Some days, the three of us have great days. The kids get an educational - or at least engaging - activity or two, the house stays reasonably clean, dinner gets made, and no one loses an eye. And some days, days like today, I wonder what the hell I was thinking replacing my blessed daycare lady with...me. Sure, I am technically the mother, but we're living in a world of outsourcing. Why do what I can pay someone else a subpar wage to do? It's worked wonders for corporate America's bottom line.
Anyway, I digress. Actually, I was feeling a bit smug this morning when we left the house at 8:50 am. I had recently recieved an email from Portrait Simple saying if you brought your kids in for thier christmas pictures before September 30th, you would get 50% off your christmas cards. Well, sign me up for that, right? So I was actually congratulating myself as we headed out the door on being a together enough mom that I was actually getting my Christmas cards made...in September! and at 50% off! look at me, mom of the year.
Oh, how we all did laugh.
The pictures were a flop. After 45 minutes of trying to pig wrestle my two (adorable, by the way, but you'd never know it from the photos) kids into some semblance of a passable photo, I gave up. The pictures are actually hysterically funny in their bad-ness. you can check them out yourself at portraitsimple.com (online portraits, search cox, password is 2803). I think I'm going to go ahead and order that one you see mocked up as a holiday card - I think if you can't get a great picture, the only thing to do is to send a flat-out AWFUL picture...sort of a go big or go home holiday card ethos. But the amount of time and trouble the whole endeavor took left me needing a drink by 11.
After the pictures, I decided to head over to watertown to return some shelving for the playroom I had bought from Target the day before. I had bought some shelves for the playroom downstairs - the toys are out of control and we have only an old 3 drawer dresser to contain them - but Andy didn't like it and thought we should get one he saw at Ikea instead. So, fair enough, I troop all the way back to watertown to return them. The dang thing weighs a TON, and I had both kids to wrangle as well, so when I ever finally get all three of us plus the shelving system up to the service desk to find out that somehow I didn't have the recipt....so, moving on. let's say I was annoyed, yes?
Heading back home, now about noon, I get caught in some god-awful construction on arsenal street and end up spending 25 minutes sitting in traffic cursing fate. Normally, Owen would be interested enough in the digger activity to distract him from the car not moving, but he was starving and had to pee. Elias also, (I think, he can't talk) was starving. Either way, I was treated to a meltdown in stereo.
Driving back up Galen street, I pulled into the parking lot of a Bertuccis. I can still save this day, I thought to myself. I'll bring the boys out to lunch, everyone will pee and then we'll head home for a better afternoon. Well, remember the part about the kids having their pictures taken this morning? right. So what were they wearing? right. Matching white button down shirts. NEW. Matching. White. shirts. Bertuccis = pizza place. You do the math.
Feeling duly chastised by the universe, I brought the kids back out to the car.
Which doesn't start.
Yep. Dead battery. Oh, did I mention it was raining? And that I didn't have ths stroller in the car? So we had to walk to a nearby garage (thank God we were relatively near to one) and present our damp, sorry butts to the mechanics there to ask for assitance. After a jump and an assurance that I needed a new battery posthaste, we were finally on our way home.
hubris. It'll get you every time.
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