I have nothing worthwhile to say beyond pointing out that if there’s one celeb you should have a “girl crush” – as the kids say these days – on, it should be Kristen Bell.
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So, I guess some people find Day in the Life posts to be boring. I happen to love them. I’m bummed I missed this day the first go around because I’ve actually wanted to share a day in the life style post for awhile now. I think my day is pretty abnormal in the blogging world. Hell, I think even my family is a bit curious how a regular day goes for us, so I snapped some photos to run through a common work day for Mister and me in the shop.
We’re in Spring/Summer hours right now which means 10 am – 5 pm, Tuesday – Saturday. Unlike winter, we have a reasonably normal “weekend” on Sunday and Monday right now. If you’ve been reading for awhile, you know that Winter is our busy season. During the winter we’re open from 9am – 5pm, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and operate an After Hours line. The core hours don’t sound too bad on paper, but despite being closed we’re usually running work-related errands on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Whichever day we’re not doing that, we’re in the shop even though the door says Closed. On Closed days, we’ll usually leave the Open sign off so we don’t draw tons of people, but we leave the door unlocked in case someone is really desperate for help. Bottom line, when you own a small business if your ass isn’t in the store/working, you aren’t making money. If I’m doing paperwork on a Closed day, I’ll still help every customer that wants to come in. Our Winter days can easily keep us in the shop until 7 pm and 10 pm isn’t uncommon. In short, we work our asssssssess off in the Winter, so we have no guilt about opening at 10 am in the Spring & Summer.
Mister and I usually argue over who has to shower first and open the shop. In this case, I won out and get to roll in late. I head by our building a bit after 10:00 to grab energy drinks and some breakfast when I see a customer in our lot. I know he’s there to ask about a Trade-in price for his vehicle and negotiate a price for a new unit, so I skip the breakfast run and head inside. We work out a deal, discuss some details, and set a time for him to come back in the afternoon.
Mister unpacks a delivery to discover that the wrong parts were ordered while I was out of town. Sidebar — Mister is in charge of service, so he inspects the vehicles that come in, figures out what needs to be fixed or replaced as part of routine maintenance, and has me order the parts. I guess I should clarify that for us, a vehicle or unit is what we call a snowmobile, ATV or UTV. To clarify further, an ATV is also commonly called a 4-wheeler (or 3-wheeler, I suppose) or quad. A UTV is also know as a Side-by-side and is a fairly new class of vehicle that’s a bit like…. an off road golf cart with a much bigger engine. They are usually 2, 4, or 6 seat with big off-road tires and great suspensions. It’s like a Jeep that’s not a real car, if that makes sense? That’s a totally basic description, but I realize most blog readers aren’t ORV (off road vehicle) aficionados.
Yeah, the desk is gross. This is a shop, not an office.
Since the wrong parts were ordered but we promised the customer that their machines would be done before the weekend, I look through technical drawings for the machines to figure out the right part number, then start calling other local dealers. I find the part at a dealer ~90 minutes away. While Mister is getting ready to leave, another customer calls for an oil filter and air filter for a line of products that we don’t carry, but the dealer Mister is heading to should have them. He adds them to his list and heads out the door. It’s 90 min each way meaning he won’t be back until the afternoon. This also means he has a long night ahead of him to actually repair the units once he returns. We promised the customer that his machines would be done today, so they’ll be done, even if it makes our day suck.
A few customers come in while Mister is gone. I do the regular stuff – answering the phone, answering questions, finding parts, scheduling service. I grew up around go-karts, snowmobiles, jet skis, and more, but this job was definitely a crash course in the way small engines and vehicles work. Mister has a full-time job of his own here in the shop, so I can’t just call him up front every time someone comes in looking for a part. After a year I can find probably 90% of the parts on my own. If someone comes in with a really complicated diagnostic question, I hand things over to Mister and sometimes the customer rolls their eyes like yeah, dumb girl. It rarely phases me anymore. Some guys are old-school and just want to talk to another guy. Getting annoyed or pissy isn’t going to make my day any better so I just help when I can and hand things over when I can’t.
I get into a long discussion with one customer and tell him that we recently purchased our building. We were previously only renting 2/3 of the space from the building owner. Buying the building means we’re no longer paying rent to someone else and we can expand the showroom and service space. I take him next door to see the open space that was finally cleared out while I was away in Vegas. We don’t know what’s happening with all the extra space yet, but it’s fun to think about ideas and we’re excited that the shop is growing at a pace where we’re comfortable taking on such a big change.
I previously made plans to meet some friends for lunch but I know my customer from this morning is coming back to finalize his deal and pick out accessories. He asked me to prepare some quotes so before I can leave I know I need to get the numbers all sorted out. I figure out a few different combinations for him to add a winch, windshield, roof, mirror, and other extras to his new machine.
I meet the girls for lunch at one of my favorite local restaurants. For such a small town, we have some really really great places to eat. With Mister out of town picking up parts I really shouldn’t close the shop for lunch, but it was already planned and it’s been a busy day so I appreciate the mental break. We have a great lunch and end up making plans for the weekend so I leave in an excellent mood. Before I head back to the shop, I grab food for Mister since he should get back right around the same time I do.
My view most of the day.
I get back to the shop, meet with my customer, and finalize his purchase. We sell plenty of clothing, parts, and accessories, but selling a unit is always exhilarating. Even if the machine is just going to be used as a work vehicle on a local farm or ranch, everyone is excited when they pick up a new toy. I hope we never get so used to this place that we lose the excitement of making a big sale. This customer won’t pick up his machine for a few weeks, so I still need to order his accessories and have Mister install them.
Mister is still doing his service work as I pack up to leave. I do a few runs upstairs to inventory to locate parts, then have to head out to deal with the dogs. I recently started going to the gym again, so I want the pups to have some time to run around before I leave to meet up with my gym buddy.
Our evenings are pretty tame around here – gym, dinner, knitting, video games, tv, playing with the dogs… nothing especially exciting to share there. Soooooo, that’s a quick look into life in a powersports shop. I’m definitely living a different life than my old office job. It can be exhausting some days (or weeks) but there’s nothing like being your own boss.
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I suppose that title is a bit presumptuous, but this stuff is certainly my newest obsession.
First, some back story – before moving to Wyoming, my skin care was incredibly simple in that it was non-existent. I could use any body wash, dry shave, zero moisturizer. I never washed my face, even after wearing makeup (gross, I know) because my skin fared best with zero intervention. Aside from whatever water naturally splashed on it in the shower, zero facial skin care meant clear skin 99% of the time. Wins all around, right?
Now we’re in Wyoming and my skin hates me. It’s very (very very very) dry here and at this altitude you burn easily. My face quickly became rough and dry and red. I found a product to solve that and will surely post about it later. One topic at a time here, kids! Calm yourselves.
So my face skin sucked, but it was relatively easy to deal with. My legs however – dear god. My previously simple to manage legs became painfully dry. Sometimes they itched so much it was hard to sleep. Beyond that, I developed these red scaly spots on my… like… inner calf? Imagine the inside of your knee, then go down about 4″. There. It’s terrible. I started WebMD’ing and self-diagnosing adult onset psoriasis, bed bugs, mites, allergies, and who knows what else.
Enter, coconut oil.
This stuff has changed my life.
I wish I could tell you where I got the idea, but I honestly don’t remember. I do know that coconut oil is everywhere these days, especially since every other person I meet is eating Paleo. Coconut oil seems to be the Paleo super food, they’re all using it constantly. With my legs crying out for relief every moment of every day, I started exploring more natural solutions. I moved from my beloved Mandarin Pomegranate body wash with bursting beads of super hydration to fragrance-free baby shampoo. I dumped the dryer sheets that Mister is so fond of. I tried anything Aveeno, totally swayed by their marketing tactics. I trashed every lotion and started exploring oils – argan, tea tree, black currant, almond, grape seed. Hell, I was prepared to yank my olive oil from the kitchen and try it out as well. Somewhere there, while looking for a cheap add on item for my Amazon order I grabbed an $8 jar of coconut oil. Best purchase ever.
So how do I use it?
Coconut oil is solid at 76° meaning it will start to melt from the heat of your hands. If you just need the tiniest bit, you can swirl your fingers on the solid lump until it melts then apply wherever necessary. Since I don’t need a tiny bit, I leave my coconut oil in the shower. If you take a long, very hot shower, the ambient temperature will start to melt the oil. I take semi-short not very hot showers, so when I’m done with my other shower happenings, I hold the jar (closed, lid on, if I needed to clarify that) directly under the shower head to melt it up.
See the melty bit?
I turn off the water then, without drying at all, apply the liquefied oil to my legs, arms, torso, hands, elbows, soooo… pretty much everywhere. If I know I’m wearing my hair up – a common occurrence for me as I work in an ATV shop – I’ll run a bit through the ends of my hair. If I plan to dry/style my hair, I skip the oil. I have thin curly hair and coconut oil makes it greasy. You may think the oil would be good for curls, but if I’m planning to let them air dry I find that it weights my curls down far too much. If I shower at night and plan to shower again in the morning, sometimes I’ll load my hair up with oil then twist it up in a bun and sleep on it. When I wash it out the next day, my hair is the bessssssssssst evarrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Not only does my skin feel more hydrated on a daily basis, the flaky, scaly red spots on my legs started to disappear. My elbows, which have been annoyingly dark my entire life are now looking semi-normal. Let’s discuss this for a moment, since I’m already in the middle of TMI confessions. My elbows have always been dark. They’re not really “ashy” or dry or rough, they just look sort of bruised, I guess? WTF is this shit? It’s not a condition, I’ve spoken with plenty of doctors. It’s nothing gross or dirty, they’re just darker than my very very pale skin. Whatever, coconut oil saved them and, at the rate it’s going, it’ll probably start to balance my checkbook soon too.
Tips!
- My coconut oil is 100% pure, cold pressed, virgin, food grade, and organic. I honestly can’t say if it needs to be exactly this, but when you can get 15 oz for less than $8, why not?
- Within reason (don’t be stupid and use half the jar just to prove me wrong) I operate under the theory that more is more and use a lot every day. Let’s say it’s a quarter worth for each leg, then another for arms and elbows, then again for torso and such.
- Buy something in a plastic jar. If you’re like me, you’ll leave it in the shower and handle it with wet and/or oily hands. My jar has slipped out of my hands more than once so I’m thankful for the plastic.
- While tempting to go for the super large value size, realize you need to pick this thing up. If it’s huge, wet, and slippery (that’s what she said), you’re more likely to drop it on your toes.
- Buy coconut oil, change your life!
I’m not a medical professional so this is just personal advice. If you mess up applying it to your legs, I fear for you and wonder how you get through the day. Also, obv this isn’t sponsored. No one reads my blog, son. I don’t have companies a callin’ ready to pay me money for this shit. If they did, they’d probably tell me to stop swearing so much.
This post is also part of my attempt Blog Every Day in May, but I was already working on it, planning to tell you anyway
Day 22, Wednesday: Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel. (a pet peeve, a current event, a controversial topic, something your husband or roommate or neighbor or boss does that really ticks you off) – Note: I’m negative enough in my day-to-day without setting out to actually rant about something, so I decided to PREACH ABOUT SOMETHING. Coconut oil is effing awesome! Do it up!
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Scenes from the weekend; Or, how to lose your three readers by posting nonsense
Above all, I think this post gives the most insight into the madness that goes on inside my head on a daily basis. Also, I’m proud of the changes that we’ve made in life since that post. I asked for a job that exhausts my brain, one where I come home feeling like I really achieved something and I got it. Be careful what you wish for – it may be more than you bargained for.
Do what you can with what you have
This is the post that started it all. If you ever wonder where the name Milkshed came from, here’s your answer. Also, you’ll see that I originally started the blog just as a way to feed and document an Etsy shop. I’m glad that things have evolved since then. I’d still like to have a shop someday, but obviously life has changed a ton in a year, so I’ll just have to see where life takes me.
We lost Emma right around a year ago, just two weeks after we moved to Wyoming. Losing any pet is hard, but losing one well before their time and in a traumatic way… well, it majorly fucked with my head. I’ve moved on (after a year, I’d be a bit crazy not to) and can now talk about her without crying, but I still miss her. Thankfully, Radio has been a great addition to our little family.
A life update, Short Version: We’re moving
I’m sure people wonder how you go from working in Marketing at a law firm in Downtown Detroit to running a powersports shop in rural Wyoming, posting about bears and ATVs all the time. If you are one of those people, this is the story. The pictures are from our spontaneous long weekend to check out - for the first time ever - the town we’d eventually move to. Yes, we took that trip after we agreed to move and things were already in motion.
I shared a few photos from my parents farm in Michigan. We used to spend at least one weekend a month at the farm due to Mister’s National Guard duties. The farm is (well, was) the most central location for everyone to meet, so many of my greatest memories are tied to it – boating weekends, late night board games and cards in our camper so we didn’t wake my baby niece with all our yelling, camping out in the yard, planting the Christmas tree lots, antiquing with my mom, the time Mister found a bat inside the house.
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The day I left Vegas, we found ourselves at the Paris Casino at 1:00 am, Eiffel Towers full of strawberry margarita (right, because this is ever a good idea?) and waaaay too much tequila courtesy of a very friendly and overly generous bartender, and were suddenly like SHIT! We have to be up in 4 hours!
So.
We got back the the hotel, hydrated, packed, and were in bed by 2:00 am, to be woken at 5:00 am by the alarm. I dropped my friend at the airport, then set out on my 12 hour road trip home. Guys, I know driving 12 hours on 3 hours of sleep (after 4 days in Vegas, no less) is both insane and probably dangerous to myself and those around me, but it was the most out of body, non-human experience of my life. I was awake! I was pumped! I was alert and focused and thanks to my audio book – Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the Third Summer, don’t ask me why I own that because I don’t have an answer – the trip flew by and I was home by dark.
Before I left for Vegas, my mom flew into town to help Mister in the shop. The day after I got home, on Monday, I had to take her to the airport. She drove there thank god, because about 10 minutes into the drive home I though I was gooooooing to diiiiie. I pulled over with the tourists at one of the scenic turnouts and had myself a nap. I guess the 4 days in Vegas + 3 hours of sleep + 12 hours of driving + very little sleep + early morning drive to Jackson Hole finally caught up with me.
So the point of all this?
I woke up from my nap, looked up and saw that view.
Vegas was great, of course. But damn. Every time I get down about living in a rural place without access to most stores/movies/common comforts of modern civilization, I just have to look up and see where we live.
WE GET TO LIVE HERE!
AND IT’S AWESOME!
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I’m sure you all read the same blogs I read – Young House Love, Cup of Jo, Smitten Kitchen, Dooce, and on and on and on. They’re great, yes, but I wanted to share some other blogs that I really love. They’re all getting (or already are) pretty huge in their own right, so you may have heard of them before.
I first found Emily and her blog, Go Haus Go, through the I’m A Giant dollhouse challenge from… months? years? I don’t know… from a long time ago. I showed up to check out her dollhouse, but stuck around for her awesome house updates, pics of her two pups, and, most recently, updates on wedding planning. If you go visit now, you’ll see that Emily is super recently married and away on her honeymoon as we speak! She also just posted about changes coming to Go Haus Go, so I’m pumped to see how she updates things.
East Side Bride is my go-to for wedding snark and straight-up advice. I started reading her years ago, long before I had a wedding of my own to plan – a wedding that I would never end up planning, I suppose. ESB has a pretty regular core group of commenters and I like seeing the same “faces” day after day. She’s also quite amusing on twitter, has excellent taste on Pinterest, and runs a side blog, My Maid of Honor is a Cunt, which you should already know is amazing based on the name alone.
So, The Londoner is massive, but a relatively new find for me. Honestly, I found her through Get Off My Internets (GOMI) where she gets a tooooon of shit for being a privileged and I’m not sure what else they hate about her, but I think she’s pretty awesome. Is it a manual for how I’m going to live my life? No. But she’s gorgeous and has gorgeous friends and they take gorgeous pictures with their sexy little bodies where they eat gorgeous food and go gorgeous places and it’s pretty much as far from my life as you can get, so I find it really amusing to read. Despite all the shit talking, I’ve never seen her be anything but totally sweet in her comments section so, for now, she’s totally on my reading list.
I came across Susk & Banoo by way of Door Sixteen, I want to say? Back when she did featured blogs on her sidebar? However I arrived, I never left and she’s now a daily read. She always has great photos, tales of European adventures, fun little recipes, and the kind of saucy language I appreciate in writing. When I started reading they were finishing work on their home in London. They later sold it (I think? right?) and relocated to Finland. I love seeing the work on their new place and photos from a place that I haven’t had a chance to visit yet.
I mean, surely everyone reads Pancakes & French Fries by now, right? Jules reminds me of me and sometimes I feel like a creep-o for how often I want to retweet her and be like ME TOO. Let’s run through the awesome things she does — Her Happy Happy series at the end of the week always makes me smile. She made a vow to walk EVERY DAY IN 2013 and, best of all, is actually sticking with it! She’s perhaps best known for her William Morris project, and chronicles it in a weekly series. AND she runs the Phenomenally Indecisive Book Club, which has been the source of some of my greatest reads in the past year. Jules is a bright spot – the brightest, in my opinion – in blog world that sometimes seems to be only filled with negativity and materialism.
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The drive from Michigan to Wyoming is 24 solid hours. We’ve tried doing it straight through before, but 24 hours of caffeine, car naps, and road trip food is tough on your mind and stomach. We usually split the trip into two days, but our most recent attempt stretched into five excruciatingly long and boring days thanks to a freak snow/ice storm in Nebraska. While bored out of my mind in a hotel room somewhere around Day 3, I pulled out a sale bin skein of Lamb’s Pride Worsted in Lemon Drop and started on this sweater, then finished it up in the car before we arrived home.
This was my first raglan sleeve sweater and my first time working with short rows. The cardigan base couldn’t be easier, nothing that I haven’t done plenty of times before. I’m absolutely terrible at picking up stitches so I worried about adding the button band at the end and ruining my handiwork. Thankfully, the pattern has you slip the first stitch of every row, so picking them up was easier than expected. Still, of all the things to be totally sucky at with knitting, why is picking up stitches so hard for me? I’m so lousy at it.
The short rows in the collar are fairly genius, I think. I’ve never done this turn and wrap technique, but after one video from Knitting Help, I was good to go. I now want to add folded professor collars to everything I make.
The pattern is Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down and I’ve added some notes to my Ravelry page. You know how I am by now – the pattern is free and easy to follow, everything I love in a pattern. This was my first time using Lamb’s Pride and it’s so good. So good. I took my mom to the airport in Jackson Hole earlier this week and stopped into Knit on Pearl to grab a few more skeins. I found a mustard Bulky in the 20% off bin and grabbed a gray Worsted. I’ve already been thinking about making a little fair isle sweater in teal and gray with a tiny yellow accent thanks to the few yards I have leftover from this sweater.
I still need to block and add buttons, but I imagine it will be a few weeks before I’m in a place that sells buttons. I’ve thought about giving this sweater away, but I think I love it too much to part with the tiny thing. Plus, I’m sure no one else wants the burden of a baby sweater that needs to be hand washed, so I think this one will be tucked away for our use someday – hopefully.
I’m linking up with Not Just a Housewife’s Show Me What Ya Got #120
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I actually don’t love this as a photo of myself; I look pretty terrible. Flat hair in a braid, no makeup, glasses, tiny T-rex claw hand? Whatever. I do love this photo though.
This is from the North American International Auto Show which takes place in January in Detroit every year. This is the 2011 show, late January, almost exact a month after Mister flew to Detroit on a one-way ticket from St. Louis. He arrived on that flight and never left. We’d “known” each other since 2006, but that one-way ticket was a leap of faith for us. I come from a family of car lovers so never miss the Auto Show. My sister-in-law, Nikki, seated next to me, and I climbed into a truck to poke around. My brother, Sean, and Mister, Alan, joined us in the back. I grabbed my phone, told everyone to smile, and snapped one pic. We hopped out of the car and moved along through the show. When I looked at the photo, I saw Sean and Nikki smiling like two normal people and Alan and me making faces like total idiots and holy shit I immediately had no doubt in my mind that I loved him and we’d work together.
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Plump female for sale; will cook, won’t clean, loves naps.
I’m back from Vegas and at work alone today. I’ll recap soon(ish).
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I’m headed to Vegas early this morning to meet my bestest friend for our lady trip and I’m pretty pumped about it. I wrote this post beforehand because I didn’t want to miss a day. I don’t think it’s any less relevant just because I happen to be in a car right now, jamming my way to Vegas. If you decide to comment 1. you are awesome and I hope you have an excellent day 2. it may take me awhile to get access to approve them 3. I’ll try to reply back, I promise!
I posted this quote as part of my very first blog entry.
I spend a lot of time waiting for the perfect moment. I tend to not try things if I don’t know that I’m going to do them well. Coming out of High school I wanted to go to Northwestern, but thought I might not get in. So I did what any sensible introvert with self-esteem issues does – I didn’t apply. Mister has been going on ATV rides with friends from town and wants me to come along. I love riding, but only with him, because he already knows I’m an idiot and still chooses to spend his life with me. I worry that when I’m in a big group of people, I’ll be the slowest, the one who gets stuck, I’ll embarrass him or hold the group back or probably like ride off a cliff and kill myself, in which case the biggest concern of mine isn’t the fact that I’m dead, it’s that I inconvenienced others and ruined their ride. Clearly this is all sensible stuff. I’m obviously very mentally well-adjusted.
Actually, this blog project has been a pretty great lesson in itself. I’ve had this blog for more than a year but often find myself drifting away. It’s not because I don’t want to blog – I do. It’s not that I have nothing to say – clearly (cleeeearly) I have plenty to say. It’s not that I’m at a loss for topics or too “busy” or can’t take photos or my computer broke or I value my privacy or any very very valid reasons for not blogging. It’s because I start writing something then I’m all nahhh, nobody cares about that. No one wants to read this. I should just stop. So I do. Stop. Because self-sabotage is apparently my hobby.
Ages ago, I put the quote out there under the guise of actually taking my own advice. I was all, I wanted to do something so I did what I could and here I am ::trumpetsblare:: I am woman, hear me roar. Yet still, there are pretty much a billion things I’m not doing because I’m my own worst enemy. I’ve been writing daily now, all because I decided to hop in on this blogging project someone else set forth and you know what, I actually really like it. Not only that, but people are reading it. Day one I assumed that the clicks where just other self-promoters, people commenting to grow their own blogs. There’s a lot of that for sure, and I don’t blame those people. But there’s more than that (I know, I can see where you guys come from) and it’s awesome. It would seem that I can ramble about shit and that’s totally ok because I like it and apparently others do as well. This is all a tiny little lesson learned, but I’m determined to apply it to my own life more often.
So
do what you can
(TRY)
with what you have
(MAKE IT WORK)
where you are
(STOP MAKING FUCKING EXCUSES)
Blog every day in May
Day 1, Wednesday: The story of your life in 250 words or less (or one paragraph… no one will be counting your words… probably)
Day 2, Thursday: Educate us on something you know alot about or are good at. Take any approach you’d like (serious and educational or funny and sarcastic)
Day 3, Friday: Things that make you uncomfortable
Day 4, Saturday: Favorite quote (from a person, from a book, etc) and why you love it
Day 5, Sunday: Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them? If you don’t have blogger friends, talk about a real-life friend or even a family member
Day 6, Monday: If you couldn’t answer with your job, how would you answer the question, ‘what do you do’?
Day 7, Tuesday: The thing(s) you’re most afraid of - I went off topic and just shared something I’ve been meaning to post for awhile now
Day 8, Wednesday: A piece of advice you have for others. Anything at all.
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