Some of you that follow me on Instagram or Facebook have seen some posts and updates on what's going on with me personally. I haven't shared too many details or progress, SO.... here is what has been going on. It's a long read.
Last year (2023), my dad passed away and my mom has been living on her own since then. It came time to make a move for her, so we have been working on getting her house packed up and sold since about March.
Needless to say, there have been quite a few visits back and forth, and at the end of May her house was sold and we were driving her and her entire house in a U-Haul up here to Colorado.
We were actually driving on our 33rd wedding anniversary.
(we still haven't officially celebrated yet.)
(Oh yeah, I died my hair blonde :-) to help with going grey. It's not as blonde as the picture now, but still blonde)
After that, we were able to focus on our house. We had a pretty small house and if we didn't move, she would have been in a small bedroom, sharing a bathroom with kids, guests and the rest of us, and dependent on us to do her laundry because it was downstairs. In addition, either my son would not have had a bedroom, or I would not have a cookie space - except the kitchen table. With that said, we were able to find another house that had a mother-in-law suite (Next-Gen) on the main floor, with her own bath, laundry, living space, bedroom and kitchenette. Basically a small apartment inside/connected to the main house. Plus, it had an unfinished basement which would be able to be customized into my own cookie space. Yay!
We were able to move into the new house, in Thornton, in the middle of June, while still prepping our house to sell in Arvada - AFTER renovating two bathrooms. Then three weeks into July we were able to close on that house. That meant that from the time we moved into the new house, let me rephrase that - by the time we were able to start sleeping in the new house, we were slowly moving all our house contents into the new house until we finally closed on it. It's a serious understatement to say that we are EXHAUSTED!! We're not old, but we're also no spring chickens either! Our bodies and minds took a toll! We have now been in the new house in Thornton now for about 6 weeks and have slowly been able to start to relax - that's not quite the right word, but anyway.
We still have a storage unit of all my mom's items that we are now slowly going through, trying to get her more settled and deciding what items we need for our space and what she might need in the future that won't fit in her space, and to sell the rest. This in itself is a huge task! We are whittling it down a little each weekend.
Oh, but I forgot to say, we've been having some record breaking heat here in CO, so you can't do near as much as you would like and have to work in the early AM or later evening.
That takes us to TODAY and they have started working on our basement and it is so LOUD that I can feel it on my feet!! We will be in construction for about 2 months.
Before I go on, I hope you'll continue reading, to help you further understand the crazy time we have had the last couple of months, these events all occurred at the same time of this whole process. Orders were still being done, mostly by my assistant artists. My large corporate orders still being done by me. One of them, 20 dozen, were due the week we moved over to the new house. That same week, my daughter was in a pageant I needed to attend with her - in another city and a hotel stay.
That was actually also Father's Day weekend and my main cookie assistant was in Alaska.
Are you starting to feel the stress and tension?
Let's keep going then. :-)
The week after the pageant, my daughter's best friend, and our family friend, got married, and my mom had her 2nd eye injection for Wet AMD which is now a 30 minute drive to get to since we moved and already established a relationship with a doctor there. Prior to this, I had scheduled her DMV appointment, which books 3 weeks out at the least, for July 10th. At this eye doctor appointment, we found out she had a vitreous hemorrhage in that eye, which needed to be removed asap. The earliest appointment they had that fit my schedule was - yep - July 10th. So, I had to reschedule her DMV appt. The next earliest appointment available was for 7/30. This would allow time for all the follow up eye appointments after surgery and for it to heal before taking her eye test at the DMV.
You can skip down past this story, but it must be told to explain the frustration here!
The DMV said she needed her birth certificate to prove she was a citizen - she's 79, born in Ohio and has a valid, not expired, Texas driver's license, and has proof of residency for both Texas and Colorado. We reschedule for a couple weeks out, but the next morning, I look for a possible last minute appointment/cancellation, I find one that is about a 35 minute drive away. I wake up mom to get there in time and all is going well. We get to the station and the guy says that it appears she's had a name change and we have to prove that with her marriage certificate. I'm boiling mad at this point! She's been married for 61 1/2 years - 36 of those living in one house - and again, my dad passed away a year ago. But they still want the marriage certificate! I was done with this guy and stormed out with all my papers. The only thing I can imagine is the issue is that Texas lists the maiden name as the middle name, kind of like Facebook does. But guess what?!! Her marriage certificate has her nickname on it, so it does not match her legal first name that is on the driver's license!!
If I could use emoji's, I would use the faceplant one right here.
And here.
I'm just shaking my head in frustration and want to scream, even as I sit here typing this out and reliving it all.
So, the end of this, so far, is we have an appointment again with the DMV at the end of August to prove here name, which I doubt will work. But I will have my dad's death certificate just in case and I joke about taking his urn of ashes up there with me. I'd try for another last minute appointment, but I just need a break and time to focus on my work, or my j.o.b., which brings me to the final thing happening in all this. Nope, that's not true.
There is something else.
I'll get to that.
I have had a medical billing business since 1998. I've had numerous doctors over those years and when we moved to Colorado 10 years ago, I had 5. All of them were based in Texas and done remotely. I have let them go as they moved to groups or retired, not trying to pursue anymore as I worked towards growing the cookie business - simultaneously. So, I finally got word from the last doctor I had that she was moving to a group and would be ending services with me. Guess when that was going to be? The week of Father's Day.
Insert bulging eyes emoji.
Fortunately, that got delayed and now the date was 2 days ago. But the nature of my business includes collections of insurance payments, which are delayed from the date of billing, so I will continue to work on that for another month or two. It's all up in the air as I haven't heard back from the doctor to confirm an actual end date, so in the meantime I just continue working as much as I can.
Before I end this story of the last few months, I have to add that I have a toy Yorki. Her name is Willow. Don't worry, she is okay. But.... she is 6 pounds - okay, almost 7 - but she should be 5 - and I'm certain she has "greeted" all of you as you have picked up cookies from my house. She's my alarm system and doorbell! Isn't she cute!!
To preface this, in our last house, we had our room in the basement and we had a gate to keep her upstairs at night to sleep with our daughter. We had intentions of doing the same in the new house, but our daughter's room is across the hall from ours, both upstairs. The first couple nights we got to sleep here, we had no way to train her to not come in our room and were too exhausted to try and all having to go to work the next day, so we allowed her to sleep in our room for a couple nights. That was the first mistake and we knew it.
So the time came it was a good night to try to train her to stay in my daughter's room. We had a gate across the hall and it all set up in her room with Willow's bed and she has stairs to get up on her bed. (you can see them in the picture) BUT.... she was so stressed with this whole move and SO anxious to try to get back to our room - because she could actually see it, which is the biggest problem, that she apparently jumped straight off the bed. This is very dangerous for such a little dog. We finally just brought her in our room so we could sleep. The next morning she's limping and not putting a lot of pressure on her back leg. It's clearly not broken, but still hurting. We have no vet out here yet and don't know where an emergency vet is. I had been looking but not satisfied with what I was finding. After office hours, of course, I decide she needs to be seen, so I found an "urgent" vet, which basically is after hours and not as expensive as an emergency vet, so I was happy with that. Nothing broken, just sprained apparently, so we leave with an injection and an anti-inflammatory. She does well over the next week and things are getting better.
Then... maybe a week and a half later, I let her outside to sit in the sun for a little bit, as we've done for the last month, and this time there is a bunny a few feet away. She doesn't usually care about them. This time, however, she darts over quickly to try to get it. Well.... we don't have a deck yet, and she jumped off the lower stair and ran through the river rock.
Best I can guess, her little leg just fell in one of the crevasses just the wrong way. I didn't notice anything wrong with her as I went back and sat at my desk for the next hour and she slept in her bed under my desk. When I get up to get ready to go to our community group, she is clearly hurt and in pain. Her head is cocked down to the right and tail stuck down tight, limping. The front leg this time. My husband leads our group so he left and I stayed to watch her. Maybe about 30 minutes go by and I'm headed to the vet - again. They can't find anything really wrong so again assume it's a sprain of some sort. I leave told to just observe and come back later if needed. We did. At 9:30 pm. We leave with pain med and steroid. A week has passed with all that now and she's off all meds and doing just fine, but my goodness!
Whew! I'm exhausted just rehashing all that with you guys! And I just mentioned the "highlights", leaving out all the boring keep your life together stuff!
(This picture is of me after working in the storage shed last week in the heat!)
So, what's next and what should you expect on the cookie front?
Pic of the basement and future cookie space.
Once I get my cookie room up and running, which should coincide with the end of the doctor's account, hopefully, I will be able to offer regular holiday custom designs and open my schedule up for more custom spots.
ALSO... I plan to offer small group and one on one classes in my new space.
AND... I have signed with Sugar Bloom Cookies, here in Thornton, to be a teacher for her classes at her studio. We are going to start with once and month and see how that goes with my schedule. Her business has grown so much since winning the Christmas Cookie Challenge on Food Network she needs additional help from local Cookiers like me to manage the demands.
Andrea Goossens - "Sugar Bloom Cookies"
With all that, I'm excited about the Fall and all the new it will bring!
Regarding pick-ups, all orders will have an option for pick up location. My artist Amy will be providing her location as the Arvada pick up address, which is near Standley lake & Simms, and I will be available for Thornton pick-ups, which is kind of near The Orchard & Outlet mall. I do have an artist in Westminster, so I might be able to open that up as a pick-up location in the future. Actual addresses will be given upon ordering.
I have now been doing cookies for 6 1/2 years and the best is yet to come! I'm excited and so happy to have you all follow me on this journey! I can't thank you all enough for supporting me and loving my cookies and spreading the word with all your friends and family!
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Signing off for now,
Jennifer
The Cookie Darling
P.S. I love wearing my fun cookie t-shirts from @thedoughmesticcookie on IG. I wear a size large. ;-) I love sweet drinks and coffee lattes too. :-) You know, just in case. ;-)
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