whiskey fridays. or wednesdays. or whenevers...

things around here have been going at approximately 90 bajillion miles an hour. yes, 90 bajillion. next week is thanksgiving....but apparently it's not a real holiday, because all i am seeing are christmas commercials. don't get me wrong, i LOVE christmas, am a toddler about it, but can't we at least celebrate the holidays in order without another infringing? hmmmm. can we? can we now?

with that being said, i feel as if it is 3 in the morning. i'm not tired or anything of that nature, but i feel as if i have been running non-stop. i had honestly no idea that it was friday today. not even a vague clue. that's pretty bad, because that means i didn't know yesterday was thursday. thursday is my favorite day of the week. go figure right?

we've sold our first piece of furniture...wooohoo - urbanreclaimed.com - find us, love us, like us, buy us....

i am steadily trying to promote us any way that i can. which involves no less than 3 changes to each website that i've made. including the biggest one of all and that was....A NAME CHANGE...wooo hooo. if you didn't notice in the last paragraph, but our name is now Urban Reclaimed. all of our websites can be found from the one above - urbanreclaimed.com.  i think i have now successfully made everything talk to each other. by i, i clearly mean, darwin's friend john....he helped get goodsie.com going. pretty sweet.

we are working on a logo, and i am trying to decide if i want to do a brochure. brochures are annoying and a pain in my ass, but i have not entirely ruled them out. we will see.

i just want it to be monday at approximately 10:00 am. that means i am dropping dar off at the airport and me, the coneman, and sweet praia girl are headed to the m...mmmhmm.  whiskey, food, and no responsibilities. yes please.

ciao.

'like' us on facebook (and mississippi wood trader), follow us on twitter (and me too), bookmark our website (and mine too)....selfless promotion right there...selfless

snowmageddon. part 4.

welcome to snow day part 4 for this kid. i think i have reached the max capacity of snow that i can take. i live in the south for a reason and that reason does not involve snow in any way shape or form. since monday i can count how many times i have been out of my house (besides to let the dog and now dogs out) on one hand. it's 3. 3 times. i can't handle that. it's not like i have anything to do, it's the fact that i cannot do anything if i even wanted to. even the dogs are restless. it says the temperature is supposed to be 35 today. which is a lie. i just looked, only 32. so that means no melting of the awesomeness. BUT tomorrow is supposed to be 43! i have never been so happy for the 40s in my entire life! and then get this 51 on monday. ha. welcome to the south i guess.

you may wonder what i have done in 3 1/2 days of being snowed in. well i will inform you. i have read a book, cruised the entire internet (yes the entire thing), cleaned my house top to bottom, and most importantly i've had staring contests with the dogs. i don't think i or they could be more bored. i've never thought of myself as an especially boring person until this week. i may not actually be a boring person, but without civilization to talk to, i may never know. at the rate this snow is melting i for sure may never know.

if i were at work, which i desperately miss right now... the cold warehouse. the lumber smell. the propane heater in my office. the forklift cranking up. the saw buzzing through wood. the crazy customers. all of it, i miss it... i would be floating around organizing and throwing things away. i think secretly i should have gone to school for organizational purposes. i completely made that terminology up, but i am going with it.

all i have done since day one at mississippi wood trader is organize. organize the office, the bills, the company, the lumber, darwin, darwin's life, my life, and the list goes on and on. i am fairly certain i was put on this earth to organize. which comes to the day that i decided we needed a job board. darwin may have suggested it, but again let's be honest it's up to me to get most ideas moving along. we needed some way to organize the jobs that were going on so that we could see them clearly and plan accordingly. which meant i got to craft and organize all in one sitting. that. was. a. big. day. i walk into work armed with paint pens. i find a suitable ruler substitute and get to drawing. we have a big dry erase board that currently wasn't being utilized so i ganked that and put it up in the office. about an hour and a half later, the job board was created.

moral of the story. if i get to organize and create. i am a happy girl. just like when i got to organize and create things for the scott antique market that we did...total bust, but fun anyway. i think i am going to now try on every piece of clothing i own and decide if i like it anymore...wish me luck.

p.s. that is not a picture of my house, but that is what i feel like....

snowpocalypse...

snow day. part 2. i think the cabin fever may have set in. my driveway goes straight down; there is no getting out. i am not even sure that i could leave on foot if i even tried. that may come later based on how stir crazy i get by the end of the day...

now around the warehouse things constantly need fixed. it's kind of a continuous string of calamities that may or may not get dealt with. one that needed to be dealt with for oh as long as i have been here, and most certainly needed to be fixed before i got here, attempted to get fixed one morning.

i stroll into the warehouse one morning and notice that one of the forklifts is in the shop bay. the mast is all the way up and there appears to be a human hanging from the rafters. imagine this view at 8 in the morning. is he dead? who is he? what in the hell is going on? i put my stuff down and stroll on back to the shop bay to see exactly what is going on.

it's darwin. he is hanging/repelling from the rafters. he has climbed the forklift and has attached himself to the rafters to fix the florescent lights. yes, most of the florescent lights have been out since oh i don't know circa 2005, but that does not mean that we need to be climbing forklifts to hang from rafters.

now this whole scenario wouldn't have been quite so terrible if say someone had actually have been there to make sure he didn't topple off the top of the forklift, electrocute himself, or i don't know help. now that is where i stepped in. handing him lightbulbs, sockets, the whole nine yards. but still nothing is more nerve racking (well actually there is, but we won't go there today) than seeing your boss hanging from the rafters with no adult supervision.

he always tells me to be careful when i am climbing on things (log piles, metal sculptures, lumber packs...) and i always tell him that i am okay, i used to do this all the time. he responds with well i don't want to have to explain to your mother what happened. i proceed to explain that my mother would understand and most certainly wouldn't be surprised....however if we reverse that situation, i am not sure how i would explain that to his mom, besides yes ma'am i am very sorry. i have sold the business and praia and i are moving to the beach...come and visit...(are you sensing a pattern of my life goals yet...beach, beach, and some more beach, with a side of beach.)

so snow day...good lousy i am going insane...

word vomit....

it’s wednesday and it’s raining. could you make a worse combination if you tried? i am not entirely convinced, but i am sure there is someway to make it worse….and oh wait, i’ve just found it, the internet is going in and out and it’s cold. i am currently (i clearly mean, me and the two dogs) are huddled by the wood stove, pretending that a. we aren’t bored, b. (they don’t have to pee) c. i am not hopped up on diet soda with nowhere to go…it’s like putting a bouncy ball in a confined box and watching it frantically wiggle around trying to find a place to stop and settle (usually my operating speed anyway). it’s just not going to happen and that is something i have vaguely come to terms with. i shouldn’t drink diet soda, but i just love it so. i really am a fan of buying the 93 cent one from Sam’s Club, RaceTrac, Pilot, wherever, and chugging it and annoying the ever living shit out of darwin; he has been known to take them away from me asking for a “sip” and chug the entire thing: “because it’s better that way, if you (me) don’t drink the rest of that. for my sanity and yours.” touche, fact, touche nonetheless. it makes my day more entertaining; i am sure he wishes he could bungee cord me to the chair and watch me squirm so that he doesn’t have to deal with me, but alas, things don’t go as we wish most of the time. hope for the best and plan for the worst right? that is pretty much how i have been living my life the past 6 months or so. walked away from something i knew for over 3 years and did my damndest to not fall apart. it’s november and i am still functioning (some days better than others) and i haven’t fallen apart just quite yet. there have been numerous meltdowns, which i feel i should probably apologize to darwin and my friends for having to be caught in the middle of them, but ya know, shit happens.

days like today are, when the flow chart of ideas going through my head is like driving the autobon in germany: it’s going as fast as possible and it’s dangerous. i often get sidetracked and one tangent leads to about 6 others. which leads me to this post. have you ever just tried to sit down and do something start to finish without stopping, interrupting or getting sidetracked? i have, and i used to be really good at focusing and getting that one task or idea done and moving on to the next one; all with great ease and precision. after over 2 years at Mississippi Wood Trader i find myself lacking the mental ability and drive anymore to make myself sit still and get one task, no matter how menial and small, done without doing 3 others at the same time. i often wonder if maybe i could have handled something better if i would have just taken the time to sort it completely out, and then i promptly forget about it because i have eight million other task in line. i think darwin is rubbing off on me. yet somehow, my organizational overachiever self always steps in and i manage to get everything done. i make lists upon lists and cross things off as i go and then add about 10 more. if you were to read these lists, they would probably look like a bunch of kindergarten gibberish (complete with doodles), which in many cases they actually might be. i am a firm believer in seeing an idea through all its possible outcomes, but sometimes, that may take a day, a month, 2 years, an eternity, i just never really know. usually the best ideas get tossed aside to do something else, like say undoing the Quickbooks disaster that darwin always manages to create, but they come back to me and i begin to ponder. it’s really hard for me to turn my brain completely off.

today i made myself do one task and complete it before i moved on. do you know how HARD that was for me? hopped up on diet soda and french fries? mmmm french fries….case and point. i am not really sure i actually accomplished that task, or really what that task was. hmm. i am not cut out for corporate America; i like the beach entirely too much to be restricted to this silly “vacation time” you people speak of. i’ve got too much energy to be pent up in a cubicle, and i really, really like my dog. so i came to Mississippi Wood Trader, knowing nothing other than what my uncle has told me: darwin’s young, he’s cool, and he sells lumber. i can sell lumber, right? of course i can, i grew up with it….or at least i made myself believe i could. now that being said, i knew i could never work some where being given one task to do a day. good gracious that sounds miserable. so naturally i pick the place with an energetic boss, skateboards, forklifts, trucks, dogs, the whole nine yards. i love it and it proves that no matter how silly an idea may seem, it could turn out to be the best thing you have ever done.

maybe part of the reason i really enjoy working here, is because the random things that shoot through my brain at Indy 500 speeds, don’t seem quite so crazy. ideas around here come and go, and someone has to take them and filter them and carry through with them. that usually falls to me, and i am okay with that, because organizing is something i crave. it’s almost scary how much i can’t handle unfolded laundry, dishes, papers….it sends me into an absolute tizzy.

so there you have it. this is how my brain works, which coincides quite well with how darwin’s works. we both bounce off each other like toddlers and sometimes we meet in the middle and realize a good idea. which is part of the reason i started this blog; i thought it was a good idea, darwin humored me for the nanosecond he was paying attention, and then viola i made a blog. i am a blogger. ha, now that’s just silly.

P.S. expect a lot of rambling, because after over 4 years of structured History major paper writing, i am tired of filtering thoughts (frankly, i am just tired). ideas come in a rush and this is pretty much how i sound at most times anyway. i talk too fast, and i think too much, so it comes out in a jumble and you just have to piece it together and bear with me…it takes a second to get used to, but i find it works best.