I honestly am not sure how much longer I can keep this pace up. Between the Swedish manuals at the Big Deal job-in-a-box, where some dude at the translation company just puts some French in every now and then, I guess to see if anyone is paying attention, to the Avon business, the canvassing, and all the little details of The Hub's business which seem to have somehow morphed into "my problem"....I feel burn out coming on.

And, I even took the weekend off. Both days. Saturday I went a-wandering with Friend Will and his wife. We had a great time, and he very kindly fixed the macro feature on my camera....

I had pushed one too many buttons. We went to Annapolis and down over the Chesapeake Bay bridge to St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore. It sounded like so much fun to The Hub that he wanted to go to St. Michaels again on Sunday, which we did. The highlight of that trip was seeing an osprey in its enourmous nest out on a sign post in the water. The Hub has a better camera and he was able to take some photos. All I really got was a tick, which firmly attached itself to my thigh, I suppose while I was walking in the weeds, trying to take a "consolation picture" of some roadside flowers.

Ticks are gross. The daggone thing had already started to bite me when I spotted him in the evening. I grabbed him with a pair of tweezers...his freaky little legs were all flailing around. Eeeeep! Just the idea of him getting all settled in to feast on my blood and give my Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or whatever you get from just plain old regular ticks creeps me out. I mean I have a live and let live attitude, but really, there's a limit. So I yanked him out and flushed him down the toilet.

Then, today, it was back to the grind. I had an Avon sales meeting right after the job-in-a-box, so I was literally at work from 9:00 - 9:00. It used to be no big deal for me to work very long hours when I was in my 20's but I think it's starting to tell on me now. Today, the 21st, was the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. It certainly felt like it!

I met the woman in my town whose sales totalled over $100K last year. She received the Mrs. Albee award at this meeting for already selling $10K in this award year....which started three months ago. Just to give you some perspective, the average Avon order, company wide, is about $20. It's a very fine little porcelain statuette....they do a different one every year. Mrs. Albee was the very first Avon lady to ever go calling and now she reappears, forever young, in turn of the century garb, to inspire us. When she started out selling little compacts of powder to her friends I can't imagine that it entered her mind that she would some day be a little, fondly regarded figurine in the homes of women who could run corporations if they wanted to.

As we were leaving the meeting, another woman asked me if the nail polish I was wearing was an Avon color, and I had to mud-wrestle the urge to say, "no, it's Mary Kay." OF COURSE it's an Avon color!

But, you see, I'm getting cranky. I need to figure out some way of slowing down some.