As I sit here looking out onto the Ponderosa pines and reviewing the week, I can honestly say I didn’t do one damn thing for the business!  Nothing sums it up better than that handy phrase which incorporates a bad four-letter word, followed by the word “all.”  That is precisely how much I did.

However, I was busy working like a lumberjack around this house and yard.  I went outside on the weekend and raked mounds of pine needles.  I washed some of the windows, and then I decided to paint the kitchen ceiling.  I figured after 21 years it was probably time.

You can blindfold me and let me loose in Winners or Home Sense and I can find my way around effortlessly.  But being in Rona looking for paint supplies is another world for me.  I wisely went early, so I was able to find a person to  help me.  From what I was saying, and from what they were saying, I could see this was going to be a challenging day.

After two days, the kitchen ceiling was painted.  My neck and shoulders will likely never work properly again, but the job is done.  The ceiling is textured, so you have to push like a maniac on the roller to fill in all the spaces.  Luckily I’m a fitness proponent or would’ve likely died halfway through.

You’ll notice I’m not mentioning Nicky as any kind of assistant here.  God no, he was busy playing ball hockey with his pals out in the yard.  but come on, let’s try to be positive here.  He did say what a lovely job I had done, so that’s something.

His forte is being an excellent host in his lair, the basement.  After each weekend I pick up the dripping bags of beer cans and bottles and attempt to make them acceptable for returning to the licquor store.  It’s beneath the kids to do so, and I really enjoy having the cash because to me it’s free money.

The other day I took in a haggard-looking assortment, and said to the nice clerk, “I’m really sorry about this can, it appears as though someone has bitten into it, doesn’t it?”  The poor clerk just looked at my blankly, and I shrugged saying, “My 21-year-old son and his friends….”

The clerk asked if my son still lived at home, and I said he did as he’s attending school.  He said he had lived at home while going to school, and so we chatted about how he got into the job at the licquor store.  Being interested in finding ways to entice Nicky to get a job and move, I asked how one applies.

I came home and told Nicky about how to apply at the licquor store, and he said he would like that kind of work.  I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to work in a licquor store?  But then he got out the frying pan and a pound of bacon and prepared himself a snack.  Soon after, the boys arrived and they were out shooting a ball into a net, any thoughts of job applications far away.

As I was showering this morning, it dawned on me that I’d forgotten to write my blog.  I know this doesn’t sound like a very significant thing to forget, but when you’ve done the same thing every week for five years it does make you wonder.

You’ll recall I wrapped 300 individual pieces of bark, and apparently they went over well at the Source Office Furniture convention in Burnaby last week.  There was some interest expressed by a woman from the Red Hat Society.

Have you heard of them? They’re women over 50 who run around wearing purple clothes and red hats.  I’m not sure why, but I see on their site it has something to do with sisterhood.  I guess that’s next.  First, forget the daily and weekly routines, next join the Red Hat Society and embrace it.

I’m still working on getting labels made for the Okanagan Chocolate Bark.  It was quite an ordeal settling on the colours.  But now I think the bark’s going to look really nice in the half pound and one pound clear cellophane bags I bought, and then tied with cloth ribbon.  Now with the labels it’ll look very sweet.

I was invited to attend an event at the Spring Wine Fest on May 1 at the Rotary Centre for the Arts.  It’s one of those events wherein people sample food and wine, but don’t actually purchase it.  I actually prefer those to craft fairs where you’re selling because people are scared to sample, thinking they’ll be forced to buy.

The dress at this event is black pants and a white shirt.  My pal Kathy is going to help me, and I e mailed her and said I’m guessing this will be no problem.  She and I are similar in that we like to have several pairs of black pants and quite a good number of white shirts on hand at all times.

But whether or not I’ll fit into any of the many pairs of pants I have is another matter.  You’ll recall I was running aroung gloating and screaming “look at me!” when I lost the 20 pounds.  Now I’ve made the grave error of making chocolate bark, and all hell’s broken loose.

The tough part is the scraps.  When you chop up the chocolate, you get all these delicious little slivers that can’t be sold.  I put them into baggies and the kids do their best at eating them.  However, while I’m standing there chopping I can’t seem to stop myself from shoveling a lot of these pieces into my pie hole.

And that’s the main reason that I continue to slug it out at the gym five times a week.  Last week I said to Kathy, “I like that red car out there.” There was a red BMW parked outside the gym.  She said, “This one?” and I said, “No, that one,” then realized I was looking in the mirror.  Kathy just screamed with laughter and we’re now on the look-out for more signs of creeping dementia.

 It would be far more honest of the university to say ‘we have one week off in February’ instead of giving it the lofty title of Reading Week.  I’ve yet to meet one single individual attending UBC Okanagan who actually read.  One of the women from my gym went to Mexico with her boyfriend, Luke’s girlfriend Michelle went to Calgary to visit him, and Nicky played ball hockey in the yard with his friends.

Not one of these people read, studied, or worked on any assignments whatsoever.  And of course the downside of a week like that for me are the hoardes of locusts that suddenly cluster in my basement.  I’m telling ya, another few months of parenting is probably my limit.

I was very excited to write my February newsletter last week because I was able to announce my new chocolate bark venture.  My web designer Steve’s already put some beautiful photos on my site, and I’m now working on the wording to go with them.

I’m not sure if you remember this, but in the beginning of the fruitcake business I was crazy for the idea of making wedding favours.  Then I got a couple of orders of 200 pieces of fruitcake wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon.  After I’d done a few I decided my sanity came first and stopped advertising this product.

So then what part of my mind had gone on me when I excitedly told Joanne at the gym that I’d happily make 300 individual pieces of bark for her convention?  Around day three of ribbon cutting and tying bows I went, “Oh yeah! That’s why I got out of the wedding favour business.”

Oh well.  This week 300 people in Burnaby will be reading my little sticky tag on the back of the cute little bags of bark.  All I could fit on there is “Homemade in Kelowna using Okanagan Fruit” and then my website of course.  So maybe some will actually go ahead and order.  I have big hopes and dreams for the bark.

Another big dream I have is to be able to apply the many fabulous things I learned at the xeriscape workshop I attended on Saturday.  It was put on by the Okanagan Xeriscape Association, and the guest speaker, Owen Dell, is well-known in sustainable landscaping.

All I could think of while sitting there was how I need to win the lottery so badly now.  The lawns have got to go, because they’re wasting so much water needlessly.  And the photos he showed of converted yards were really inspiring, not all dead and ugly at all.

I’m thinking the odds of winning the lottery are going to be low, so it looks like I’m going to be stuck with whatever grudging labour I can get around here.  But the kid’s learned that Reading Week means Hockey Week, so I’m guessing Gardening Week will mean I’m Busy with Friends Week.  See what I mean about that time limit on parenting?

My life is filled with one hare-brained scheme after another, but this time I think I might really be onto something.  As you know, I’ve been experimenting with the chocolate bark idea.  It was just a couple of weeks ago that I learned how to temper chocolate so that it looks all nice and professional.

I took samples to my gym, and as a result, I sold several pounds of chocolate to members.  I thought that was pretty exciting, but it got even better.  Last week, a super nice woman named Joanne asked if I could make 300 individual pieces for her company’s upcoming convention in Burnaby!

Of course I said yes, and then have been working like a frightened  idiot ever since.  I really love things like that, because I’m a big procrastinator.  With great haste I made a mock-up of a label and went on-line to search for cello bags.  I had to buy more chocolate and candy a whole bunch of almonds.

One of the very worst things about this venture is the proliferation of very bad food in the house at all times.  Just talking about those candied almonds is making me hungry, and oh yeah, there’s pounds of them right in my own house!

I’ve decided I need to buy my own dehydrator.  I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’d like to dry my own fruit.  I want to use really nice ripe Okanagan fruit, and what better source than my mom’s orchard in Osoyoos?  And really, how hard can it be to learn how to dehydrate fruit?

Ain’t life grand?  I can’t imagine not having wild schemes whirling about in my head.  I think it’s because of that that I’ve seriously had second doubts about hunting for the elusive male on-line.  It’s strange, but for weeks now I’ve had the theme song from that old movie, Born Free, running through my head.

Somehow I don’t think a chocolate and fruitcake-making, fruit dehydrating beekeeper with a kajillion spoiled pets sounds appealing to most men.  Though when I see how badly the kitchen ceiling needs painting I think I should stop being silly and not be so averse to having someone cramp my style.

I’m sure someday I’ll get bored with being able to do whatever I like whenever I feel like it.  But for now I adore things like the ‘girls’ get-togethers we often have at my dear pal Kathy’s house.  I’ve described it to you before – gleaming, beautiful, all Jordans all the time.

The downside to the Saturday night event was waking up sick on Sunday, which suffice to say, was a quiet day.  I had all manner of plans for the business, but instead ended up on the couch reading Margaret Trudeau’s latest memoir, Changing My Mind.  I adore reading it, as I remember those times well.

It must be that hare-brained schemers like to read about other hare-brained schemers to make them feel less mad.

I went to Osoyoos last week for a visit with mom and Gerry.  I told mom I was getting a bee hive, and said I’d been advised to get a bee suit.  Mom sighed, and said, “You’ll probably get to be really odd like those other beekeepers.  You know… beekeepers…they’re all really odd.” Then she listed a couple of them, including a former neighbour named Johnny Rist.

I agreed, and said so what?  I said someday all of the land bordering mine will have been turned into a version of suburbia.  I already have one neighbour with a whole hill of pink rocks right beside my indigenous shrubs.  Someday all of the land surrounding me will be filled with houses and concrete, but there will be this one little old farming woman with her damned bees.

Mom reminded me of the danger of swarms.  She said Johnny Rist’s bees would swarm every once in a while and he’d have to come over and coax them back into their hives.  I just don’t know how I’m going to explain that to the pink rock-owning neighbours.

“Umm, excuse me, but that swarm of bees in your driveway appears to be mine.”  Lorraine, the beekeeper from the gym, said it’s “absolutely beautiful” when they swarm, but I’m feeling kind of nervous about that part of it.  However, one must remember that anything worthwhile often requires overcoming challenges.

Such was the case on Friday when a nice Shaw Cable man came. I’d been visited by a travelling salesman who convinced me to switch from Telus to Shaw for my phone services.  Of course, they have to come and do some wiring at your house, so we set a date and time.

When the cable installer arrived, he hopped out of his van and immediately walked to my basement kitchen window, and said, “What’s this cable?  That wouldn’t have been installed by us because we never put it outside like that.”  I replied that I had no idea.  He asked how long I’ve lived here and I said, “Twenty years.”

I then thought back to the many cabling jobs over the years.  There was the cable installation to several upstairs areas, all done by Denis’ friend, Shane, an electrician.  Another time, I recalled Shane doing something with the Shaw cable lines at their source.

Then I recalled admonishments over the years from Luke, such as “We can never call Shaw Cable to our house.”  These images and thoughts all came to me in the moment I was standing on the driveway, looking at the most recently pirated line.  I knew it was the cable for my basement kitchen TV.

Somehow, however, the Gods of Forgiveness seemed to be with me.  The kind cable installer went about doing the phone switchover, and he and I never mentioned any of the other unusual lines again.  You see how a good attitude can trump a bad situation.

Did you know that chocolate needs to be tempered?  Neither did I.  I’m not even sure how I came upon this fact, but needless to say, I now know how to temper chocolate. You know how when you buy commercial chocolate it has a snap when you break it, and a glossy sheen?  As well, it doesn’t melt in your hands instantly?

This is all thanks to the arduous and picky tempering process.  You’ll recall that last weekend I’d experimented with various chocolate bark recipes, and came up with four combinations.  I sent samples of each to my web designer to photograph and put on my site, and took a bunch of samples to the all-women gym I attend.

Then I discovered the process of tempering chocolate, and had to tell the web designer to just eat and not photograph what I sent.  He admitted he was a bit dismayed upon seeing the bark, as even though tasty, it wasn’t overly attractive.  Now he’s going to be photographing the Michelangelo of bark in that it is absolutely gorgeous.

To temper chocolate, you have to melt it very carefully, and use a chocolate thermometer to measure the temperature.  It has to be heated to 125 degrees F.  Then you take it off the heat, and cool it until it’s 86 degrees.  At that point you return it to the heat until it’s not more than 90 degrees, and work with it within that temperature range.  Can you see why I’m a bit prickly about it?

In any case, I now have glossy bark that has a beautiful snap.  It was tasty before, and still is, but now it’s also nice to handle and look at.  I’ve wrapped the pieces in cellophane and then put ribbon around it.  Tomorrow I’m going to put a display in the glass case at the Woman’s Place gym.  Women plus chocolate should be like shooting fish in a barrel, non?

And speaking of the gym, it’s the most wonderful conglomeration of interesting women.  I ordered a bee hive for this spring from my pal Lorraine, who has hives and sells honey.  She advised me to get a bee suit, saying, “you’ll feel better if you have one.”  Then she proceeded to tell me about forgetting to zip the hood shut one day and getting hundreds of stings on her head.

I figure the hundreds of stings I’ll be getting as I learn beekeeping will help distract me from the pain of holding a thermometer into a bowl of melted chocolate. 

Yesterday as I stood at the stove for three hours, sweating from the process, I was thinking this appears to be another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.

However, maybe the learning curve associated with the impending bees will top this.  But it’s all very interesting and wonderful, and contributes to the general excitement I feel about the Year of the Rabbit, which is supposed to be a lucky year for us all.

I’m not sure what happened, other than to say I got myself focused and it worked.  You know those books about getting what you want by visualizing it?  There’s a good reason why they sell – it works!  If you think about something positively, a good change will come your way.

I’ve long been searching for a product that would take the business more year-round.  I do okay with the Okanagan Harvest Cake at wineries during the summer, but still wanted something more than that.  You may recall I’d considered making chocolate pate at one time.

But because I already have masses of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit in the house, I’ve decided to try my hand at chocolate bark.  First, I met with the owner of Lake Country Harvest, a local dried fruit company, and sampled her wares.  Her cherries are really very nice.

I then bought some white Callebaut chocolate, and decided to make white bark with Okanagan cherries and roasted almonds. However, once I’d roasted the almonds and tried it, I went “meh.”  It was okay, but nothing special.  I prayed for the muse of bark-making to descend upon me, and as usual when we ask for this type of help, it arrives.

I came upon a brilliant idea of making my own candied almonds by stirring butter and sugar together, then adding the almonds.  Once coated, they’re very crunchy on the outside, and so very nice in the soft white chocolate.  Before I added the cherries I tossed them with vanilla sugar.  The end result is bark that’s both attractive and very good.

I spent hours trying various combinations of fruits and nuts, and have come up with four kinds for now.  Tomorrow I’m going to send some to my dear web designer to photograph and post on my site.  Because I don’t want to sell to stores, I’m only going to have the bark available from my site.

I already have an order for a pound from one of the women at my gym, so am taking that as a good sign.  For now my packaging’s going to be pretty basic until I know what the demand is like.

Besides that, I started writing an ebook.  In case you don’t know, it’s one of those PDF files that you pay for, then download, so no actual product has to be shipped.  Since I have my website already, it seems silly not to use it more.  The topic of my book is weight loss, as it’s a topic I know all too well.  Maybe it’s strange for a purveyor of such fattening foods, but perhaps that’ll have some cachet.

When I tell people what I do, they say, “it doesn’t show”, so perhaps a diet book makes sense.  You should’ve seen me with all of the bark experiments, as of course I had to try all of it.  I’d better get that product developed and behind me so that the diet book continues to make sense once I have it written.  No-one wants a 200 pound diet book author.

I’m sure I must write about this topic around this time every year.  Why does it take months for some of the stores to pay for the fruitcakes they’ve sold?  It’s really heart-breaking for the small business person, but I have to spend a lot of my time in the early months of the year hounding large stores for payment.

A pox on them, I say.  However I remain optimistic because I can honestly report I’ve never been stiffed by a customer.  I take everyone at their word, and that’s stood me in good stead over time.  I guess there’s always a first time, but so far everyone who’s ordered fruitcake has always paid.

You’ll recall this year I made only one resolution for myself, and that was to say yes where I would normally have said no.  In other words, I want to be open to ideas and suggestions and try new things.  My resolution for the business is to try harder to grow my on-line sales, because of course that’s where I make the most profit.

There’s a great website called www.brighttalk.com, wherein one can take free marketing seminars.  They’ve got great workshops with titles like A Social Media Marketing Strategy in 90 Days, and Three Secrets to Web Marketing Success.  I’m going to force myself to try one on-line marketing strategy a day and see what happens.

It’s laughable, though for me to think of myself conquering ‘social media.’  I’m on Twitter, and forget to tweet.  Then if I go to the site I have no clue how to read messages from anyone, so have no idea who’s even reading my useless tweets.  I’m on Facebook and Linked In, and won’t update either of them.

So I’ll try this computer marketing stuff for a while and keep you posted on any and all progress.  Motivation to start marketing arrived today due to an order for Okanagan Harvest Cakes from a nice person.  It was so much more than just an order for three fruitcakes; it was a big wake-up call for me.

I’ve resolved to be more open to new things and also to try to increase direct sales, yet I was already defeating myself by feeling negative about the idea of being able to market my product outside of the Christmas season.  But this order showed me that I need to try much, much harder with the Okanagan Harvest Cake as a year-round product.

We have to try so hard to stop the negative and limiting self-talk, don’t we?  I found an interesting book called The Power of your Subconscious Mind, and have started to read it.  It’s funny because it was written in the 1960’s and looks pretty much to be the same philosophy of the wildly popular The Secret and The Law of Attraction.

The main messages in these books seem to revolve around getting a grip on your thoughts and focusing all of your attention on your goal.  One is not to be distracted by two litres of milk left out overnight, one’s vehicle being moved out of the garage into the rain so the space can be used for hacky sack, or by one’s tequila being drank once again.

 Yes, I know I’m behind with my weekly blog, but I find the less I have to do, the less I do.  When I have dozens of things to do in a day I can do them easily, but as the ennui connected with January settles in, I can’t do a damn thing.  However, for once I’m going to enjoy it and revel in slowing down for a while.

I was enthralled by the January Martha Stewart magazine.  I spent a couple of hours browsing through it, and then went through it again, removing interesting recipes.  There seem to be quite a few recipes that I want to try.  For one, there’s a beautiful recipe for eggplant parmigiana that I plan to try, but using chicken breasts instead of the eggplant.

Perhaps as a result of Martha’s craft suggestions, I took out a needlepoint that I’d started last year.  It’s very pretty, consisting of the usual jumble of pansies on a cream background.  I don’t know what happened to me, but on Sunday I spent over eight hours working on that thing!

I told one of the women at the gym about it, feeling embarrased, but fortunately she said she’s just signed up for a knitting class!  What a madcap, adventurous group of women we are at the gym, eh?  To their credit, a couple of members are taking pole dancing to spice things up a bit.  So far, I’ve declined their invitation to join.

My friend Kathy invited a few of us ‘girls’ over to her house on Saturday late afternoon for appies and drinks.  She has a gorgeous house, with a panoramic view of Okanagan Lake.  Her furniture comes from Jordans Interiors, and there’s not a speck of dust to be found on the marble counters.

I’m telling you this so that you can appreciate how she feels when she comes to this pet and big-footed male-damaged house.  You can imagine what the cats have done to the furniture, and what the kids and their friends have done to the general interior of the house.

Which reminds me of the big plans I have for the yard in the spring (notice how I’m ignoring the paint jobs that need to be done inside the house).  Because I no longer get any amusement from running in and out of the house every ten minutes from May to September, moving sprinklers, I want to try xeriscaping.

Here in the Valley there’s a great resource in the Okanagan Xeriscaping Association.  I’ll probably have to take one of their introductory classes just to figure out how to reduce some of the English garden I’m currently emptying Okanagan Lake to water.

All I can say in my defense is that when I moved here and started gardening, the garden centres were full of all of these madly beautiful water-loving plants that we now all have.  However, if I can get used to some of the xeriscape flowers, I’ll survive the change-over.

Thanks to the change in my marital status, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s got to occur around here.  For example, I just went downstairs and as no-one is there, I turned off the TV and all of the lights which had been left on by Nicky.  He finds bills incredibly cheap as he doesn’t pay them, so fails to see what the fuss is about.

The most horrible thing that could happen to me would be if I have to get a job outside the house.  I was telling my mom that I’d run into some former colleagues who contract to the government.  I told them about my fruitcake business, which they seemed to ignore, and they said they were always looking for people and to give them a call.

I said to them with a bit of embarrassment, “Um, it’s probably not going to be a good idea because I can’t actually be anywhere at a set time.”  This took them back a bit, but I explained in as friendly a manner as possible that with my firm gym schedule, and the other things I have to do, it’s really hard for me to find the time to fit in a job.

Here’s an example.  I did some research on Biore pore strips, and bought a box of them.  I wanted to get rid of the blackheads in my nose, so used one of the strips and it actually worked.  This made me try the strip on other areas, and by the time that was all done, you can imagine there’d be no time to race to some silly-assed job.

I grew up in a house where nothing was wasted, and being frugal  was a normal way of living.  Sadly our generation lost all of that.  As we know, the great economic strides that were made during our lives have contributed to the downfall of the Earth, so it’s probably good to be forced to cut back a bit.

And can you believe, I have no difficulites living like that, but it’s the mammals I live with who balk at cost-saving measures.  I won’t malign Nicky any further, but have to say the dogs and their chi chi food, as well as the cats and their finicky appetites, are a large financial burden.

However, I’m certainly not going to get rid of the kid or the pets, as they’re now my sole hobby.  With no money for the Number One hobby, which as you know is to shop, I now have to dote on those around me for something to do.  I’ve walked the dogs every day, and that’s good for all of us.

In case you’re wondering, the fruitcake business was good, but again, not the banner year I keep expecting.  It all starts out with such promise in November, then those last cases just sit here, waiting for homes and never getting adopted.

Never mind.  My only resolution for this year is to be less rigid and more open to suggestions and ideas.  Perhaps as a result of that, money will absolutely pour my way, and the Earth-destroying hedonism can return.