The Queen's Rambles

Remind me to never get Christmas portraits so close to Christmas again. The last time I got them done in October, which seems early but who cares? At least there are not five million people waiting for their turn.

The funny thing was, the two people in front of us and the two people behind us were very clear that they were NOT having Christmas pictures done. They were all in to have one year portraits for their little girls. Strange coincidence.

I also found it odd that Erik didn’t want two of the girls to look at him and was being a total pain in the ass, but was really friendly and talking to two of the other girls. This wasn’t even at different times. I don’t understand.

[Total tangent. I may have to go see New Moon. Those werewolves are hot.]

I also don’t understand why they can’t be more organized at the photo place. This was our first time at JC Penny’s. We’ve been to Sears and Wal-Mart and so far the best organized place has been the Wal-Mart in my home town. They had three people working at Pennys. One was the dedicated photographer. The other two were just running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They were both editing pictures, answering the phone and dealing with customers. It felt like they were doing a whole lot of nothing, but maybe they were doing something important. I didn’t understand why one of them didn’t answer the phone and deal with customers and the other one could have done the editing, instead of them both running back and forth all over the place. I was annoyed.

At least Erik was mostly good for the shots and tired hard to smile. Too bad his trying hard always led to that horrible teeth baring thing that little kids do. The photographer tried to get him to laugh naturally, but he was not into her jokes. She kept telling him that he had stinky feet, which totally PISSED him off. Can’t way I blame him. I wouldn’t be laughing if someone told me I had stinky feet.

When we came home, he found a spool of thread and I just couldn’t deal with him so I let him string it all over the house. Sometimes silence is worth the price of clean up.

But then I made a mistake. He got himself trapped, so I had to cut him out of his mess with scissors. I put them away, but I saw him go in the kitchen, climb up the counter and grab the scissors. I watched him snip the threads to bits (at least it will be easy to vacuum them up) and was pretty sure he was going to cut a hole in his shirt. He was wearing a shirt with a giant stain on the front, so I didn’t really care. I probably should have stopped him. That’s what a responsible parent would have done, I suppose. But I didn’t have the energy. I thought he would probably feel it if he cut himself and not do much damage. That’s my only excuse.

Sure enough, he cut a big hole in the shirt. He was really scared to tell me and was expecting me to blow a gasket, so it was a nice surprise for both of us when I calmly told him that’s why he’s not supposed to play with scissors. I need to find a new spot for the scissors.

On the baby front, I have to stop looking at the baby center boards. I’m sure there are intelligent, articulate women who post there. They are rare, though. Most of them are either dumb, ignorant or just plain moronic. I’m really interested in what people are naming their babies because I can’t think of any baby names at all. I need inspiration, but I also need to know what really popular names to avoid (Isabella!). One lady says she is naming her daughter Chagrin. I want to send her a link to a dictionary.