The Storm Before the Calm

You know how it seems like distant deadlines are always a long way off? Like you have all the time in the world to finish that report, or build that bench, or clean up the guest room before company comes because, hey, they're not coming for another two months, right?

And then the deadline sneaks up on you.

We've been living that for about two years. "Eh, we can open the tea rooms whenever we want. We've got tons of time. Besides, we're practically done already. There are only one or two little things we still need to do..." Sound familiar?

Kathy picked Mother's Day weekend (May 9-10) for our grand opening, and we figured that gave us plenty of time for those one or two little things that still needed to be completed. How tough can it be? But as the date approached, we realized there were all sorts of little things that still needed attention. So it started to get a bit frantic around here. Not enough teacups. Need to order butter. Got to buy strawberries, but not too early or they'll go bad. The floor needs cleaning. Where are we going to put the big water urns for making tea? I know; let's build a table for them and put it right here, but first we have to find table legs and then put together a table and then anchor it to the wall so the table doesn't fall over and spill all the hot water on the floor if someone catches an apron on it and where are the AC plugs for the stupid things and we're running out of time we haven't even started cooking yet and the phone is ringing and, oh yeah, what do we do with the phone if it rings while we're serving guests do we answer it or ignore it or turn off the ringer so nobody hears it, yeah that's a good idea but oh wait what if someone is calling to cancel their reservation we'd need to know that, but only if we're going to reassign the table to someone else but maybe we don't want to accept walk-ins on our first day so let's not do that and do we have enough milk?

Eventually we got on top of it. The house was all ready, the ingredients had all been ordered and delivered, some of the long-lead cooking had begun, the dishes were all washed (we had to wash all the brand new plates and glasses before first use), and the tables were set. Nothing can go wrong now.