Another long week (and it's only Monday)

It's already been a long week and it's only Wednesday. :P 

Our water heater has been leaking. We were going to take advantage of 18 month no interest special financing through Home Depot to purchase the new water heater and have them install it. So I went through the Home Depot website to book the free consultation. Their website says that they send someone out who comes out and takes a look at what we currently have and makes sure the water heater we've picked out will work...then gives us a quote. Well...we had "Jim" from Plumbco call us and said he didn't need to look come out and look...we just buy the water heater and he picks it up and installs it...then we pay Home Depot $900 for the labor. I ordered the water heater online and put Plumbco as the party picking it up. He was supposed to come out on Wednesday. Well...Jim ended up texting Johnny and said he wasn't licensed in Derby. Um...WTF? I had to provide our address when I set up the free consultation, so I guess they don't pass the address on to the contractor? Oh...and Jim from Plumbco is also the only contractor that Home Depot uses. When I called Home Depot's in-home service department, they said they would "try" to find a local contractor who can service our area and "if" they find someone, they'd call us in 24-48 hours. Are they going to call if they don't find someone? Of course not. So I said never mind and just had them cancel and refund the order. So now we're starting all over finding someone to replace our water heater. We were only using Home Depot for the special financing, but I have a credit card that has no interest for the next year now...so we'll just use that and find a local plumber. I found one on Facebook that has a lot of good reviews, so Johnny is going to call him. Hopefully it'll work out...I hate trying to find contractors for home repairs. I haven't been a fan of several we've used so far (like the guy who replaced two sides of our fence). 

Ugh. It's always something! 

That's true for work, too. I did finally get the replacement part for my Romeo cutter. I've also not been pleased with the 11x17 vinyl sticker paper that I'd been using for sticker sheets. There has been an issue with the adhesive separating and spots where it doesn't cut through very well. Getting a new blade and a new mat didn't solve anything. And the batch of paper that I'd used at the beginning of August was so much worse. It basically wasn't cutting the stickers at all. I tried increasing the pressure, slowing it down...it either wouldn't cut through or it would cut all the way through (which doesn't work for a sticker sheet). And it had to be the paper...because my letter-sized pages from a different brand cut just fine with the same settings, blade, and mat. And of course I didn't realize the problem until I had a customer contact me about it. I've sent out three replacements and then provided a refund for one customer because a replacement wouldn't arrive in time before school started. When I started using the 11x17 sticker vinyl so I can print four sticker sheets per page, Koala was the only brand that had that size. They only sold it in packs of 30 and there was a "digital label" watermark on the back of the page...which I covered up with my own text logo printed all over the back. Now I am using the Uinkit 11x17 pages that I can order in quantities of 100 or 200...plus it doesn't have anything printed on the back. And most importantly...it cuts so much better on my Romeo. 

Oh and speaking of work issues...I had a crappy "customer" today. I say "customer" because I'd canceled her order. I have free standard shipping for my sticker and magnet orders because I use Etsy's letter mail labels which allows me to send orders using metered mail prices (currently $.78 for 1oz). However, Etsy's shipping process doesn't allow sellers to send merchandise via letter to US territories and APO/FPO addresses. Etsy won't even let us print the label...we can only choose package shipping. This particular customer had ordered two 2" stickers to be sent to Puerto Rico. Her order total was only $6.50 and my cost to ship a package via Ground Advantage to Puerto Rico would have been $8.40 (because USPS recently decided to start charging lightweight packages the same as a 1lb package when shipped to what they consider to be rural zip codes). So, I sent her a message and explained that since her order was less than the cost of shipping, I canceled her order and said that if she wanted to repurchase the order, she could upgrade to Ground Advantage shipping so I could send the order to her. I also have this statement in every single one of my Etsy listings: "Because of the way Etsy shipping is set up, US Territories and APO/FPO addresses will require being shipped as a package. If the package shipping rate is not automatically applied to your order, I may have to create a custom listing for you to be able to pay the postage for the order. If you don’t want to pay the postage, I can cancel the order for you instead." (Side note: I've since changed the wording to say that the order will be canceled instead of creating a custom listing because I ran into complications with that, too). 

When I sent her the message, I mistakenly said USPS wouldn't allow me to send merchandise as a letter to PR when I meant Etsy wouldn't allow it...just like I state in my listing description. Well, she jumped on the "USPS" part and accused me of trying to blame USPS instead of my "business decision" not to offer free shipping to PR like other businesses in the continental US that she's gotten free shipping from. She said she, "would have appreciated having that explained clearly rather than having it presented simply as a USPS restriction," and, "Thank you for canceling the order. I'm happy to take my business elsewhere." Uh...with her attitude...yeah, I'm also glad for her to take her business elsewhere! I've covered the cost of package shipping to Puerto Rico multiple times in the past when the order total was more than the cost of shipping...but I'm not going to pay more for shipping than the total amount of the order. Especially when the explanation she wanted was already available to her before she ever made the purchase. While it's extremely common for customers not to read listing descriptions...it's still not my fault. I provide the information and that's really all I can do. 

So anyway...I responded and apologized for saying USPS wouldn't allow it when I meant Etsy doesn't allow it, copied and pasted my listing description which explains that Etsy doesn't allow it, and explained the fact that her order total was $6.50 and the cost to ship it would've been $8.40. Her only response was, "Puerto Ricans are not gullible. Please educate yourself," and then pasted a ChatGPT link to Postal Explorer and blocked me. Um...I worked for USPS for 3 years (and Johnny still works for them and has for more than 25 years now) so I'm fairly certain I'm more "educated" about USPS than she is. :P And considering I'd already said that I hadn't meant to say USPS in the first place...I'm assuming she didn't even read my response.

But...luckily she's only the fourth rude customer I've had in the last 5 years. I have a section on one of my many work-related spreadsheets which lists "problem customers" with their name, address, and the reason why they were a problem. I believe two of them with large orders were trying to scam me for a refund (because they were pissed off about going through Etsy's Purchase Protection Program to get a refund for an order they claim wasn't delivered instead of me refunding them directly...even though my policies clearly state I only provide replacements, not refunds) and a guy who ordered a 3 inch sticker and was pissed that it wasn't bigger than 3 inches (which honestly makes me laugh...because of course it's a guy who doesn't know how big 3 inches is). :P 

Overall my customers are wonderful. Even when I've made mistakes or there has been issues with a product, nearly all of them are very gracious about my apology and correcting the problem. I've had a few who were rightfully upset about an issue, and I have a lot of patience for their response...because I was the one who caused the problem (versus something like shipping issues that I can't control). Some days my brain seems to work less than others. Gotta love perimenopause and chronic health issues. :P 

I've also noticed my eyesight seems to be causing more issues lately, too. I need to make another eye appointment. It's been a year since my last appointment, and I think I'm going to have to end up getting bifocals this year. Because of the amount of correction that has to be done for me to be able to see far away...my glasses start to affect being able to see close up. Plus I'm getting older and my eyes are already slower to adjust from seeing far away to close up. I also need to have them check my optic nerve. I've been having pulsating tinnitus which I really just assumed was high blood pressure, but since I have hEDS and a family member that has already had to deal with intracranial hypertension...I figure I should probably rule that out. 

Johnny and I talk a lot about our medical issues...and I think my approach really bothers him. He's very much a "do everything reasonable to save me" kind of person. On the flip side, I'm very much a "I've had a good run, I'm going to die of something" kind of person. If treatment is more uncomfortable than my daily life already is...I'd honestly have to really consider whether I want to deal with it. I've even started rethinking having the hysterectomy and adhesiolysis surgery. I do think my quality of life would improve overall with the surgery...but I just keep thinking back to my last abdominal surgery and how hard the recovery was...UGH. At any rate, I won't be making that decision until after the first of the year. If I do decide to have the surgery, I'd want to do it in February when I'm the slowest with work. I also need to get in for a mammogram...since I'm supposed to have them every 6-12 months (I have a history of fibroadenomas since I was 17) and I haven't had one since 2018. I still have the one they've already checked out and I've paid attention and it hasn't really had any dramatic changes, so I just haven't worried about it much. But I did develop a new one in the last year, so I figure I'll go ahead and have it checked out. 

Well...I wanna get some more stuff done before I go to bed...so that's enough rambling for now. :)

Happy anniversary to us!

Johnny and I celebrated our 9th year of marriage and 14 years back together this week! I truly love our relationship. Johnny and I fell in love more than 21 years ago...but it wasn't the right time back then. I knew from the moment of our first kiss in June 2005 that he was "the one" for me, though. Our life together is even better than I could have imagined back when we met. :) It hasn't been perfect by any means...but it has all been worth it to get to where we are today. 

You know...they talk about the "seven year itch" in relationships where people start losing interest or become dissatisfied in the relationship by the time the seventh year rolls around. However, I think the opposite is true for us. The first six years of our relationship were definitely the hardest. Dealing with exes, moving in together, blending families and finances, adult children and their pets and/or families moving in and out, and various other things...we had a rocky start (and that rocky start lasted awhile). We got married on our 5th anniversary and during that first year of married life, there were times I wondered if we'd even make it to our first wedding anniversary. It was an especially chaotic time in our lives and I don't think either of us handled the stress well The biggest thing at the time was the fact that Johnny's daughter, her husband, their four kids, four dogs, and a cat moved into our living room a couple months after our wedding. We already had Johnny's mom living with us, my two kids, three dogs, and three cats. What turned out to be "for a couple weeks" turned into six months. 

But by August 2018, everyone else had moved out and we finally had a sense of normalcy for pretty much the first time in our relationship. We were able to rearrange and redecorate the house the way we wanted (which has been an ongoing process). Johnny retired from pool work (while still working for USPS) and I started doing transcription work from home to bring in some extra money. We were able to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy in 2019 so that we could make payments over a five year period which eased the financial burdens that we'd been struggling with years before. We were also in the position to be able to buy our first car together after dealing with our previous vehicles getting old and crapping out. We were still dealing with teenagers, but I think we were in a better place to be able to handle all that comes with raising teenage girls. 

Then when Covid hit in March 2020...things really settled in to a comfortable routine for us. Johnny also started working from home and we were basically spending all day together everyday. It's funny...we talk more about how our day is going now that we're both at home together than we did when he was gone at work for the majority of the day. And I started CandiMaker in 2021 and Johnny has been wonderfully supportive. He always asks me what things I've sold and says "good job" every time he hears the cha-ching notification from my phone letting me know I got another sale. 

And then in 2025, Johnny and I finally became empty-nesters for the first time ever. It's just us, two golden retrievers, and three tabby cats enjoying a nice life together. My favorite thing is sitting at the coffee table in the living room to eat dinner and watch a show together...which is exactly what we did to celebrate our anniversary. We ordered Hibachi Boy for dinner and finished an episode of The Bombing of Pan Am 103. :) 

Happy anniversary to us! 

What a week!

Man...it's been a long week already and it's only...well now it's Wednesday. :P 

Sunday I was getting ready to print sticker sheet orders on my Romeo...except the black plastic piece of the tensioner (the part that tightens the blade holder in place) broke in half. I found ONE place online that sells it as a replacement part...so I got that ordered. The bad news is that it won't get here until Friday. I really hate when there's no option to purchase expedited shipping. I have a ton of orders that have to be shipped before Friday. I was worried that I was going to have to start cutting them one at a time on my Cricut. My Cricut Maker 3 absolutely sucked for sticker sheets, but I haven't tried making them on my Maker 4. I've just been using my Siser Romeo for sticker sheets (it works perfectly to cut four 5x7 sticker sheets at one time) and then I use my Cricut Maker 4 for my stickers and magnets. 

So anyway...Sunday night, I ended up using a little bit of Gorilla super glue gel to see if it would hold the two broken halves together. I let it sit overnight to fully dry before I tried using it. I had four sticker sheet orders that I needed to send out on Monday, so that morning I held my breath and cut the sticker sheets using the super-glued tensioner...and thank goodness it worked. I stopped after the sheets due Monday and got all my orders packaged so I could go to the post office. I had to buy some shipping boxes for my large notepad orders. When there's just a few notepads, I can ship them in the pretty bubble mailers. I bought with my eBay refund, but larger orders need a box. I bought some 11x8x6 and 10x603 boxes and they worked out perfectly. 

I usually just put my orders in our mailbox (we have a locked cluster box) and any poly bubble mailers I put in our mailbox with a note for our mail carrier (who is pretty wonderful, btw) that it's outgoing mail, but the boxes won't fit. So I took the packages in to be scanned and dropped off the envelopes. I had a lot of sticker and magnet orders from the weekend (mostly custom name stickers and magnets) so I worked on those the rest of the day and put them in the mailbox before I went to bed. 

Today was the real test. I had 12 sticker sheet orders that were due tomorrow (well...now it's today)...and luckily my super-glued Romeo cut all six 11x17 pages without any problem. Thank goodness! So tomorrow I should--hopefully--be able to get the rest of my sticker sheet orders out that are due the 13th and 14th and then I'll have the new part on Friday. 

My new chair arrives today! I'm really excited...hopefully it'll help with the pain and discomfort. My JellieBody should arrive on Friday...so hopefully between the two I'll be able to find some relief.  Especially considering I have some more notebooks to make this week, too. 

Well...I suppose I should get some sleep so I can get orders done tomorrow. :)

Busy August so far!

I've been super busy with work lately! At least this year I kind of expected it. Last year I had a huge influx of orders for the back-to-school season. Between the custom stickers in my CandiMakerStickers shop and the custom name label sticker sheets in my CandiMakerPlanners shop (in addition to my regular orders), July and August were my best months of 2025 for both numbers of orders and revenue.

This year, I had nine less orders in July 2026 compared to July 2025, but my revenue was almost $300 higher in July 2026. And for the first seven days of August, I've had nine more orders and $214 more in revenue this year than I did during the same time period last year. 

One thing that made a difference this year is that in July I added tear-off notepads to the products I offer...and I got two large orders for them earlier this week. As I'm writing this...I'm in my office printing 56 notepads that will go out on Monday. One order was for 41 of my notebook paper design notepads personalized with teacher names and then another order for 15 of my notepads personalized with names in "signature" fonts that they ordered with magnets on the back. I'm very thankful for the large orders! :) A lot of my sales are single-product orders, so I like to encourage larger orders with buy-more-save-more discount codes.  

I'll be finished with all the notepads tomorrow...then I'll spend Sunday printing and cutting the rest of my regular sticker, magnet, and sticker sheet orders. And then I package all the orders before I go to bed so they're picked up by USPS on Monday. 

I think adding new products periodically has helped my growth each year. The first year, I was mostly focused on creating new sticker designs. But after I decided to offer the option of magnets for each of my sticker designs during my second year, I saw a large increase in orders and revenue. Since then, I've tried to add new products each year. I have several new product ideas floating around in my head right now...but I haven't worked on new designs of existing products for several months, so I'll probably use any free time I have to focus on that through the end of the year. February and April are usually pretty slow months for me, so I'll probably hold off on any new products until then. 

One thing I've noticed while I've been spending a lot more time in my office (at one time, anyway) is that this chair is UNCOMFORTABLE. My elbow hurts, my knees and hips hurt, my back hurts...everything hurts. :P So I finally decided to go ahead and get a new office chair. Having hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I really need something that's versatile. I looked at a lot of different kinds of chairs, but I settled on this one from Walmart. I really hope it helps. 

I also decided to try some compression products...the JellieBody and Korform shorts. So many people in the hEDS community have talked about them helping with pain, stability, and dysautonomia...so since I've had such a successful summer with work, I decided to finally order them. My back, hips, and knees have really been bothering me lately (in addition to my neck, but they probably won't help with that). Johnny and I did get some new pillows, though. He saw an article that talked about these pillows so I decided why not...couldn't be any worse than the old pillows that we've been using for, like, a decade. There were mixed reviews, but I was hopeful...and so far we've not been disappointed! I've been having a lot less neck pain. I had to remove some of the stuffing, but it's a lot more supportive for my neck and head. So I'm pretty happy about that. 

And since I've been having such a good July and start to August...I splurged and got something that's pretty much just cosmetic for my desk. :P My desk is 18 years old and the desktop is definitely showing it's age. My binding machine also caused a pretty big scratch before I realized it had a sharp spot on the bottom. So...I was looking for a desk mat that would cover the desktop...but the sizing was pretty limiting. I actually ended up finding this mouse pad that works pretty perfectly. It doesn't go across the whole desktop, but it definitely covers the part that shows the most wear. 

I did take a bit of a break from work last weekend to celebrate my husband's birthday! It's the 29th anniversary of Johnny's 29th birthday. ;) We had dinner at Village Inn with Aubry (and Danny), Ashlyn, mom, and my grandparents. Then we came home to put our leftovers in the fridge and let the dogs out to pee before going over to my grandparents' house to play Flip 7 with my mom and grandparents. It was the first time Johnny and I had played...and we had a lot of fun. :)

Well...I finally finished the first order of notepads, so I think I'm going to head to bed so I can get started again early tomorrow on the second notepad order. I hope everyone has a good weekend! :) 

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Here we go for July!

The 4th of July has been over for awhile...but there were some a couple large booms and then some firecrackers that went off this evening. UGH. Nova really does not like fireworks...although she is doing a little better. She used to refuse to go outside from morning until way after midnight because she would anticipate the fireworks happening and wouldn't want to go outside just in case. She'd start it from the first firework and it would last until several days after the fireworks stopped. Now she'll go out off and on, but then wants to be right next to Johnny (or me, if he's not available) if she hears any loud noise. Other than that, though, she prefers to hide in the hallway or the bedroom during the fireworks. She does the same with thunderstorms. It's really all she's afraid of...which is the opposite of Boz where storms and fireworks are the only things he's not afraid of. :P 

Work is going really well. June was the highest revenue month of 2026 and tied January for highest number of orders. But...now we're in July which was my most successful month of 2025...even compared to December! I had about 100 more orders and almost $1k more revenue in July 2025 compared to December 2025. The first couple weeks of August stay busier, but then by the third week of August things slow back down to normal...but August 2025 was still my second best month of the year. Last year, July didn't pick up until the third week (second full week of the month from the 13th-19th) and I'd had 46 orders that week. This year, the first full week of July (the 5th to the 11th) I had 59 orders. So...hopefully that momentum keeps up! 

I finished my sticker collection albums and got them listed in my CandiMakerStickers shop and on my website. I have four designs right now...and I personally think they're pretty cute. ;) Now I want to focus on notepads for my CandiMakerPlanners shop. I have a lot of different design ideas...now it's just a matter of getting them all created and listed. I'm offering four different sizes right now: 3x3, 4x5, 4x6.5, and 5.5x8.5 (half letter). I'm also going to have some 3x8.5 to-do list options. I have one set of notepads listed so far...personalized dog breed notepads. I'm pretty excited about them. I took a long time creating over 300 dog breeds...pretty much every AKC breed available plus a few additional options. So hopefully people will like them. I'm also going to have matching stickers and magnets as well. I was hoping to have those listed this weekend...but I was busy with orders so I didn't have time. I'm hoping to still have the listing posted this week though. 

In other news, I had my appointment with the urogyn last week and she said everything looked good, so I can see a regular gyn to hopefully have my total hysterectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy and adhesiolysis if possible. She did say that they would likely stay available in case my bladder is too involved in the scar tissue. I assume that I'll need a colorectal surgeon, too, because I know for a fact that my colon is very affected by the scar tissue. I'm hoping to be able to do the surgery in February 2027 because that's when I'm the least busy with work. So we'll see how all that goes. 

Oh yeah...and in more other news...we had to replace the sump pump again. :P This is the second time since I moved in...the last time was just a few years ago, I think. Johnny took the old one apart to see if he could fix it, but he's assuming that the motor just burnt out because there was something stuck in it that had fallen in the basin. We have a pedestal sump pump...and they're not as readily available as the regular submersible ones. He'd tried to just pick one up at Lowes but they didn't have any in stock. So we ordered one and it arrived Sunday night. Then we ALSO have to replace the water heater. UGH. It's lasted about 20 years, but it's starting to leak. We have to replace the sump pump before we can replace the water heater...because that way we can drain it into the sump pump. If it's not one thing, it's another! Oh the joys of home ownership. :P 

Well...I better get back to work! :)