Family Pictures

It was soon after I woke up that everything went to hell.  We had decided not to put anything on the children, clothes-wise, until we absolutely had to, because it was family picture day.  We had an appointment at 12:15, and so were trying to eat a late breakfast, hoping to hold off lunch until after the photo shoot.  Nudey Ruby had a banana and baby Edward had milk.  Simone was putting Ruby in her tights when I shouted “Wait!  She hasn’t brushed her teeth yet!”

“Well, I’m not stopping now, we’ve got one leg in!”  Ruby came trotting over to me wearing only her tights, ready for teeth brushing as the baby attempted to set the world drooling record on the couch.  At the end, frothy toothpaste was everywhere, just as I had imagined, so we cleaned up and Ruby went back to Mom to get her dress on.  I was trying to get Edward ready to go when Simone called out from Ruby’s room “Did you print the coupon?”

Of course I had not printed the coupon, so I left Edward half ready and ran to the computer to find the precious 40% off that made the whole day possible.  Ruby appeared at this point in her dress, ready to get her coat on.  The coupon printed, as we headed over to the door to get Ruby’s shoes.  “Which shoes is she wearing?” I asked.

“The black ones,” said my wife, in a tone that indicated I should not be asking questions I should already know the answer to.  “Have you seen my black sweater?”  I had not seen her black sweater, and at this point I was in a frantic search for the black shoes.  I found one pretty easily, because it had just been thrown at me by my wife, but the other one was nowhere to be found.  It was as I was lying on the floor, straining my arm to reach under the bench, hearing crashing and cursing coming from the bedroom, that I started laughing at the absurd irony of it all.  I didn’t need to be stressed about this, I was just living a classic harried parent picture day stereotype.  I got Ruby’s coat on, got Edward’s coat on, and started looking for both the shoe and the sweater.

It wasn’t long before I stopped laughing, because now we were behind schedule and neither the shoe nor the sweater appeared to be anywhere in the house.  “Hey,” shouted Ruby, “Edward found my shoe!”  What was this?  Oh yes, the baby somehow was lying on the floor, ignored by all, and he was pointing at Ruby’s other shoe.  A holiday miracle if I ever saw one.  Simone found a different sweater, everyone was dressed, except for Edward who was going to be dressed at the last possible second for security purposes, and we headed out the door and into the car.

We were about ten minutes past the point of no return when Simone asked me “Did you remember the coupon?”

The lady in front of me at The UPS Store was possibly the oldest, slowest person I have ever seen standing upright.  She counted out her payment in nickels and pennies (I am not kidding about this) and it seemed like hours until I got up to the counter and asked if I could get online to print out a coupon.  It took me about seven seconds, and it cost me exactly seven cents.  I rushed back out to the car, coupon in hand, as Ruby loudly sang a mash-up of “Jingle Bells” and “Old McDonald Had a Farm” for the twenty third time.

We made it to the studio at 12:10, starving, frazzled and frizzy.  Ruby refused to let anyone touch her hair with a brush, Edward needed a diaper and was still not dressed, and Simone and I were at the end of our ropes.  But we worked our parenting magic, and by 12:15 everyone was ready and looking angelic.  I walked in and announced our presence proudly.  The photographer just looked at me blankly and said “Yeah, well those people over there are the 12:00, and we haven’t even gotten to them yet.  It’s going to be 30 minutes to an hour until we get to you.  Do you have a cell phone number?”

We managed to keep ourselves occupied in the toy department for a long time, but Ruby’s Christmas list has gotten a lot longer.  The photo shoot finally started around 1:00 and when we were done around 1:15 or 1:20 the photographer said, in the interest of time and fairness, that she was going to shoot the 12:30 people, and if we could come back in 15-20 minutes we could choose which photos we liked and all that.  I think it was right around that time that my brain completely melted.  Candy and potato chips for everyone!  We sat on the floor of the K-Mart eating pringles and combos and candy bars, having lost the will to look good, and wishing it was lunch time.

We choose our shots pretty quickly, and decided to head to one of our favorite lunch spots for the best Cuban pork sandwiches on the planet.  We got there at 2:00.  For some reason our sandwiches were not ready for another 35 minutes, and I have to say, even after everything we had been through, these 35 minutes were the hardest.  We were all starving, exhausted, and confused.  There was no one else in the deli!  How long did it take to make three sandwiches?!  And the kicker was, when they finally arrived, the sandwiches were nothing like we remembered.  The bread was different, the ingredients were not the same, and I basically wanted to start crying.  But I stayed strong and ate my sandwich in sad silence, trying to remember the hilarious irony that I had felt earlier.

We are going to pick up our pictures in two weeks, because apparently that’s how long it takes to print digital pictures these days.  They’d better be worth it is all I’m saying.