Frustrating and Irritating

This weekend I worked on painting charms for a couple of special orders. Then I sprayed them all with the final clear coat and a lot of them got ruined by the clear spray making the paint buckle. So, I had to let my customers know that their orders would be delayed because now I have to order more charms, paint them and maybe let them dry longer or use a lighter final clear coat or something. Basically I won't be making much profit on those orders, and I don't think I'll be doing any more special orders. I don't know exactly why, maybe because while I love to make things I don't love it when I 'have' to make something within a certain time frame or feel rushed to get an order done. So, I'm in the process of editing all my charm listings with a little 'sorry, I'm no longer able to do custom orders' disclaimer. Maybe I'll lose a few customers who want a bird in blue, but not the blue that's already in the shop, a different blue, but for peace of mind and less frustration it will probably be worth it in the long run. I have to order the charms in minimum amounts of a dozen and if someone only wants one bird in the blue that I don't already have in the shop then I'm spending money on 12 charms and only selling one.

After so many charms got ruined over the weekend I was about ready to quit selling them altogether, so...

I'm kind of rethinking that shop anyway, while I did sell a lot of charms last year the past few months have been very slow in the charm shop. Some of it may be that the price of copper, a main component in brass, has gone way way up this past year and I've had to raise my prices accordingly. I don't sell cheap crap charms from China that are made out of who knows what kind of metals, and probably contain lead because China just doesn't care about how safe your product is, I sell charms that are made in the good old USA. With no lead in them, but in a country where wages and production costs are higher, thereby making prices higher. Anyway, the shop does make some money but not a huge profit and sometimes I think the work involved and the expense may not be worth the few dollars of profit. I'm going to keep a close eye on my books the next few months and then make a decision whether or not to keep going with it.

The handmade shop is doing well, though. I just need to keep a close eye on supplies and costs on that shop, too, and make sure it is actually turning a profit.

So what else is going on besides getting totally irritated over the weekend?

Mimi was sitting straight up the other day but was getting so sleepy that her eyes kept shutting and then she would kind of startle herself back awake and then her eyes would get all heavy again and she would startle herself back awake again. Just like a little kid who is fighting sleep and just wants to stay up a bit longer.

Dusty seems to be gone for good and Keith is so worried about Genie being lonely out there. He's brought her into the house for a few minutes at a time, hoping to assimilate her into the indoor world, but she kind of looks around in confusion and goes right back to the door to go back outside. The other cats seem to be kind of used to her, they don't get all freaked out when she is by the back door anymore and they didn't get all weird when she came into the house.

Our lesbian neighbor is definitely moving, she had her U-Haul in the driveway yesterday and friends over to help her move. She told Keith that she was taking seven (yay!) of the cats with her and one of the barking backyard dogs. So that should only leave like 3 or 4 cats and 2 barking dogs next door. She is taking the pesky Bandit, so we won't have him banditing about in the backyard stealing Genie's food anymore. Yay!

We got an EOB from the dental insurance company for Keith's visit to the new dentist. The total cost for a visit with all the fancy x-rays and head scans and pictures of the inside of his mouth and all the other looking around they did was over $700.00! What? The insurance company only paid like $175.00 and our portion appears to be $75.00. So, if you contract with the insurance company and they only allow $175.00 for the visit then why don't you just charge the allowed amount to begin with?