The days are loooong. The weeks seem tremendously arduous but yet here we are, past the middle of July, the year past half over, careening into August and it’s schedule of camp, camp, sports camp, start of school, labor day, and then I’m three weeks away from starting my fall photo sessions at the end of September. Yet getting there is going to take forever.
Swim team has sucked all the life out of me between driving two kids between practices and coaching and teaching duties, plus I shoot every meet for what becomes an end of year slide show and album where parents can download images for a small fee that goes mostly back to the team.
I photographed three swim teams this year. One I have finished the accounting and all that and OMG nightmare. I did my online forms and payment which worked amazing this spring with the handful of schools I do. Magical even! Then with swimteams, I have parents who order prints but then didn’t show for pics. Or were there for the team pic but their swimmer “forgot” about the individuals. Or showed up for individuals but parents didn’t do an order. I have had to chase down so many people and give refunds for about 10% of orders due to people not showing up. It’s really frustrating. Is it just this team?
Then for the 2nd team, which I think is in much better shape but still I have to track down a couple of people to refund them for swimmers who didn’t show, fedex lost my print order. Says it was delivered but it wasn’t. Wasn’t at the front door or back door or kitchen door. Wasn’t at any of the neighbors, wasn’t in the bushes. Crappy driver? Porch pirates? Thankfully because I filed a missing package complaint with fedex the lab is reprinting the entire gigantic order. Phew. But now they won’t be here for the banquet saturday as originally planned.
And thanks to all that I’m terrified to do the accounting and look at the order forms for the 3rd team. Am I going to find a whole bunch of people who fucked up again? Am I going to spend hours I wasn’t planning on spending doing administrative stuff for this group instead of just editing and ordering? Super freaking annoying. I thought my online order forms and all that was going to make life easier and honestly it’s just a different kind of hard.
On top of all that life is just really hard. It’s been 2.5 months since the husband went back to work in an office full time and that feeling of being a single mother monday-friday is back with a vengeance. If only for missing having a second taxi driver in the house so I’m not the only one going back and forth. I have a mosaic I HAVE to finish by saturday so I can grout sunday. When it’s going to be 100 degrees out of course. That’s so it can sit for 24 hours to cure and then get delivered to it’s new home on tuesday.
I’m like a steak that’s left on the grill so long it’s a little charred, a little tough, and well done. No moist tender bits left here; all hardened spirits and exhausted lumps with no life left. I felt like the summer started off behind and I have yet to get caught up and wonder if I ever will. I may put my foot down and say no to new clients this fall. Unless we’ve already spoken and you’ve gotten your name on my list then oh well. I can’t say no to my old clients whom I love and for whom make this job enjoyable every year. I can’t even be bothered to put tags on this post and gussy up the SEO shit. There’s so much else to do. We need to finish cleaning out the girls rooms. And the kitchen needs a deep clean like nobodys business. And no one helps and no one cares but me it feels like. And it’s hard to get motivated when a little chip at the big to-do list just doesn’t make a dent.
*sigh*
And yet I trudge on. Like so many of us entrepreneurial parents do. Right now I’mma gonna trudge on up to bed as I can barely keep my eyes open. First swim run is at 7:15 and thank god it’s friday and they feed the kids pancakes after. One less meal for me to worry about.