A little glimpse of success in this parenting thing

Matt and I take turns waking up in the morning with Lennon. Today was my day to take morning duty. When he started crying at 5:30am (poor kid pooped his pants) my first reaction was "Noooo!" And then I realized there was poop involved and my reaction changed to "Fuuuuuuck!" We ate some breakfast and then I turned on the TV and naturally, because I'm a good mom, I picked Wayne's World for us to watch. 

Then this happened:

Lennon asked for me to pick him up (asking = hands making grabby motions) and he sat down in my lap on the couch. After a few minutes, he scooted off my lap and laid down on the couch. I laid down next to him, put my arms around his adorable little body, and we cuddled and watched TV. It was the first time he's ever done that. It was one of the best moments of my life. 

Resolutions

I'm working on a few new resolutions in conjunction with the new year and new job. I feel like I really need to work on my communication skills. In business, I'm terrible about answering emails in a timely manner and I am turrrrible (say that in a Cleveland voice) about answering voicemails. I freaking hate voicemails. I need emails so I have written documents for sessions and weddings. Working things out over the phone leaves way too much room for someone to forget something. (Someone = me.) And when someone emails me and then immediately leaves me a voicemail to say that they've emailed me... Well, you're going straight into the trash folder. Those people are high maintenance and usually cause problems so I ignore them.

See? Major communication issues.

And in my personal life I'm even worse. My friends aren't going to give me a bad review on WeddingWire if I don't answer their emails right away so I usually flag them for "later" and then forget about it for 3 weeks. And then it seems too late to answer without looking like a jerk, so I just let it sit there and make me feel guilty. I'm bad about texting too. My parents, sister and husband are the only people who are guaranteed to get return texts. I'm just a flake and I'm bad at relationships. Always have been. I'm a lifelong loner and retaining friendships over long periods of time isn't an easy thing for me. I don't fall out of like with my friends. We don't fight. Nothing goes wrong. The only explanation is that part of me simply doesn't care. It doesn't really bother me to be isolated from people so I let my friends sort of drift away without making any attempt to keep them. It's a pretty shitty personal trait.

Other resolutions:

Stop shopping - Even though I'm buying a new couch today.
Take a vacation - The goal is Iceland but the reality is Minneapolis.
Work out bigger business goals for 2013 - I'm starting to think about finding my own studio.

Finally. 2012.

Hey ole blog! So, here's what's been going on:

My plan to quit my job in March 2012 got bumped up when I had a complete meltdown in October and decided to leave work at Thanksgiving. Best. Decision. Ever. Between the wedding album orders rolling in, all my fall weddings, and families getting photos done for the holidays, I was working at least 60 hours a week. It took until Christmas to catch up on everything.

And then Christmas happened. Or rather Day of Epic Disappointment happened. The plan was to host Christmas with my family for the first time ever so I went a little crazy. I bought holiday plates, table cloths, decorations for the house, $200 worth of food... And then I spent Christmas day hunched over the toilet. My family couldn't come over because my grandparents are in their 90s and can't afford being sick. I crawled out of the bathroom to watch Lennon open his presents and then I went back to bed and slept until December 26th. Wouldn't you know it, the next day I was totally fine.

I'm more than ready for the holidays to be over. It really feels like my new life is starting in 2012. There's no office to go back to, no shitty career that I don't like. When I go to a wedding, it feels like I'm going to work. I go and I work my ass off and I bring home a paycheck. It's good stuff.

$600

I spent $600 today on an advertisement for my business. Six hundred freakin dollars. I would love to have spent that money on a bunch of stuff from Fossil that I'm freaking out over... but instead I spent it on a featured ad on a wedding website.

Sigh.

This is what it's like to run a business.

I can add up my contracts for next year and say, ok, I'm going to make $50,000 next year. (That's just a number I made up.) But "me" making $50,000 and "my business" making $50,000 are totally different things. There is a surprising amount of overhead to running any business. For me, I pay a monthly lease, a monthly vendor listing on a wedding site, shipping costs, album and printing costs, office supplies, camera/new lighting equipment, second shooter payments... It's insane. Of all the money I've made off this business this year, I've spent $14,000 on getting it up and running to the point where I will be able to make money off of it in 2012.

It's just so strange to have woken up this morning and spent $600 like it was nothing. With any luck, the advertisement will make my money back in bookings, but it's still such a lot of money.

Not the good kind of high

Turns out I have high cholesterol. How awesome is that? It's gone up 27 points in the last four years. I'm not an expert on these matters, but I don't think that's a good thing. Right now I'm in the "elevated" range of 200-240. If it keeps rising at the current rate, I'll be in the 240+ "high-risk" range by the time I'm 31. I think the biggest factor affecting my cholesterol level is genetics. My mom's family has some crazy cholesterol happening over there. If genetics are negatively effecting my cholesterol, there's really not a whole lot I can do about it.

The other factor in cholesterol levels is, of course, weight, diet and exercise. Now. I'm not much of an exerciser these days, so the obvious solution to that is - more exercise. But diet? Do you know the foods that are contributors to high cholesterol? Meats, cheeses, butter, baked goods, packaged snacks like crackers and chips, shrimp, full fat dairy… So, basically all the good ones. I'm going to try to cut out beef and pork and a lot of the cheese I eat. At home we're going to do a mostly vegetarian diet with fish and chicken added in occasionally. We've been cooking a lot of curry and bean based dishes lately, so I don't think it will be that big of a deal. I'm going to miss bacon though. Bacon is so fucking good. Turkey bacon and veggie bacon are a joke. I don't know who came up with that stuff and thought, "Oh ya, people will never miss the real thing."

Bacon and my mother are probably equally responsible for my cholesterol.

Feeling Sucky

I returned a batch of wedding photos to a client and I'm afraid that she doesn't like them. She responded to my email with a question and nothing to the effect of "I like these." I'm insecure here, folks. If you don't tell me you like your photos, I assume you hate them and that you're going to bash me on an internet forum somewhere. I constantly live in fear of ruining peoples' weddings and getting destroyed by online ratings. Fuck, the life of a wedding photographer is so glamourous.

Matt also left today for Texas. I'm bummed out because he's going down there to play at a surprise birthday party for friends of the family. I used to work with both of them and have known them for probably seven years so I'm a little disappointed that he gets to go and I'm staying home. Stupid responsibilities.

On top of that, I have actual work to do at my 8-5 job and I've been in a total rage all week over it. I'm learning this new IT platform and it totally blows. I hate the internet. Wait, correction. I hate building things on the internet. I hate design work. I hate HTML. I hate sitting at a desk.

Oh, and I keep thinking it's Friday. Which it's not.

I think this is just one of those weeks where life sucks and hopefully beer and sleeping in this weekend will fix it.

Catch Up!

Lennon was on Offbeat Mama last week.

I have missed a lot of that boy lately. Between May and June I had nine weddings and they kicked my ass into the ground. I got everything edited and ready to return and no one hated their photos. Everyone actually liked them. I couldn't believe it. So, now I have a bit of a lull in work until August weddings start approaching the late mark. That means I get to be a real person again and spend time with my family and blog for non-self-promotional reasons. I have 24 weddings booked next year, which unfortunately is not enough to meet our income needs. I'm confident I can book 10 more to cover all the bills... but it would be so much easier if I just raised my prices $1000 a wedding. Every bride in Omaha is finding me though some "Budget Brides" member board over at The Knot. I would like to personally thank whoever started that thread because she's keeping me in business. As of April 2012 I will no longer be working my 8-5 job. I'm quitting on my five year anniversary. How fitting! My 401K will be fully vested, wedding season will start the following weekend, and I don't see the need to stay one day longer than is necessary.

I started shooting with another photographer and she's beyond awesome. She's only doing one wedding a month with me right now, but next year she's going to shoot almost all weddings with me. I'm so relieved. She makes the wedding day go so much smoother. And I have someone to complain to. The only snag at our first wedding was she left early because the wedding ran over on time, and then they started the first dance while I was in the bathroom. Seriously. It was the first time I took a break to pee in over six hours and I miss the first three minutes of their dance. (These are the types of complaints I have. Majorly interesting stuff.)

We've done some work around the house. We made-over our bedroom, got new windows, and swapped out some furniture in the living-room with things that Lennon can't gash his sweet noggin on. We also bought a new bed for the guest room since my studio equipment is being moved out and we're actually having a guest come stay with us. So, that's up next. When all the rooms are done I want to do a house tour and submit it to Offbeat Home. I would send it to Apartment Therapy but I think my house is a little too low-brow for that site. People on there say mean things when they don't like your coffee table. Going back to the windows - those damn things cost us over $7000 to replace. 16 windows cost $6700, then we had to pay another $500 because the current windows tested positive for lead. While I'm happy to not be living in a drafty, lead infested house, I'm not happy to have just dropped a staggering amount of money on something so not fun. Being an adult blows sometimes.

I'm continuing to make poor clothing choices. Including but not limited to: platforms so tall I can't walk or drive in them (but my legs look gorgeous), red high-waisted shorts, ultra-high waisted 70s jeans, wide leg pants that some lady thought were pajamas, a John Lennon tunic tee that says "WAR IS OVER," and a shiny lime green pencil skirt. I was on the look out for a jumpsuit but couldn't find one I liked. Which is probably for the better. I've given up trying to have a definable style and now I just dress like a kook. My favorite fashion related spots are ModCloth and Bleubird Vintage