My restaurant/coffee shop/antique store has now been open for two months. It has consumed such vast quantities of my time and energy that blogging and other “leisure” activities were put on the back burner, so to speak.

I had ordered a sign for my business back on January 2 but the sign company I used was a small one-man operation that turned out to be completely unreliable. After three months of insisting that he deliver our custom sign (which was already made, he simply couldn’t be bothered to come install it!), we were finally able to order another sign and have it installed.

Here is a photo of the front of our building now that we have our sign:

And there I am in the reflection of the window, taking this photo with my ipad in the glaring morning sunlight.

Spring has arrived fully this week. The trees are greening out and flowers are blooming everywhere. My brother informs me every day of the new birds that he has observed arriving back from their winter travels.

This is a wisteria bush on my property. I also have wisteria vines growing up through the trees in several places.

My favorite flowers, the daffodils have already bloomed and died. Someone needs to invent an ever-blooming daffodil.

When I can now in the mornings, I sit on the back porch in a rocking chair and have my coffee. It is a great way to start the day. I watch the sun rise over the hills and listen to all the birds of our forest.

My business has stayed extremely busy but I’ve gotten less exhausted from it all. I finally have enough people working in the kitchen (“fingers crossed”) so I don’t have to be in there every second of the day. Now I plan to concentrate on improving the coffee bar and smoothie area of the business as well as bring in more art to hang on the walls.

We completed week 2 of our business being open. It has been a wild and busy ride so far. And completely exhausting. I have been working so hard and so many hours and trying to juggle everything that I simply made myself sick. I haven’t really eaten anything in two weeks. And what I do eat seems to not stay with me long because my stomach is so upset. Apparently I have a bad case of nerves that really affects my stomach.

I finally went to the doctor on Friday and got some anti-nausea medicine to get me through this. I hate hate hate to take medicine but sometimes it is necessary. I have no idea where I’ve been getting my energy to work the 14-hour days I’ve been putting in.

The medicine is helping and I ate a small meal last night that actually stayed down in my stomach where it belonged. So far today, I have managed to eat a bowl of cereal. I’ve lost 12 pounds. And my clothes are rather hanging on me now. I may have to go shopping for some new clothes that fit!

But over-all it has been wonderful having this new business and figuring everything out. We have been just incredibly busy and have received such an outpouring of support from our community. We are only open four days a week but we could probably be open a couple of more days each week and still be just as busy. But for right now, until I get the staff fully trained and all the kinks worked out, then I will continue on our current schedule.

Last week was crazy. I worked around 90 hours including putting final touches on my coffee shop/cafe/antique store and then opened for business on Wednesday. It was flat-out busy from the moment we opened up which was hugely gratifying.

But I was still a bundle of raw nerves so I didn’t eat anything for 4 days. I’m not sure how I kept going but apparently Dr. Pepper was my energy source.

Then I caught an awful bad cold. So I’ve spent a couple of days trying to get some rest and recuperate. Since my business is only open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of each week, I have had three days in which to work on resting and getting over this cold. I feel better today for the first time in a week.

Our new espresso machine finally arrived also. We have it installed and ready to go. Our espresso machine’s name is Gloria and I will post pictures soon!

Now we are waiting for the sign to be delivered and hung on the front of the building. I ordered the sign over two months ago. They delivered it while I was on vacation (which I had asked them not to do) and it was made too short. So they took it back to correct that and I haven’t been able to get them to come install it since then. They’ve given me every excuse in the book to keep stalling me and I am quite angry about the delays. I was really disappointed to open my business with a sign on the building and if I have to order another sign from another sign-maker, then it will be delayed even further.

So that is my past week in a nutshell: work, sleep, work some more!