on this now very holey bag. They look so disgustingly pleased with themselves. Heh.

I'm not terribly pleased with myself today. I'm having a flare-up with the nerves issue and my back. This is the one that makes it very difficult to walk. I've been sleeping a lot better over the past week, but it always seems to be a trade off. If my spine to leg nerve (I should really find out the name of the damn things) is fine, I can't sleep because of back spasms. If I can sleep, I find it hard to move during the day. I just can't win with my back, can I? Ahh well at least it's not everything at once anymore.

I'm not feeling quite as beaten down anymore as well. So the lack of sleep must have been a big part of my doldrums. I'm still tired and wanting my afternoon naps but it's now more a feeling of playing hooky rather than a need.

You know, during the summer I never felt really bad if I decided to take a Tuesday off to watch the new releases. I keep wondering why it's such a big deal to my nag in my head to take time off in the winter. It's not like I have summer vacation the same as Miss. Sara does. I'm not free from the need to work -- I just seem to be free of the guilt to work.

I'm going to try to get into the habit of making a batch of soap each week. Sometimes I can get into a mood and then I end up making soap like a crazed woman. Then I don't make anything for months afterwards. I made a lot of soap in October and haven't really wanted to make more since them. That's kind of sad when I think about it, I loved making soap all the time when I started. It's the reason I started the business. Too much soap for us to use. Now I don't even make the special soap for us to use up.

Anyway, I'm going to set Wednesday mornings as a time to make a single batch each week. Routine, probably sometimes boring, but it'll keep the supply steady. Not that there's a big worry about running out of stock at this point in time. Business is bad. I've had 2 orders in 2004. In some ways it makes me damn grateful I listened to my gut and stayed so small. If I had rent to pay on a storefront, a loan to repay, all those various things -- I'd drown. The business would fold.

But because I stayed small, just a little business run out of my PC and my kitchen I can just float through this dead spot. I finally finished posting all my receipts for 2003. I have the rough numbers, and the definite final sales totals. I'm showing a 40% loss over my first year in business. Forty percent. That's crazy. I talked to my Dad about it and he said he's showing a major loss in 2003 too.

Which was a relief to hear. I figured I had done something wrong, that I had screwed up in some major way to have such poor sales. Dad says it's not just me, not just him, that it's also hit the people he knows from the shows. These are people that make their living from selling the things they make. They take it a lot more serious than I ever have. If they've been dead in the water... yeah.

And that's 30 minutes.