When life gives you lemons...

I pride myself on being a positive person but man, I have been tested lately. Between legal/business issues on the backend (which have been resolved, woo hoo!), the looming CPSIA legislature, and the death of beloved laptop and loss of all my data... it's been long, rough start to 2009. But I continue to remind myself of a quote by Maya Angelou: “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

So score one for persistence because yesterday, by the grace of God, the CPSC granted a one year stay of testing and certification requirements for certain products. In a nutshell this means I will be able to continue to make children's products (that are known to not contain lead) without the looming fear of prosecution or incarceration.

"The action taken today provides breathing space to get in place some of the rules needed for implementation, but it should not be viewed as a full solution to the many problems that have been raised." —U.S. Consumer product Safety Commission

This is really great news for small business owners like myself who do not have the resources to pay for the testing/certification of children's clothing. I am also focusing on the 20% chance that some of my data may be recoverable from my laptop. It's still in the morgue but I got call from the IT guy at 5:30 last night who said he opened her up and the platter isn't completely scratched on the hard drive. He said success rate in this situation on this particular model is about 20% so I am going to take those odds. He's looking for a donor drive out there (essentially, my hard drive has mere days to live and it's on the top of the organ donor list; if they can find a match they can attempt to operate). So fingers crossed that things continue to look up next week...