Where's the Bacon?
You know those days when your brain feels like it’s on massive overload? So much to do and never enough time? To the point where you don’t even know where to start? Let’s just say that’s been the last month or so.
We all have those days. I heard on the radio that a new study came out, to fall asleep faster you should write a to do list for the next day before you go to bed. What about the middle of the night when you wake up in a panic because of everything you have to get done? I once woke up from a dream about baking a cake and honestly had to think to myself “did I really do that at work today”. I have crazy vivid dreams and yes I have woken up in the middle of the night hitting my husband with a pillow because of what “dream” him did.
It can be very hard to slow down and enjoy the here and now. GO-GO-GO mode all the time. Building and expanding our business seems to have taken over our lives, particularly my husbands. There are so many aspects to go through when building a business from the ground up, so many steps I never even knew about. To think about it all at once honestly makes my brain hurt. When my husband, our business coach or accountant ask me “Make sense?” my response is “sure, why not”. I am what my parents call “artsy fartsy”…..insult or not, you tell me lol.
Working side by side with my husband every day we are asked by many, “how do you separate work from home?” Or my favorite response from other people is “WOW I couldn’t do that, I would kill him!” Obviously that last one comes from more wives than husbands. We are both guilty of bringing work home and it can consume a lot of our conversations. I know those two things will never stop. We might get better at not bringing work home, but then again we knowingly didn’t sign up for a punch-in-punch-out situation. Growing up in a family business myself, none of this is new to me. One word best describes family businesses “HARD”. OH and tired! We are all tired, all the time. I would pay a lot of money for just a tiny bit of whatever it is that makes kids chase each other around the house at seven o’clock at night. FOREVER….in circles!
The endless amount of paper work and applications for a small business loan drives me crazy. I am not even the one filling them all out, thanks honey. You don’t have to fill anything out for raising another human being, which is a much larger responsibility than taking on a business. I’ve always thought there should be some kind of test in order to have children. We have to make three year projections on our new business just to get a loan from the bank. I get it, they have requirements, it’s an investment for them. We should look at our kids the same way then. After all, we are vested in their future from the day they are conceived. First, I should have to submit a resume that discloses everything from our past. Then sit down and write out projections for where I would like to see our child in the next three years. Sleeping more than 20 minutes at a time? Successfully making it up and down the stairs? Eating without more coming back out than went in? Finally using a toilet?!
For a brief moment I am able to get some work done in the summer months at home while our boys play outside. Winter, not so much. Our kids are drawn to a computer like a monkey on a cupcake! They don’t get many electronics in our household, mainly just the TV. Hugh, our six-year-old, is already asking when he can have his own computer and phone. Graham, our two and a half year old comes in like a ninja just to hit a couple buttons and run away. Why are we all so obsessed with pushing buttons? I was writing something down the other day and my husband asked me what I was doing……well sweetie this is a pen and this is paper, in the olden days people use to use them to….. :P
Unfortunately, living in eastern Wisconsin there aren’t too many options for indoor activities (that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg). A project for our house that I came up with last year, was an indoor playset in the basement. After having one for a year, anyone with young children should have one in their house! These indoor playsets are now a part of our business and we would love to expand on them. I love designing them and working with the families. Down below I have pictures of ours and one we just finished up this week. It has all the bells and whistles, even Alexa enabled lights and music, along with an in-home intercom for communication. We were laughing when we left because the dance flashing party lights went on. Dancing party lights definitely brings out the kid in us all. Ours isn’t that fancy, but still fun. We have a rock climbing wall, monkey bars, a platform with a fort underneath and a swinging/climbing rope (all the kids favorite). Our boys will spend hours downstairs even in the summer when it’s too hot to play. It’s another great way for them to burn off their energy. I don’t know about other peoples’ kids but I swear somedays I wonder, what did you eat?! For whatever reason our two-year-old goes bonkers after eating bacon! He is bouncing off the walls and jibber jabbering a million miles a minute. It’s like his version of a protein energy bar.
So what is the answer to all this stress from work and hyper cooped up kids???? Maybe an ADULT indoor playground or maybe we all need to eat more bacon!!
