Surprise Yourself

So we all know that emzee over here is a big fat sap. As in, I'm emotional about everything and not at all afraid to show it (even when nobody wants to see it). This week, twice I was emotional in ways I did not expect.

It started a couple of days ago, when I had to start packing up my tiny grotty kitchen in preparation for moving to the new big shiny kitchen. Sidenote, how strange is it that you can pack and pack and pack and pack and pack and have a whole pile of boxes....and yet the space looks exactly the same, as though you've not packed anything? Very infuriating. Anyway, so I was packing and packing..and realising that I actually felt a little sad about it all. This was a very odd feeling to have - because after all I'm moving onwards and upwards and yadda yadda positive happy shiny people stuff. Sad was not at all what I expected.

I spent a couple days feeling just the wee bit crumply about this strange melancholy which had settled over me - where was the crazy happy bouncy joy? The excitement? The anticipation at ripping off tons of plastic to reveal sparkly stainless steel? Turns out it was there, hiding under the sadness over the end of an era - which, when I think about it, is how I felt when we moved out of our teeny tiny rental house and moved into our big mortgaged family home. I was then (as I am now) thrilled to be moving...but, you know, I brought my babies home to that rental house. The kitchen is no different. I can clearly remember buying my very first 25 kilo bag of flour, staring at this giant sack and wondering how on EARTH I was going to get through that much. I can even remember FINISHING that bag of flour (ages and ages later) and thinking, "YIPPEE! I'm managing to stay in business long enough to both justify and afford a SECOND 25kilo bag of flour!"

I guess sometimes it's the little things, right?

For the record, I now buy 25 kilo bags of flour about 6 at a time, and it takes me about a month to get through ALL of them. So more than one bag a WEEK..and sugar is more than that again. Fair to say the business is still in business for a reason, no?

In a manner of speaking, the four years spent in that small kitchen has actually been my business's childhood. The business is now well and truly a pre-teen. Not surprisingly, this is happening at exactly at the same time as my human children are...and so comes all the fabulous highs and head-scratching lows of parenting a pre-teen, of both the human and the business variety.

You can understand why it was that I was packing up my kitchen and feeling a bit sad and blue. Not what I expected to feel but totally predictable given the circumstances. When I turned the light off there today (for the last time), I thanked that kitchen for looking after me and my baby. It served it's purpose well, but it was well and truly time to move on.

Then came moving day (today) and I thought I'd be feeling overwhelmed, scared (okay, terrified. Holy crap that's a LOT of money I need to pay back, and a LOT of kitchen space to make use of!), worried, nervous...and (insert negative emotion here). Funnily enough, I felt NONE of those. I actually felt...hope. Excitement. Thrill. In actual fact I bounced around filled with sheer JOY as I watched all those boxes (and that box, and that stool, and that oven, that mixer, that other box, all those ribbons, and yet more boxes) get loaded onto the truck. I sang my heart out in the car on the way to the kitchen - nobody was watching, right? And then, you know, I couldn't take the massive smile off my face as I watched that box and that box and THAT box come off the back of the truck and make their way into my new kitchen.

Twice this week I felt emotions totally opposite to the ones I was expecting...and twice I was glad I did - because in the end it was quite okay to farewell the start of the story so you could look forward to the middle bit. Apparently the middle bit is where all the good stuff happens (or so says Business Guy, and we pay him to know this kind of stuff.)

Go on, do a little bounce for me. I don't expect you to - which is exactly why you should.