Picking My Brain

I’m returning to you to today live from the Ocean County Mall Summer Festival in NJ.  I wish that was half as much fun as it sounded.

My Mother-In-Law Sue has started her own importing and retail website.  To test the market and create interest in the site, we’ve signed up for a few “festivals” and “street fairs.”  I say we, because I have been helping her with the business since I’m not doing much else with myself.

We’ve imported some pretty pottery from Mexico, some cute pig bake wear from Chile, jewelry from Peru and a bunch of different handicrafts from Africa.

So I’ve been sitting in the Ocean County Mall for 12 hours a day waiting for people to be interested in our products and buy some.  Yeah, that hasn’t gone so well.  I think we are very out of our demographic here, but it is serving as a learning experience.  Our other shows aren’t until October, so we’ll have more products in by then and we’ll be in a bunch of different areas, so hopefully we’ll fare better there.  We’ve been here since Wednesday, and have only made four sales.  We still have today (Saturday) and tomorrow, but the weather is gorgeous ourside, so I’m afraid most people have gone to the beach.

But we are getting some interest, we have people taking our business cards, and we’re hoping that things will go better on the website.  (Shameless plug alert: Aslan’s Pride)

In the meantime, I’ve been pretty busy.  I started those volunteer opportunities I talked about in my last post.  I’ve been working at the Pet Adoption Center at PetSmart for the past three weeks.  I go in on Monday mornings and do the morning cleaning, feeding and playing.  The cats are all so friendly, and there’s one who seems to really have taken to me.  Unfortunatley he can’t come home with me, but I’m sure he’ll find a good home.  I’ve really enjoyed playing with the different litters of kittens that have come through.  I haven’t had a kitten in years, so it’s been fun playing with them and watching them grow up.

I’ve also been very busy at Ten Thousand Villages.  Despite my reluctance at going into retail again, this is different and I’ve found that I’m actually enjoying myself.  First of all, it’s a non-profit.  All of the proceeds goes back to the countries we imported from.  It’s nice to know that buy selling their products, I’m helping to feed families and send children to school.  Everything in the store is fair trade, so the artisans all over the world are making fair-market value on their products instead of being taken advantage of by “middle men.”  They have a new store opening in Greenville, DE.  It’s only about 20 mins away from me, and the manager I’m working with now it really pushing for me to apply for a paying position there.  At first I really was hesitant, the pay is hardly above minimum wage and would not be enough to help Ben and I reach our goals of buying a house.

So I have formulated a plan.  I have finally found a website who is interested in my writing skills.  They have sent me a project to do as a sort of “audition.”  I’m hoping that they like it and want to hire me.  Again, I think it’s not going to be a high paying job, but if I combine that with the Villages position, plus my percentage of profits from Aslan’s Pride, I might do okay.

If I can’t find anything before my unemployemnt runs out, I have two plans.  Since the government has just extended unemployement benefits, I will hopefully be elligible for that and can keep looking.  If not, then I’m probably going to head over to Commerce Bank and see what kind of a position I can get there.  It won’t be much, but at least it will be something until I can find a good career.

So that’s my life right now.  While I’m sitting here watching people go by, I’m going to finish up that project and get that sent off, plus I’m hoping to make a post over at Enlitened Life, and do some more updating to Aslan’s Pride.