Only two comments for today:

1) It's kind of sad how little I missed my coworker who was on vacation this week. I missed having her here to share the angst of the bakery decision, but other than that, almost not at all. In fact, not having her constant negativity helped me have a really calm, happy workweek for the most part, plus get in a lot of good walking at lunch.

2) The hour between 2pm and 3pm is the longest fucking hour of the workday, every single day. I HATE it.

And now, two days later, the cupcake shop dream is toast. Unfortunately, the financials were not good and there was no way I could have made them better quickly enough to not risk my house. Everyone's advise was to pass, which I did. But while I'm disappointed, I have to say I learned a hell of a lot in the one week time period in which all of this went down. The most important of it all is that I already have a small team of support people that will definitely still be there the next time an opportunity arises and that is an amazing feeling, considering how unsupported I've felt in general the last several years. And now that I have this wonderful new group of women entrepreneurs to share with and learn from, I'm sure a new opportunity will turn up. And it may end up being something entirely different from a bakery! Who knows! But I'm excited to find out!

Wow, SOOOO much has happened since my last post!

First, the cupcake shop dream is progressing, but very slowly, which I guess for my sanity is good. My old boss and I met with the manager of the shop last week, and she told us as much as she could about how things ran, but didn't have much info on things like the age of the equipment, the lease, or the financials. She was, however, a very bright girl with a lot of great ideas for the shop that the owner never did anything about. And unfortunately, she's already take a manager job at a new shop opening in May, though she did seem willing to train me in as much as she knew. The rest of the staff of four all have new jobs also, though she said none of them were wonderful anyway, so that's probably for the best. Since then, I emailed the owner asking her for the financial info, and she emailed back yesterday asking for more personal information about me before she would send them. Not quite sure why she cares at this point...if I have the money, that's all she really should be concerned with.

And actually, having the money is probably the biggest surprise of this post -- I called my dad Thursday after the meeting with the manager and told him about it all and, unbelievably, he offered to give me the entire amount right away! I hadn't even asked him for a penny yet, and certainly was not going to ask him for more than half the amount, if that! I was shocked! But he was really excited about the prospect of me doing this and has since sent me a really nice email about how he thinks that, even if this particular opportunity doesn't work out, that I should definitely keep looking for another one, which again, shocked me. But wow was it nice to have someone else besides Brad being supportive!

Anyway, as of today, I'm waiting to hear from Brad about the draft responses I wrote to the owner before I send them, to make sure I'm not saying anything that could hurt me. Once I send them, hopefully the owner will get me everything I need for Brad's partner to take a look at them and tell me whether this is worth doing or not, and if it is, then I'll move on getting an SBA loan for everything else. I'm hoping that if it does look like a go, I can find a way to force the closing to be AFTER my beach trip in July, because I think by then I'll really need a vacation.

The other big news: my first meeting with the East Cobb group of Ladies Who Launch. Absolutely amazing. Eight women who had never met me, instantly interested in me and my project, and instantly supportive. Joining this group may be the best thing I've ever done.

So it's been a very positive last few days. And while I've been incredibly busy, it's felt wonderful. Productive. And that's certainly a feeling I've had in forever! And while of course I have some anxiety over the fact that there is a lot to doing all this that I'm literally flying by the seat of my pants on, I feel like I've now got sources of support I can go to for help, and that is absolutely huge for me. And even if this particular plan falls through, I now have several sources for new ideas for new plans! And it all happened in one week! How fucking cool is that??

I've spent the last 24 hours losing my mind about this potential business. Thank God, the Universe, Allah, whoever, for my old boss -- he is my absolute savior in this already! Even if it turns to nothing, he was instantly there to support me -- automatically arranging breakfast this morning and volunteering to go with me to meet the manager tomorrow and check the place out and ask questions. Without him I would be a quivering puddle of fear, anxiety and helplessness!

As for the situation, I emailed a few times with the owner last night. She has already moved out of state, so clearly she's out, but she seemed nice and hopefully reasonable. And speaking withe the manager/baker today to make the appointment tomorrow, she too sounded smart and reasonable. Which is really all I can ask to start with at this point.

Wow. Just wow. There is a very real possibility that I could be the owner and operator of my own cupcake shop in just a few months. Unfuckingbelievable.

Holy shit!!! Just found out that the little cupcake shop not far from my house is for sale. And for a reportedly reasonable price. Immediately emailed the owner about setting up a meeting, as well as emailing my former boss for advice on how to handle this. Have heard back from neither and am about to stroke out!!!

Finally have the AC and cable fixed, but somehow my stress from that doesn't seem to have gone away. I can't seem to find my way back to happy....or even faking happy. I think part of it is because I am forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone and really start dealing with the cupcake dream again, and it's been, once again, disheartening. I met with the small business loans woman at my bank Saturday and she basically said my only option was an SBA loan that would probably be dicey due to my lack of business experience. And while she gave me a contact at the bank to call about it, I know that I'm back at that Catch 22 where I will need to give him the business plan from the company and their facts and figures in order to know whether I could qualify for a loan, but the company doesn't even want to meet with me until I can tell them I qualify for a loan. I know from both reading other entrepreneurs' blogs etc. that I just need to keep working at it through all the "no's" until I finally get a "yes", but some days that just seems like such an exhausting task.

I am, however, proud of myself for pushing myself to join a local chapter of a national organization of women small business owners who I'm hoping will be able to give me some real world advice and possibly even mentor me through the process. I registered to go to my first "event" Thursday night, though right now I'm the only one registered, so I hope they don't cancel it! Even if it's just the event coordinator and me, I'd love to be able to sit down with SOMEONE - ANYONE -- who's actually done it and is willing to share information about it, and a one on one with her might actually be better than a whole group thing. So we'll see. Also, I have a new member phone call set up with the Atlanta director of the group for next week, so I'll have half an hour to hear more about the group and all it does. All of which is good, but is still stressing me out. I don't think it would be quite as bad if I didn't have so many other things going on over the next three weeks -- doctors' appointments, PT, birthday party for the twins, two weekends in a row out of town at my brother's. For someone who usually does nothing but work, workout, and lie on the couch, this is stressful. (And pathetic, yes, I know.) But since one of the major things I keep saying that is making me unhappy is boredom and a lack of people in my life, if I can make myself do all these things, I might just be on the road to fixing some of that.

Finally had a meeting with the small business loans rep at my smaller bank. The bank itself doesn't do startup loans even for franchises. She basically handed me an SBA packet and said "good luck." And of course the SBA packet requires all the minute projections for the business that I would have no idea how to get at this point. I'm going to call the guy whose name she gave me about it, but if he doesn't have more patience and guidance than this woman and every single other person I've talked to about this, I literally may have to give up on the ownership route and consider real jobs. Boo. Also spending my second Saturday in a row waiting for service people to fix things that should have been fixed last week. Pissed.

I really am beginning to think I'm bipolar, because my moods are really weird lately. I had a complete clusterfuck of a weekend -- had new cable system installed, which was a 6 hour process and a complete nightmare, as such things always are, plus my AC seems to be dying a slow death as of Saturday, plus my home alarm is still non-functional, plus my kitchen overhead light is also still non-functional. All those plus finishing my happiness book had me extremely depressed again yesterday and again this morning. Then at lunch I started thinking about how stupid it was to be so incredibly stressed out about such non-life-threatening things and I managed to give myself the "shit happens, suck it up and walk it off" speech, so now I'm feeling better. I'm still somewhat worried about the money it may take to fix all these problems, but right now I'm OK with my "it is, what it is" attitude, so I hope it lasts!

Feeling scared today -- the back and leg have been doing OK the past two days now, and I have PT again today. After four days of intense pain following last time's session, I'm not looking forward to tonight's aftermath, even if it is somehow actually helping me long term.

Thinking about my life on the way to work this morning (which was beautiful and should have been incredibly inspiring, if only I felt like I had something concrete to do with the inspiration), and thought, once again, how completely boring my life is. And while lately I've been able to make it feel somewhat better by checking off my little "action accomplishments" towards health and weight loss, it frustrates me incredibly how boring the pattern of those accomplishments is and now void of new experiences it is. And it seems like every little taste of "oh! a new person or experience possibility" I've gotten lately turns into nothing. The Match guy. The women's group I joined on the internet only to find that they really aren't as active as they make themselves out to be and only seem to have meetings on weekday midmornings in far flung places that make it impossible for me to attend. I know I need to make more effort myself on this, but it's hard when I feel like I have to keep to a pretty strict schedule to keep my work and health balance under control, leaving little time and mental energy to be the actual instigator on new people and experiences. I'm almost to the point of joining Facebook (something I said I would never do!) just to see if it would lead to any positive connections. (As opposed to just 700 emails from people like Michael and Tiffany and other people I have no desire to hear from.) I guess I just wish one - just one! - of my little half-ass efforts would turn into something real that would give me the motivation to do something bigger.

Ok, in the spirit of my new attitude, I am updating my earlier post to report that my leg is feeling much better this afternoon, basically since I took a 10 minute walk at lunch and did my PT stretches when I came back. (Also, I'm sure the pain patch began kicking in, but maybe not, since it certainly didn't seem to last Monday.) Anyway, I'm officially calling this a gratitude post -- I am extremely grateful for less pain.

Damnit! I completely jinxed myself with yesterday's post. Woke up today with leg pain even worse than last Monday's! WTF??? Trying my damndest to ignore it as much as possible and keep up yesterday's mood, but so far I'm not doing very well.

It took some work, but I managed to get my better attitude back. Out of nowhere on Tuesday my back and leg were MUCH better and stayed that way all week. So in keeping with what I'm learning from my happiness book and irunurun, I made a very conscious effort to do things that I knew would keep my mood better --- walking at lunch, eating better, sending some positive emails to some men on Match who I knew wouldn't be interested in me, but still would appreciate compliments on their well written profiles (a rarity!), even doing little bits of cleaning throughout the week towards having the cable/internet guy come next week and not being overcome by dust and cat hair. (In fact, I actually just spent the last few hours doing some serious kitchen cleaning - some things probably hadn't been touched since I've lived here!) And while doing it, I kept my Itunes as loud as I would go and sang along with every song. Who knew cleaning could actually be fun?? And now I feel like I've earned some time on the bed with my book and the cats in the sun, which REALLY feels good. I think the lesson I'm learning is that when you're seriously depressed like I am, you really have to take baby steps in getting out of it...but it can be done.