One of the worst things about self employment is that, when you do something stupid, there is no one to blame but yourself. Take today, for example. I hit the home office promptly at 9:00 and started to work on a flyer to market myself as a cleaner of businesses ( These would be good paying customers - but that market is much harder to crack then the home market....which isn't exactly a piece of cake) I found a cool clip art of a monster hulking around wearing a tie. I put in some dialouge next to him:

"Is THAT the new guy?"

"Um, kind of"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, remember how nobody would ever clean out the refigerator? That's what DEVELOPED behind some old potato salad."

"Yikes"

"That's not the worst part. When it showed up the boss didn't know what to do - so he hired it!"

The flyer goes on to advertise the benefits of having All Around the House, Unlimited clean your office, because I'll clean the fridge, coffee area, am trustworthy enough to clean around computers and desks, etc. It's the "one small business person to another" angle.

Sounds great, huh? I FORGOT TO PUT MY PHONE NUMBER ON IT! Arrrrrgggh!
So now I'm hand writing my phone number on all these flyers.....

I did have an interview today with some prospective clients. I think the lady wants to check my references before she engages me, which is wise. People who hand me their housekeys after I've known them for 5 minutes make me a little nervous. But that happens to me all the time - and of course, I am always in good faith with everyone. These were pleasant people and closer to home. The gentleman is in his 70's but he certainly doesn't look it.

My new business cards came from Vista Print, too. Yay!

The bad thing about using my apron as advertising is that you never know exactly what you might be doing when you're wearing it. For instance, today....I think I still have a touch of that "caregiver virus". I went over to Superfresh to pick up some items for the house, but unfortunately my stomach decided that it wasn't happy with me. Just as I was getting ready to go into the market, I knew I was going to hork up my lunch, and there was nothing I could do about it. So I grabbed one of those blue bags somebody stuck in the recycling right outside the store and used it as an airsick bag. I was trying to be as inconspicuos about this as possible.

All of the sudden I heard the unmistakable sound of a mastiff barking.
Great, I thought, I'm horking up my lunch in front of the store AND having auditory hallucinations. What else could go wrong?

"RR-WOOF!" said the dog with great urgency. "RR-WOOF-WOOF-WOOF!"

"What's with that d- Oh-oh- Ma'm are you okay?" this was the porter, a young man, according to his nametag named Dan. This was a rhetorical question, since he certainly seemed like a bright guy and knows that middle aged women in pearl earrings who are throwing up in public are not usually, strictly speaking, okay.

"WOOF!" said the dog approvingly, as the fellow came to my assistance. I looked up and saw a huge black nose withdrawing back into the window of the car parked at the curb. He really WAS a mastiff! We didn't hear another thing out of him.

The porter pointed me in the direction of a bench, and then came back to check on me. I used the rest room to get myself together, and did the little bit of shopping I'd come to do. I really hope that this virus or whatever it is leaves soon - I'm not going to be of any help to anybody if I'm sick myself.

Speaking of the mastiff, he was sleeping with me again last night....which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been sleeping on the sofa. I woke up in the middle of the night with Winston's head on my knees, snoring away. I think he was cold...or he thought I was cold. I HAD been chilly and Winston is a three dog night all by himself. Anyway, there was no room to stretch out and he wasn't budging. For a minute I thought I was going to have to sleep on the floor - since I could hear The Hub, even downstairs, snoring in the bedroom above me.

So, here's to an early and event free bed time tonight! Actually, I'm probably going to have nightmares, since The Hub has gotten all involved in Quentin Tarentino films which seem mostly to be about witty, amoral, gangsters hacking one another to bits, with stops for torture scenes in between. I think this may be an underhanded bid on The Hub's part to get me to turn the television back on. But, "live by the sword - die by the sword" - I rented Adaptation with Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep and popped that in tonight. And if things really get ugly, I'm prepared to rent Sense and Sensibility again!