Four Months In, And....

Today is four months since our little soda shop opened. It has been a whirlwind and also a marathon. 

I have stressed nonstop since we opened. I worry this venture will bankrupt Genius Golfer and me. I worry it will make one or both of us crazy. I worry this could be the reason behind G deciding I'm too much work--since I come with the shop--and will divorce me.

In reality, GG has been a ROCKSTAR! He works his regular job from home then comes over and works another full time job at the shop. He handles all the bills, orders, accounting, payroll and franchise stuff. He talks me down off the ledges I keep finding myself teetering on. He reminds me that we will be fine, and that this is what I signed on for--for the next 10 years.

Actually I have come to understand that we can tot his project with differing mental picture of what this would look like. I imagined that I'd hire and train all the cute high school kids and then leave them working happily as I ran errands and did marketing in person to the schools, PTAs, etc. I imagined that GG would receive the billing for vendors and payroll and write the checks. Oh how wrong I have been!

I work M-Sat, from before we open until usually, 6 or 7PM. Saturdays I'm in a little later and out a little earlier, thanks to GG who spends another very full day there. I think I am averaging 60 hrs/week since we opened. My body sure feels it. On weekends when the local high schools have dances, I work more since the Saturdays are reserved for day-dates and dance things for our employees. I have been open to close several weekend nights because I am free labor and no one else was available.

On Sundays GG will deep clean the coke machines monthly and the ice machine quarterly, since that is the only day we are closed. We usually visit the shop every Sunday to pick up the rags for laundry, or at least to make a drink for ourselves.

But the weather finally turned out of winter and that has made all the difference. We are just beginning the summer season down here and the warm sunny weather brings people out in much larger numbers. Now if we can just keep enough employees all summer--while their families go on vacations, the kids go to camps and conferences, and all the regular family stuff people do together--to keep our shifts staffed to serve our customers when t ey come in.

Meanwhile, We Are a "Dateline" Episode

 On Halloween day, several members of GG's family got a mysterious text from an unknown number. It w as small photo of a computer printed note announcing a wedding upcoming the following week--of Mamacita and someone named W. We have never heard of W.

Sister K had decided to move back East and had left Mamacita's house about a week or two before that. The other sisters in law were in proximity and regularly checked on and did things with Mamacita every week. That particular week, however, things had gotten crazy for both of them and as I understood they had both missed being there in person. GG checked the "bouncy" app they use to find her car, purse, keys, when she looses them. Her car was in her garage. But her purse and keys were somewhere in Utah county they couldn't immediately recognize.

As soon as the text came across, the text threads began within the family asking all the questions: Who is this guy? When did you last talk to Mamacita? Who saw her last? When?

Everyone in the family put their individual skills to work to find this guy and figure out where Mamacita was. The Girl asked her detective type friends to find legal--and sneaky--ways to locate W or his family so we could contact this guy, or at least figure out what was happening.

There was no response from the initial mysterious phone number when we first tried to reach out to him. No answers were coming from that end.

GG locked down Mamacita's finances. As her financial agent, he was able to move all her money to other accounts that she couldn't access with her debit card.

The Girl discovered that one of W's daughters and I had a mutual friend on Facebook. She also found a phone number to contact the daughter. The Girl made the first contact with his family. She explained that the daughter and I shared a mutual friend. She further explained that we had received a text notice about her father and The Girl's grandmother getting married next week, and we as a family were concerned because we have never heard of her dad and that grandma had dementia so the family was worried what was going on. The daughter, Shelly, was equally concerned. In fact, she was livid about her dad. Her mom had only passed away in March and he had already "proposed" to three other women...obviously nothing permanent occurred in those cases, but with Mamacita, her dementia situation made that all the more enraging to Shelly.

Shelly asked if she could call me and talk to me about the situation. The Girl was happy to pass that responsibility on. Shelly called me and we spoke at length about what had happened since her mom's passing. Her mom, who had cancer, had been the recipient of harsh treatment near the end o f her life at her dad's hand. She was really angry about that. W had apparently been on the hunt for another partner since even before his wife passed away. His children were not pleased.

In our discussion I learned that W had no financial stability and he was likely on the hunt for a "purse" as well as sex. When Shelly spoke to her dad, early the next morning, he was upset and told her to tell us (Mamacita's family) to keep our noses out of her life, that she didn't have dementia but she was just not cared for. When Shelly tried to disagree W told her Mamacita was right there, in his bed, right now, and she was just fine!

EW!

The next thing we knew was that the girls had discovered, using "find my friends" in their iPhones that Mamacita was at the hospital. So B called the hospital and told them they though their mom was there as a patient. Sure enough! She had been brought tot he ER for chest pains. She thought she was having a heart attack. Really it had been about a week that she'd been without her meds. At least W took her to the hospital! The girls raced there and B intercepted the cardiologist who got an earful of the situation. He was quick to side with the girls and sent W tot he waiting room. He had no legal authority in this case, and the girl--B and L--have been assigned Mamacita's medical power of attorney. The staff at the hospital got Mamacita settled and meds corrected and sent the girls home with her through the ambulance bay so W couldn't see them leave with her.

Back home the girls stayed with her and got her settled. Somehow Sister K got wind of things and she made it home--she had been on her way back already, having rethought her decision to move. Eventually that night all the girls were there together with Mamacita.

Meanwhile, we discovered that W had obtained a marriage license for them. We also learned that the license was valid for 32 days. We knew that she needed to get away from her regular life and get her away from W until we knew more and had better protections in place for her. I contacted our friend from the stake in PG that specialized in elder/family law and he got us started on an emergency guardianship. I also contact Auntie D who does trust work and got Mamacita's trust straightened out. Now we just had to wait out the 32 days.

Sisters B and K brought Mamacita to us on Nov 3rd. Having her with us meant that she was safe from W, but it also meant that we needed to be with her all day. I quickly found out that I could register Mamacita as a part-time resident with us to use the Senior Center for lunch as well as to take classes. OI found out she had the chance to go to line dancing. She loved that! So I took her twice a week to classes then to the center for lunch Tuesday-Friday. In the process we were invited to go to two other "private" line dancing classes on Thursday & Friday. She loved that. 

I was glad she was happy. But it was exhausting. During that day she watched every movie musical I could stream for her. She made lunch and helped GG make dinner. She was helpful and happy. She slept a lot though, and never once mentioned W or an impending wedding. That told me she wasn't aware of what had even happened in Springville.

We kept her with us even when we were having Quench-It training or working at the store all day. Some times she was happy to "help" with a  project. I had her bagging fruit for smoothies one day but her results wasn't exactly what we needed. But she was happy to help. Other times she would watch Netflix--again, movie musicals I could stream--in the office and we'd bring her the samples of things the kids were learning to make. Even after watching White Christmas over and over one day for 8 hours, she still didn't know what she had watched--or that she even HAD watched a movie. That part was sad.

The Quench-It kids were great though. They referred to her as "grandma" and they seemed to understand that the dementia was keeping her with us even when it looked boring to anyone who could see it. They were good sports about the added bonus "helper".

Finally the 32 days were up and W hadn't made any more attempts to locate Mamacita. Sister B came down for the weekend and she and BIL J took Mamacita home with them after church. I never appreciated the quiet of my own home before as much as I did that first day after she went home.

After the craziness that was the month of November, we ended up having an enjoyable time with Mamacita at our home. We enjoyed her company for Thanksgiving and had a lot of personal time with er--probably more than she would have otherwise enjoyed with us--but she was safe and relatively happy, even though she wasn't in her own home. Sister K ended up coming home and has agreed to be Mamacita's primary caregiver--I believe the other siblings are agreed on giving her a stipend to do that full time. The rest of us will still need to help K and give her the support and back up she will need as she helps Mamacita in that way.

I knew there were really weird and sad things in the world, I just never thought this kind of thing would happen in this family. We think we are well connected and stay in touch  fairly well. What would have happened if Mamacita DIDN'T have  an attentive family?! 

NOW OPEN!

 The Monday after Thanksgiving we started training with our Quench-It employees. I have 31 in total--mostly high schoolers, and a handful of older college age students. Not everyone is in school, and in December that doesn't really matter that much, honestly.

The franchisers were here for a week to lead the training. We had three sessions each day for three days. Then we were still waiting for our business license--which didn't even come for another week. We basically "practiced" on any car who thought to come in and try us. The kids got the practice of taking "real orders" but we couldn't take payment for them without the business license. That was an expensive week=--we were paying payroll AND giving away product without anything coming in. I was very nervous that I would bankrupt us with this stupid business proposition and Genius Golfer would give up on me all together.

The kids were great! I was so excited to get to know them better and see the fun combos of friends we were putting together to work. I have always liked high school kids in general--they make me laugh and I guess I am an over-grown 15 year old myself, so I just enjoy being with them. They are energetic and enthusiastic and awkward and unuse of themselves all at the same time. This is a similar feeling I had to teaching high school, without the pressure of assignments and long hours and parent-teacher conferences.

Our GRAND OPENING had been set originally for Dec. 10th as the new store in Syracuse was going to be opening on Dec. 17th--but when we didn't get our business license from the city in time, we opted to continue our "soft opening" another week and open simultaneously with Syracuse. The franchisors came down again to help that weekend--there were special things the franchise does at a grand opening that we didn't really know much about. There was a social media scavenger hunt, for example. Our GRAND OPENING day was Saturday December 17th and we had a special all day of half price drinks. We were SO busy with people coming in to try us out. They kids got a feeling for just how busy we could be! It was energizing and terrifying at the same time.

One really fun surprise that day was that GG's step mom-Grandma Jo-sent us a balloon delivery. It was a BIG helium filled balloon and a 12 foot arched set of three pieces of multiple balloons.  Never in a million years would I have thought of that! It was such a cool surprise.

It w as great day! It was  along day, a tiring day, a wonderful chance to meet new neighbors and customers and to really see a big chunk of the kids in action. It was gratifying to see people coming into try us out and to be finally able to take (partial) payment for the items we were selling.

It has now been a just over a months since we started the training process. We are not as busy as I had initially hoped, but I also am delighted that we can ease into things here and get busy as the weather warms up. We have had flashes of crazy and the feeling of being swamped--and that, in segments is REALLY fun. I am looking forward to warmer weather and more customers seeing us here and stopping in to get a drink or a treat. It has been fun to get to "know" some new friends as they stop by everyday--sometimes with their dogs, sometimes on their way to work.

This is going to be a fun new chapter for me.