Personal Concierge

People who run their own home based business as a personal shopper, running errands for other people, are also known as a concierge service. Concierge are the people who work in fancy hotels, making sure the guest have all the extras they need. The concierge would book tours, order them a taxi or a limousine, whatever comes up. It's a wonderful thing to have someone you can count on to help you with the little extras, if you have a lot on your plate, need help and can afford to pay for it.

Photographer

Take photos of people at events. Photograph pets for their owners. Learn a little more about light and shadows then look for work as a professional photographer. You don't need the expense of your own darkroom or developing film now so photography can be a simple home business.

Event Planner

Weddings, family reunions, local business events, there are endless events going on all the time if you track down the sources. Talk to a veteran event planner and see if you can apprentice while you get the hang of things and build your list of contacts and sources for cakes, flowers, party supplies and etc.

Local Newsletter Publisher

Your local area may already have a local newsletter, distributed in stores and other businesses in the area. If so, consider formatting your newsletter online instead. But, gather businesses who want to reach more customers and provide the content to fill the newsletter with news, tips, stories, events, and ads.

Packing and Unpacking Service

Not only can you work with real estate agents to provide a welcome to new people moving into the neighbourhood but you can offer your own service to help people pack to move or unpack when they move into their new house.

Pet Sitter/ Walker

If you like animals offer to pet sit for the evening or a weekend (or longer if you are able to). This may be in your own home or you may come to the home of the animal. If you can, offer extras like pet grooming.

Yard Work

Whether it's raking leaves, shovelling snow, cleaning a pool for Spring... there is always outside yard work to be done.

Internet Services

Building a website is not the job it used to be. These days you can spend some time learning the software and put up a finished site in an hour. Not everyone wants to do this however and those people will pay to have someone do it for them. You can also set up their online portfolio with social media accounts. Offer Internet lessons to teach them how to use social media and update their site too.

Tutoring

What's your best subject? Offer your services to parents with school children who need some extra help and your expertise. English, math, science... but don't forget piano playing, sewing and other skills you have.

Collectibles

The idea isn't to build up a collection for yourself but to find and add to the collections of others. Pick items which you have an interest in and know something about then search for them online, in second hand shops and from other collectors who may want to sell. Connect yourself to people who collect and want what you can find for them.

Graffiti Removal

Here, a local business is told to remove graffiti within a specified amount of days. This is left for the business owner to do and if it is not removed in time the city will fine them. So, graffiti, especially when it continues over time, is a problem and a headache. Watch for the businesses which tend to be hit and offer to clean it up. You could even get a contract to come out weekly and take that headache away for them.

Local Tours

Your town will have something interesting to see. Even if you can't think of anything, there is a reason people are coming to your town. Find it. Offer yourself as tour guide and then... go a bit farther. Offer a walking tour of your town and talk about the history, the paranormal, the UFOs, the ghosts and hauntings. Work with people who run local events, have a bed and breakfast or other tourist related businesses - don't forget great sources like the local library and museum too.

Home Staging

You may not want to clean someone;s house but you could help set up homes for sale. Look at their curb appeal, see what could be touched up and make to look better for the sale inside and outside too.

Personal Chef

Not a caterer who cooks for parties and events, but a personal chef who cooks for a family (or someone alone and needing a specific diet). You do the shopping and cook it too. Preparation could be at your own home but the idea is to serve the food hot in their home.

Clothing Repair

Can you sew? People need cuffs hemmed, buttons sewn on and rips and tears repaired. If you can do alterations add that to your list of services.

Bookkeeping

Even with the software out there to make keeping books easier, someone still needs to pull it all together on a regular basis. You could have a few businesses (even other home businesses) who you visit weekly to gather the paperwork, sort it out and enter it into the system.

Office Plant Maintenance

Find which businesses keep plants and offer your service to maintain them: water, prune them and fertilize.

Elder Care

Seniors living alone need company and help with things like running errands and organizing.

I don't think asking for something is asking for too much. The whole online dating thing seems impossible. I have met men in other ways, at BDSM related events for instance, who actually are sincere and know what they are talking about. Men online looking (claiming to be looking) for BDSM and a Domme are too often liars. They want a fantasy. They do not want a real person to take that away from them.

Anyway, I don't know where else to look at this time. I can't seem to find any one my own age and in a close enough location who is also single and can accept me as I am (not thin or especially fit at this time). So, for now, I am just not going to care about it very much. I've got enough to work on and enough family pushing me to help them too. Not that I mind helping them but it all gets a bit crowded when you are taking on problems that aren't your own as well as those which actually are your own.

Below is another Fetlife profile which I wrote and then deleted. Some day my prince will come... that's my fantasy.

*I actually want to meet a guy interested in D/s IN REALITY. If a man here is about my age and local I will reply. I will not be talking to people who just want to play around online - pretending this is real to them.

I'm a Dragon. Born in the year of the dragon. I'm an INTP.

What does this mean?

I don't like playing games unless they are RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. I also like city building games and I have a soft spot for Carmageddon.

I write adult fiction and non-fiction. Sometimes I get paid for it.

I do not get paid to be anyone's Domme. I take Domming personally. The man I choose to Dom will not be one of the endless do-me trolls. He will also be local enough that we will meet in real time. I don't want to play online and I won't be playing casually.

I'm not looking for a younger man. If you're not 40 at least what do you really think I'm going to do with you? Find someone your own age. I want intelligent conversation with someone who will know what I'm talking about. If you're too young I'm going to have to wait while you look things up on the Internet.

Let's also be clear on the fact that I am not thin, or fit. I'm not very tall but I'm a large woman. I want a large man. No, I'm not talking about your cock. Put it back in your pants and think with your other head. I've already written about wanting someone I can talk to. I also want someone I can enjoy. I don't want a slender guy because I'm used to big guys and smaller guys seem breakable by comparison. That's just how it is.

The man I want must be single. Divorced is fine. I'm ok with the single Dad full time or part time. I'm fairly kid friendly. Lots of practice.

He really should be at least a little nerdy or geeky too. I really like science fiction. I also like history, so he could be a history nerd.

I photograph abandoned places, urban exploration in rural Ontario. I'm interested in a road trip buddy. I'm a great navigator.

I could say the man I want doesn't have to be all of these things, but he does need to have at least the majority of them. Some people will think I'm asking for too much but I'm really not going to be happy with a man who isn't close enough to meet/ date, near my age, single and big (BHM). I don't really see that as asking for a lot.

One last thing, I want a relationship which includes D/s and a variety of fetishes and such. The relationship part is essential. If you just want anything roughly female looking to serve you as a McDomme you should get a blow up doll.*

BookCrossing: Free Books for the Finding (or Trading)

BookCrossing is a free, travelling library around the world, based on one website which started it all in 2001.Finish reading a book, go to the site and get an ID number for your book. Leave a review of the book if you like. Leave the book to be found by someone else, randomly. Or, you can trade with other members of the BookCrossing site. Someone may be looking for a copy of the same book. Whoever gets your book can go to the BookCrossing site, look it up by the ID number, see your review, comments about how you found the book, who gave it to you or why you choose to buy that book for yourself. Then the person who has the book from you reads it, leaves their notes and review and releases the book out into the world for someone else to pick up at an airport, a park bench, a bus stop, or maybe a local meeting of BXing (BookCrossing) people.

You may never have heard of BookCrossing (also BC, BCing or BXing) and that's a shame. BookCrossing is how you can find a book lost out in the wild. A wild book is a special thing, not always so easily found when you are actually looking for it.

However, wild books are not dangerous. They won't bite, or scratch. At most you may get a paper cut through mishandling of the book. Bring a book bag, one you can fasten up for good measure. Books have been known to escape after all, you just found one yourself out in the wild!

What Does a Frequent Book Reader Need?

What gadgets and tools does a book reader need? Some extra light for reading at night. A bookstand - especially nice if you're using a cookbook to follow a recipe. Magnification for those words as they seem to get smaller print every year...

Don't forget the bookmarks! How many different bookmarks have you owned over the years? Better yet, how many different things have you used as bookmarks?!

BookCrossing is for Book Readers

BookCrossing is an international network of free, travelling books. Pick one up and pass it along.

Register a book you have read on the BookCrossing site. You don't need to buy the stickers and other accessories. Just write inside the book cover about BookCorssing, explain the book is free (not lost) and should be passed along to someone else. To register a book you just get an ID number for that book in particular. Now, anyone who picks up that book when you release it into the wide world will be able to go to BookCrossing and add themselves (and a review of the book if they read it) to the information which stays with that book and it's ID number on the site.

Ron Hornbaker began BookCrossing. With the help of Ron's wife, Kaori, and cofounders Bruce & Heather Pedersen, the site was launched on April 21st, 2001.

My Mother never liked Roseanne. She would not even sit and watch one whole episode with us. She thought the show was too rough, too rude and not really funny. I didn’t agree.

It wasn’t easy to look past your own Mother’s point of view and consider she could be wrong, but I saw more to Roseanne and I still enjoy watching the show when I find it coming on in re-runs on television.

It is true, Roseanne was not the sunny, generic situation comedy like so many others which resolved all their issues by the end of the show with a big group hug and boundless innocence filled with optimism. So many TV shows from the 80′s seemed to be created for people who carried a load of fluff in their heads. Reality TV hadn’t been invented yet. (Or if it was, no one would have watched something that unfluffy).

Roseanne was about a real family. Fictional characters but people you felt you could walk outside and meet.

Roseanne was not thin, she didn’t dress in fashionable clothes and her house was not something out of a magazine, though it was clean and usually tidy. Roseanne was about people who didn’t have money, they actually had debt, lost jobs and tried to deal with bill collectors. Roseanne worked in a factory and was harassed by her boss until she quit and then she didn’t have a job for awhile. She wasn’t rescued – she had to fix things herself. Roseanne worked as a waitress but by the last season of the show she was a small business owner and dealing with her Mother as a business partner.

Roseanne and Dan (her husband) were a good couple to watch. They did not have a fairytale romance. They fought but made it work out, by choice. I really loved that here was a TV show where a couple were not mysteriously wealthy without ever seeming to work – they were also not models, fit and slender but they could be happy and have a life together. They could live in the world, with the same problems I was dealing with and make things work.

More than anything else, Roseanne gave me hope for my own life because nothing was perfect in her world either and yet she could be happy and enjoy her life and her family and even (sometimes) her job/ career.

I love scented shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shower gel and all the rest of them. I spend extra to make sure I get better soaps and shampoos so my skin won’t have a problem. This means I’m spending more on them. But, it’s worth it to me. I love the different smells I pick out and I like seeing them all together. When I go in for a shower it’s like choosing which garden flower I want. Though I mainly pick scents like vanilla, mint, peach and orange. But, they are my flowers and every time I shower I feel like I’m treating myself to a little luxury. When I smell the mint, peach or citrus on myself later it gives me some of that feeling back.

So, I like to have a way to keep all my selection organized and stored in a way that I can see them and yet not have them take up too much space. I do have space on the bathroom shelf, with the towels in the linen cupboard. But, I can’t really see them all in there, only the few in front are displayed.

My brother’s girlfriend gave me the wonderful idea of using a shower caddy (as it is sometimes called). She gave me the perfect shower caddy/ shampoo organizer for my birthday one year. I had it for years until I lost the hanging metal part during a move from one place to another. I still had the fabric part with all the pockets so I tucked it away somewhere. I just eventually forgot where. I have been missing the shower caddy for ages.

One day I was poking around, browsing in a department store (in the bathroom section) when I noticed a shoe rack across the aisle in another section. It was full of pockets and meant to be kept over the door, just as my shower caddy had been. But, the clear plastic pockets would not be a great choice for wet shampoo and soap bottles.

But, I was on the trail of an idea and I went looking for shoe organizers which were made of fabric, could be seen through and hung up on the back of a bathroom (or bedroom in my case) door. I found a few which were meant to hang on the shower rod. I don’t want anything extra hanging from the shower rod though – same for the shower head (I’m not messing with the plumbing).

What to look for in a great shower organizer

• It is mesh so the bottles in it will be able to dry and not stink with mildew at some point.
• It looks like it can hold up to the weight of shampoo and soap bottles (not every shoe organizer can).
• I can hang it over the back of my door so it is out of the way and yet visible.
• Also, the pockets look deep and wide enough for bottles versus some which are on the narrow or shallow side.