Price increase day

First off, thanks for the helpful comments on my last post. As you can tell I was "having a moment", probably more a result of living with chronic pain than anything psychological. I always have to remind myself that you don't have to just put up with pain, that you really can get proactive and find solutions. It's just a holdover from my odd childhood that pain is just to be borne in silence.

So I took your advice and went out and got a new type of pacifier and broke out the Colic Calm gas drops, with mixed results. I did have somewhat of a more relaxed evening - he did like the new paci (and boy what a relief it wasn't my nipples he was chomping!) but I have to hold it on his mouth because it keeps falling out. And I'm not sure the gas drops really did anything, although I'll continue to experiment with that. Still it feels good to at least try for solutions, and not having my boobs used as pacifiers all night meant they hurt a lot less. I have no intention of giving up breastfeeding - it's working, so I'll keep doing it. But it would be great to have less (or no) pain!

Today is my price increase day, which means the last few days have been a mad rush of my event attendees getting their online registrations in before the price goes up at midnight tonight. So it's a lot of emails and phone calls from people making their last bid for a freebie or special discount before they get stuck paying a higher rate - in other words, a lot of people hitting me up for things I don't want to do, and I have to answer them otherwise they'll accuse me of holding out until the price goes up and they're stuck paying an extra $20. Then there's the people who just can't figure out my (or any) website, or people who can't get PayPal to work, etc. Customer service!

I would say all of the annoyance part is tempered by all the money I'm making, but in fact I had a bit of a shock the other day when I realized my calculations were off and I was not in fact ahead of last year, but behind. Unless I manage to make $29,000 in the next twelve hours I will officially be having an even suckier year than last year, and this being my big fifteen year anniversary that was supposed to bring in a ton more people, makes it even more pathetic. Now I could get a big rush next month so I don't want to jump the gun with my negativity, but right now it's not looking too good, and it is definitely adding to my general stress. So you want to run a dance camp for a living and be a choice mom, huh?

I say all of this with a wink. It's really ok. If I survived last year with all the fertility costs and hospital costs and am not in debt, then I must be doing something right. And right now I'm pumping and got two 2.5 oz bottles and the baby isn't crying yet. Bam!