Status.

Well, the money is going out fast. I put some money in the checking account thinking it would be more than enough. Now I'm seeing it is going to be a squeeze. The renovations aren't costing too much more than expected--maybe 15% above estimates--which I'll take.

What I underestimated was the overhead beyond rent and wages. It's about double what I estimated in my head. Which was stupid of me--I just needed to go into last year's taxes to get the real number.

I'm not second-guessing myself on the loans and grants. The grants wouldn't have helped much, if at all; and I'll be damned if I'm going to go into debt.

For our first twenty years of business this would have been a disaster. I'd probably be on the phone asking everyone to please be patient. Back then, I was careful not to have any automatic withdrawals--I wanted to be able to time payments. Now all my bills are automatic, so that money has to be there in the account.

I have the money to weather this. But some of it is tied up in investments that, if I cash them, will have a heavy tax penalty. I was hoping to avoid that.

I'm still not expecting to open until mid to late March, more likely the latter. It could even be later. At least that gives me plenty of time to put the store back together.

We'll need to be careful at first on our buying of product. What really kills me is the thought that most of the big chains who are our biggest competitors--Target, Walmart, etc--are still open and making money. Some of them, lots of money.

Looking around, I really have to wonder how many Mom and Pops have the resources to make it through this. Or, even if they do, whether they have a huge debt load after they open again. There is simply no way to get through this without pain.