Why Smelly Is Like He Is

The fridge magnet (designed, of course, by Smelly Himself) says it all!  If you want to sell magnets like these (as a super impulse-purchase item) in your retail store, without the stupid watermarks of course, you can check out Smelly's new "Bits of Wisdom" magnet website.  We'll have them available individually for retail sale sooner or later, but for now if anyone's interested, just call or email Smelly or, better still, come visit him at the Smelly Gourmet in Metamora!

Living In Your Business

People have often asked me what it is like, living upstairs in our old historic home with the shop downstairs, in our lovely little village of Metamora, Indiana.

My wife and I would not have it any other way. Whereas we've had commutes to work in the past that were as long as an hour, now our commute is only sixteen steps. Convenient. When its snowing outside, or below freezing, I used to hate the time it took to thaw out and warm up the car in the dark to get to work.  Now, I just let it sit- if I have to go somewhere, I can usually wait until the sun is up.

Some couples like to get out of the house for work so they can have their "own" lives apart from each other.  Me, the only life I want is shared with my bride- we've spent nearly 24-7 together for most of the past eleven years and it just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter.  Living here, working together here, is the only life for me.

And we've got a full-service quality coffee bar just downstairs!  They let us sit there and drink our cappuccino in the morning in bathrobes and bare feet (well, before the store is opened to the public anyway.)

I probably isn't the life for everyone, but it certainly beats having a job for us. 

Of course, you don't make any money at this like you do with an actual job, but money is overrated anyway. My Navy retired pay covers the basics.  So we do this at the Smelly Gourmet for love- of the lifestyle, our little pre-civil-war village, interaction with our customers, and time with each other.