Category: Life

We’re heading into the craziest part of the year. Markets every weekend, soap orders here there and everywhere, wholesale accounts popping up (insert quiet cheering).

Annnnd my doctor rang me the other day. Apparently my thyroid levels are fine, but my iron is “quite low” and “please start an iron supplement immediately”.

Huh. That might explain some things here, you know. Like, everything.

It’s 8pm and it’s still light outside. Summer is coming and it’s lovely – long gorgeous days, lots of light – it also makes bedtime challenging, with children who don’t want to fall asleep when it’s daylight outside (despite hanging all the extra sheets up over their curtains).

Add that to exhaustion and insomnia in equal measure, and well. It was a recipe for getting sick, really. Which I did, quite spectacularly last week, with antibiotics required.

I cancelled my Friday night market, and while I know it was the right thing to do – I’ve pretty much spent all weekend recovering and collapsing in various measures – I still feel guilty. Even though I was sick, and Nathan was sick, and Mum (my driver and co-marketer) was sick – I still feel guilty, because I said I’d be there and at the last minute, I couldn’t be. I’d really hoped my antibiotics would work fast enough, but that’s the way it goes.

Exhaustion. Illness. Anaemia.

On the upside, I’ve stopped coughing my lungs up, I can buy iron supplements tomorrow, and I’m hoping this week will be full of Netflix and packaging, rather than running around in circles.

I also turned 27 last week, which was nice. Happy Birthday to me, I’m a multiple of three… etc.

Baby goats at The Brighton Show today.

These kids are drinking and getting fat on the same milk I use in my soaps. They were gorgeous, and I loved being able to meet the mother goats who supply my milk.

Here is one of the milking does my Goat’s Milk comes from.

It was a long hot day, which is why I’m catatonic on the couch right now. Not sure the Brighton Show is my target demographic, but it was lovely weather and I got to stand and work barefoot on the grass. Very nice.

Now. zzzzzzz

I packed 80 soaps this afternoon while I watched Gilmore Girls, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get to pack another 80 soaps after dinner, as well as making the soap I’ve been putting off because my 3yo has decided she needs to “help” with everything I do. For the record, soap making is not conducive to being “helped” by a 3yo.

Especially not when you’re attempting a pretty swirl with a new fragrance you know is going to thicken fast. What can I say, I like to live dangerously.

Interestingly, Eve likes cooking. Way more than the other two kids ever did. She likes rolling dumplings and icing cakes and helping to peel potatoes. She also likes putting stickers on soap and throwing freshly labelled lip balms into bags, but cooking is her Big Thing. If she can sit on the bench and watch the eggs cook – that is her happy place.

Of course she doesn’t want to eat the eggs, but if I can just cook them over and over, that would be great. Bonus points if we can collect them too – although we need to start being faster than the dogs, who have discovered eggs are as fun as balls, only they’re delicious when you crack them.

Not my favourite.

Not my chicken’s favourite either, because Heidi also likes to chew on them if we’re not careful, but there it is.

Only a quick post today, while I wait for dinner to finish cooking and my children to begin to settle down for the night. I am strung out and stretched thin and bedtime for them, and Netflix for me is a happy hour here. Although I really ought to be working more and watching Netflix less. Details.

Whoever thought that starting a business while also parenting three children would be a good idea? Clearly I am a deluded idiot.

But at least I make really nice soap, so there’s that.

Two things:

1:

I did a market last night and lip balms were SOHOTRIGHTNOW. One little girl bought a lip balm and then suddenly, I had swarms of girls at the stall, buying and smelling and chattering.

It was so lovely.

It’s really interesting to me how there are giant runs on things during markets. I won’t sell bath salts for three markets, and then suddenly, every bath salt will sell out during the next market. Often customers don’t realise that previous customers have bought the same thing.

It’s a phenomenon. Is it something in the air? Does everyone get infected with the “I MUST HAVE THIS ONE THING” air as they walk into a market? No one knows.

It’s the same with soap smells. Some days, everyone wants sandalwood. The next market, everyone is into the fruity smells. Then we’ll have a run on florals. But when a soap is hot, it’s so hot and I’d better hope I have it in stock.

(Unlike the market where everyone wanted woodsy smells and the new soaps were still curing. whoops.)

Anyway. Lip balms. I need to go restock all of my market lip balms because seriously – I sold so many. Montagu Bay Primary School is going to be awash in my lip balms for a while.

I also won fourth prize in the raffle, so it made it extra worthwhile. A 60 minute massage gift voucher. Very apt, considering my physical state lately.

2:

My smallest child dressed herself this morning, including putting her own shoes on.

Then she used the toilet. Alone. Without my help. Including washing her own hands.

She’s not a baby anymore, and I am so so thankful for that. I can understand other mothers bemoaning the loss of their tiny babies, but I am not one of them. I have a smooshy baby nephew to snuggle, but my own children are growing up, growing into themselves. I feel like I can breathe again and it’s so very nice.

People still ask if I’m planning on having more children.

“But you’re so young! You’ll be desperate for another when you’re in your 30’s.”

Look guys, my husband had a vasectomy. MY HUSBAND. A VASECTOMY. We took permanent steps to remove more children from our future.

“Ah, but you never know what will happen, hey? Right?” wink wink, nudge nudge.

You’re either implying my husband is going to divorce me and I’m going to find a new man and have more children, or what? What exactly are you implying there? That my uterus rules my life and I can’t possibly just decide to not have more children? That not having more children determines my worth?

I don’t even know.

Last time I checked, sperm doesn’t magically fly through the air impregnating random women, so I think I’m pretty safe here in my sub-fertile little bubble.

Thanks though. Nice to know that whether or not I have more children is a burning concern of yours.

Hmmf.

Sometimes, I really dislike my body.

For those who have been reading here for quite a while, you’ll know that I have a disabling genetic collagen disorder (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome). The issue with this is, despite physio, despite eating well, despite attempting to sleep 8 hours every night, sometimes I have to push myself a little harder than I should, in order to do something I want to do.

This results in a health crash, which leaves me feeling like death warmed over, barely functioning. When my health is crashing, I count getting dressed and managing to feed myself to be an accomplishment. Having three children means I also have to feed them, which is doubly an accomplishment.

I’m on day three of enforced rest, which is probably going to drive me insane, but there you go. Turns out, when you spend two weeks running a shop in Salamanca (even though I wasn’t down there every day, thanks Mum) it’s a little damaging to already precarious health.

Shop sitting was ultimately quite productive, but exhausting. So exhausting. I finished the time there, knowing I would have nine days off, which weren’t really days off when I sat down and did a stock take, and realised just how much soap I’d actually sold.

(It was a lot of soap. A LOT.)

Nine days off is not many days when you’ve also got to catch up on soap making, packaging, and paperwork, alongside all of the family things I let slide while I was working. So I worked for the first five days of my “time off”, before my health went bottoms up and I had to sit down and stop.

It’s very clear that traditional work would probably actually kill me if I attempted it, so here I am, in business for myself. Or not, because I’m taking time off. Forcing myself to sit down, watch Netflix, catch up on paperwork and things I can do laying down, and letting my body recover.

(Side note: it’s not actually working so well, which is concerning considering I have a Twilight market tomorrow night.)

On the upside, I think, maybe, I should have enough stock to see me through the November markets. Probably. If I’m lucky. The curing shelves are (mostly) full, and other things can be made quickly in large batches when I’m feeling better.

On the downside, December markets are looking shaky, unless I magically feel better on Saturday, and regain all my lost muscle tone and manage to make it through a day without needing anti-emetics to make me stop wanting to throw my guts up.

So classy. So businesslike.

I keep looking at the things I need to restock, and the goat’s milk in the fridge which needs using, and having to remind myself that if I push through right now and do too many things, I’ll send myself out of commission for a month, rather than the three days I’ve made myself sit down and rest.

It’s a balancing act, and it’s hard work sometimes. Juggling the things I want to do, against the things I am physically capable of doing. There’s a disconnect and it’s a struggle to reconcile the two things.

But there you go.

Resting.

Upside: The online shop is now incredibly up to date with soaps, so if you want to buy Christmas Presents, now is a great time.