Apparently, the answer is: as many times as you need to while you figure out who the hell you are.
The Covered Cauldron has changed a lot lately. The website has changed. The collections have changed. The plans have changed. Some days, I have changed my mind three times before breakfast.
I may have even missed my chance to name the store The Three-Headed Dog—which would have been appropriate considering the three dogs, the three dozen ideas in my head, and the fact that every decision seems to require at least three different opinions.
One head for the bakery. One head for the curiosities. One head for whatever random thing I become obsessed with next.
But I am beginning to realize that this is not just a business.
It is a journey back to myself.
For a long time, I worked in a place where I gave everything I had. I cared about the work, the people, and the mission. I showed up, worked hard, solved problems, and tried to make things better.
Then, somehow, I became the person they no longer wanted.
Boys club or not, it hurts. It hurts to realize that the place you poured yourself into can keep moving as if you were never there. I miss my friends. I miss my folks. I miss the lunch rides in the middle of the day—the little escapes where we could laugh, speak freely, and breathe for a few minutes. Those moments meant more to me than anyone probably realized.
Leaving forced me into a strange new chapter. I had to face my health, my exhaustion, my migraines, IIH, fibromyalgia, and what I am personally convinced is adult-onset ADHD. My brain is constantly playing music when nothing is on, while generating approximately 47 ideas per minute and finishing roughly three of them.
And somewhere in all of that noise, I started discovering my inner witch.
Not the pointy-hat, cackling-over-a-cauldron version—although I am not ruling that out. I mean the part of me that knows how to begin again. The part that can take old things, forgotten things, and give them another life. The part that creates warmth, gathers people together, trusts her instincts, and refuses to disappear just because someone else stopped seeing her value.
Maybe this is what I was all along.
Maybe I was never meant to fit neatly into someone else’s workplace, schedule, expectations, or boys club. Maybe I was meant to build something strange, cozy, creative, useful, and completely my own.
That is why the website keeps changing. I am learning as I go. I am trying ideas, changing direction, discovering what feels right, and occasionally staring at a button while wondering what the “A” stands for.
Which reminds me…
Yesterday evening, on the way to Walmart, Katie said, “Yes, I have parking lights, then regular lights.”
George explained that she also had automatic headlights.
Katie, becoming frustrated, said, “NO, I don’t… Is that what the ‘A’ stands for?”
All of us in the car—me, George, and Memere—said, “Yes.”
Katie replied, “I thought it stood for ‘ALL.’”
I fucking died laughing.
And honestly, that is exactly how this new life feels sometimes. I think I understand what I am doing, and then I discover that the mysterious little button I have been ignoring actually stood for something completely obvious.
Maybe The Three-Headed Dog would have been the perfect name after all. One head is trying to run the bakery. One is building the website. One is chasing a completely unrelated idea involving vintage books, haunted furniture, and possibly a new collection.
The Covered Cauldron may not always look exactly the same. Neither do I.
We are both works in progress—fueled by caffeine, stubbornness, creativity, grief, hope, and the occasional song playing mysteriously in the background.
So if you visit the website and something has moved, changed, disappeared, or been renamed, welcome to the process.
I am not lost.
I am becoming.
And somewhere nearby, one of the three heads is probably barking.