A rough "one, two" (and a bit of a rabbit trail to start off)

My Beloved and I are doing family portraits for our church's directory. We've never done anything quite like it before (mass portraits, setting up and doing family after family after family). It's very different from the specialized on location photography we usually do, but when the time came to look at doing a new church directory, we couldn't help ourselves. No one was happy with the company (I'm not naming names here) who did our last directory and portraits. While the directory was fine, the portraits were only so so (My Beloved and I didn't even take the free 8x10 allowed us... it was that bad!) and the sales pressure was too high. With that and the knowledge that we have the ability and equipment to do something like this ourselves, we set in motion to figure out the details.

It's been a lot of fun! There are probably 100 families in our church, and though we did know a lot of them before, it was nice to put faces with names on many of the new families to join us these past couple years. We always try to be low pressure when it comes time to sales, so that wasn't going to be a problem, but in addition to that, we decided to do things a bit differently than normal. I drew up a new pricing sheet, with prices different than normal. We wanted to be a blessing and ministry to the families in our church. We don't usually charge normal prices when photographing people from our church anyway. Then in addition to that, My Beloved decided he wanted any profit (over and above the costs of printing portraits and buying the directories) to go back to the church, toward our Faith Promise (paying our loan for the new building).

I'll have to keep you posted on how that one goes. We were thinking that it would sure be nice to be able to put a big hunk of change toward that. Maybe $1000 or something. We should know in the next few weeks what it will be.

Anyway... on to the "one, two" part of this post. Saturday, we finished up several hours of picture taking and had just begun tearing down our whole set up when I started feeling a bit light headed. Not quite dizzy... not quite head spinning... but weak and... well, like I needed to sit down. So I did just that. I saw no reason why it wouldn't pass after a moment, but when it didn't and I started feeling more tired, I told My Beloved I wasn't feeling well. I didn't want him thinking I was shirking my responsibility and leaving all the clean up work for him. By the time all the gear was loaded up, I didn't even feel like I could carry Sweet Pea out to the car. I was pretty hungry and thirsty... we were hoping maybe that was the cause... maybe a low blood sugar thing.

I'll spare you a few details... by the afternoon I had a fever of 102.7 and was freezing cold. By evening I was burning up... through the night I was aware of myself every moment waking all the way up periodically for a drink of water (yeah... I hate nights like that... no rest there) and very sweaty! Sunday morning My Beloved (who also got no sleep because I got no sleep) slept on the couch opposite where I was "watching" the children play with my eyes closed. Thankfully My Beloved was back to himself by afternoon, so there was someone to take care of us. By evening my fever was almost gone and I felt only mildly better. Around this time abdominal pains and some other ickiness started. (that's the "two" in the "one, two" punch I got this weekend.)

Well... this morning my fever was gone, though I still have many of the sensations of a fever... my stomach hurts (though I'm hoping that eating something will help that, I haven't eaten much in the last 48 hours) and I could lay down and never get up again!

So why am I not napping??? It's easier to police naptime (another matter for another day) when I don't have to talk myself into leaving the comfort of my warm cozy couch to walk back and make sure Tornado is still in his toddler bed... again!

Something to be thankful for in all this? My children are really very good about entertaining themselves. Sunday morning, while My Beloved and I collapsed on the couch wondering who was going to come take care of us, Tornado and Sweet Pea played wonderfully... needing only a couple guiding suggestions. Couldn't have done it without them! OH... and Tornado cleaned up all by himself... all I had to do was sit there and tell him what to "go get". Wonderful!

Labels: As it happens...

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 3:35 PM