Sarah called about 1pm (it’s now 4) asking if i was up for a trip to Oakland this afternoon. I learned long ago that when you have a plan for a day, you’ve got to be flexible because often that plan gets tossed out the window as other, more pressing items come up. That’s what happened today. Instead of meeting with Matt, who is going to help with social media/business consulting, I ended up going on my first little (over the bridge) road trip with baby Taylor (and her Mom…Sarah).
Sarah and I have been busy cranking out the 24 new card designs and a new comprehensive catalog. I leave a week from Friday for the Denver New Age Trade show. The new cards are done, printed and ready for orders. The new catalog was sent (electronically) to the printer yesterday. We had the 7 day turn around option which would allow me to pick up the catalogs on Thursday afternoon and carry them on the plane on Friday. Well, Sarah got the email this morning informing her that the proof was being mailed. After a phone call, she discovered that we needed to approve the proof TODAY because the clock doesn’t start ticking on the 7 day turn around till after the proof is approved. Rather than wait for the mail to deliver tomorrow, we headed over the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Upon seeing the proof, we both immediately decided we needed the 80lb Gloss paper rather than the 70lb Matt we had initially spec’d. Since this is being printed by PS Print.com and everything is done online, we needed to hightail it back to Sarah’s so we could determine how changing the paper would affect the price and turn around time. It would not have affected the price at all had we spec’d the 80lb from the gitgo but the fact that we wanted to make a change means we had to reenter a new order and that means that I won’t be able to pick up 2000 catalogs next Thursday. So we had to pay a bit of a premium for the 5 day turn around option.
While Sarah was busy calling PSPrint and figuring out what needed to be done, I was trying to console baby Taylor (she’s 11 weeks old, just a little peanut of a thing…she weighs now about what my kids did when they popped out!). Taylor is a tough cookie. She likes to be in continuous motion and would fuss a bit even as the car slowed to a stop…but once the car began rolling again she’d be quiet. As I tried to console her, I was reminded of being a Mom and walking what seemed like endless loops around the block in Salt Lake when Bob was a little guy (amazing that had to be 26 years ago!). After many attempts at various holds, I finally found one that seemed to do the trick. It was a modified football hold. With her quiet, I began singing the “too ra lu ra lu ra….” Irish Lullaby song that my Mom used to sing to me and I to my children…I enjoyed walking around and around in their back yard singing as the sun splashed its rays upon us and the wind gently blew a slight breeze. Walking round and round, I remembered how I used to think that my kids would NEVER grow up on those days when they were little fuss budgets. I began thinking of infants and how much attention they need. How did I do it? I wondered but then realized that I’m doing it all over again. I have another new baby and it is called “Words and Watercolors”! Granted it recently celebrated its 1st birthday! But it is still very young and needs lots of time and mothering, hand holding and someone to watch over it constantly to make sure it is growing up healthy and strong. Though I worry (too much so) about this baby being able to walk on its own, I need to trust that it too will figure out how to live its best life…just as Bob and Emily are doing!! Time marches on….