Rebounding Gophers, Chewed Peas and Losing Money on Postage!

It was just one of those days... Nick got home yesterday from the conference, but looked absolutely green around the gills and was suffering from either a flu or food poisoning. He seemed a bit better today, but went back to sleep for almost 3 hours after I got the girls up so that Erin could get off to her last day of sports camp.

He got up to shave and looked out the window only to bellow “He’s BACK!!!” Sure enough as I ran to the kitchen window, I caught a glimpse of familiar gopher butt disappearing under the shed. Remember those Disney movies where the pets travel incredibly long distances to be reunited with their families? I guess a few city blocks just wasn’t far enough. The furry little devil even got half of my pea pod crop before we managed to trap him again. This time Nick and a friend took him for a LONG drive to a local gravel pit/ wooded area just outside city limits. Be a nice rodent and go make friends in the WILD!!!

I did also promise that this blog would be a realistic peek into an artist’s life. Here’s a good example of how hard it can be not to freak out when pattern sharers tell me I am being a greedy designer to get upset over them sharing a “few” patterns with their closest friends all around the world.

I head off to a major trade show in 2 weeks and like many other Canadian designers, I have been wrestling with the need to adjust my prices. When the US dollar was stronger, my cheques from the US used to get multiplied by 1.5. The last batch of cheques went through at 1.12 which is a huge change. That extra exchange used to cover the fact that postage from Canada to the US is outrageously more expensive than mailing things from within the United States.

Today, I took 3 orders up to the post office to ship out. The first one could go regular letter mail, which is a bit scary because I cannot track or insure it once it leaves the country, but it only cost 50 cents more than the 10 percent shipping and handling on her order. The other two contained button embellishments which need to be protected and therefore had to go in a box instead of a padded envelope. The first one cost 6 dollars more than the shipping covered and the second one cost 10.75 more than I actually charged.... so on the three orders I shipped out today, I actually paid 17.25 extra to earn the money from those leaflets. How does that make sense when the news reported that Exxon made 10 billion dollars in profit last quarter? Maybe I should train those gophers to dig for oil in my backyard!!!