Camera Shy

I am deathly afraid of family photos.

Not all family photos, just my own... and maybe deathly afraid is a bit strong terminology.  Actually, the photos themselves are just fine.  It's having them taken, or rather - dun dun duhhhhhhh! - what happens once we have them taken.

It goes something like this:

Here I am... at least, add ten inches of hair and subtract twenty years and that's me when I was still single. 

(I just did a drawing for the last post, and I really don't have time to try and recreate a younger version of myself!)

But, of course, that's exactly what I just spent forever doing!  (Notice: I used the photoshop red-eye feature to eliminate my demon eye...)
Enter Husband, and the most photographed day of our lives. (I humoured him and gave him dark brownish hair here, though in my estimation - and I still have quite an eye, as you can see - his hair was black.  Was being the operative word.  Family life has added a few whitish highlights.) The beginning of our family photos...

One month before our first anniversay, enter Firstborn...and goodbye sleep!  Despite that, we couldn't have been happier.  Yet two years later...

       ...a Son!  A beautiful little girl and perfect,baby boy -  ideal right?  But, in the words of the immortal  Dr. Suess, "that is not all, oh no, that is not all!" 

 Another two years and Second Daughter joins the clan, and now we're officially out-numbered - but happy, deliriously happy. Of course, the third child feels like thirty, and I no longer have enough hands to reign in the troups...

Now, you're probably thinking that three children in four years is enough maternal fulfillment for any woman. And you're probably right... except I am not just any woman.  I am Mrs. Overacheiver!  I am in my glory!  Despite being a "mature mother" to begin with - look how fully functioning this old body is, popping out babies, supplying endless nourishment! - it was always my goal to write and illustrate children's books, and here I am being provided with enough fodder to fill a library. 

If only I had the time...

Instead, Baby Girl Three, right on schedule.  Still deliriously happy, blah, blah, blah...


Note:  The above family portrait is merely a simulation of an actual event. I had finally figured out the connection: get photo taken = get pregnant.  Not that I'd trade even one of the messy, little Critters.  I am, after all, their loving Momster.

But I put off having another family photo done.

And put it off...

...and put it off.

In the interim, I drew our family into numerous unfinished maunscripts, and strove to be the most fantabulous stay-at-home mom ever... though I did accidentally kick a hole in the bathroom wall during one Momster Meltdown.  (Better than kicking the cat, right?  Oh, and I fixed the hole all by myself as pennance.)

But then God figured out I was messing around with his system.  He enlisted the whole tri-parish area to recitify the situation with an insidious plan, code-named "New Church Directory".  I had managed to put off the issue of a family photo for over eight years, but now Husband insisted we be included in the pictoral listing.  And being the good Christian wife that I am, I complied.

Now, that wasn't so hard was it?

The following is merely a simulation of an actual event...





An Almost Unhappy Accident

This is what I looked like just a second ago when I hit the wrong key and thought I'd lost everything I'd just written...

I don't know if my heart can take all the excitement.

A Happy Accident

So... why must I be off my rocker?

Because all of the other names I wanted for this blog were already taken.  All of them.  And I had plenty of options, let me tell you!

Okay, I will...

...and that will tell you a little about me.

Momster - Yes, I am a mother.  Five times over as a matter of fact.

Momster Tails (Tales) - I am a mother who likes to tell stories about her children - stories out of school, and in it, and tattles and half-truths.

MomsterChronicles - Yes, believe it or not, there are other mothers out there who think of themselves as momsters.  Whether or not it has anythinything to do with perimenopause, like me, I'm sure I don't know.  (I just realized that I spelled anything like a horse braying or something...but I kinda like it that way.  Sort of reminds me of the three little pigs and their chinny-chin-chins...)

Momst- oh, enough already!  There are no Momster anythinythings left!  Which really does stink because my Critters really do call me that.

Just Ask Me - I didn't really check to see if this one was available, even though it's something I say all the time.  What do I look like, an advice columnist?

Nobody Asked Me - No, I'm more of an op-ed kinda person.

Cynspirations - Ah!  A clue in this one!  But also not available...

Off My Rocker - Okay, so I'm old enough to be a grandma, yet here I am trying to start a writing career while raising a late-in-life bonus baby. I'm definitely off my rocker, no question about it.  But I guess I'm not...

...Alone - If I used this there is no telling what kind of hits I'd be getting, NO THANK YOU!

There were a bunch more, but I've forgotten them in all the excitement of finally stumbling upon a name that wasn't taken. In frustration at how long it was taking to name my new venture, I blurted right out loud, "I really must be off my rocker spending hours I don't have just trying to think up a stupid name!" Then I looked at the little box that I was trying to fill in with a working title, and there it was, all filled in.  Which was purely by accident. Which was purely original, yet very me.  A happy accident.

A Happy Accident...

A Happy Accident -

Aw, man!

Here goes!

I really must be off my rocker if I think I can actually fit blogging into my life!

I mean, I don't even do social networks.  I've seen them consume hours of my teenage daughter's time, much more than homework, and as OCD as I am, I could never go through the day without checking each and every one of my "friends" walls. I can't even keep up with real walls - the ones in my house that is - which despair-itly need my attention.  Repainting the upstairs bathroom has been pretty high on the to-do list for a couple of years now, but after that last February downpour, the hall wall has jumped to top priorty.  That was a month ago... 

I walked down the hall past assorted family photos and there, between sepia toned parents and grinning first-born was what appeared to be a fist-sized water blister - right at eye level.  I poked at it.  It felt like a water blister too. Then I looked up.  Sagging overhead, right where ceiling white met barn-red wall was another hugemungous blister, oozing rainwater. I'm talking it was the size of my face!  I looked back at the smaller blister, directly below the headwaters, and of course I did what any logical person would do.  I moved Mom, Dad and FirstBorn to safety, then pulled a nail out of the wall and popped that bugger!  A stream of rainwater shot out onto the carpet as I tried helplessly to catch it in my cupped hands.  The most I succeeded in doing was spreading out the flow so that the entire carpet was a damp mess and not a concentrated puddle. Carpets dry, so I wasn't too worried, but now instead of a blister I had saggy paint, which looked too much like my saggy jowls for comfort.  And the threat of  another eruption still loomed overhead. 

I moved the remainder of the pictures to safety, which took some time considering the size of our family, and decided to let time and gravity work on the other blister.  Meanwhile, Husband went up on the roof and slathered black goop on the seam around the chimney, which appeared to seal the leak.  A week or so later and the wall was perfectly dry. Unfortunately, The Critters, a.k.a. my children, were as tempted by the loosened paint as I was by the blister, and like a scab, they picked around the edges opening a wound of white drywall. I couldn't blame them - especially since no one fessed up - since every time I walked past I had to fight the urge to pick at it myself.  I tried to rehang the pictures strategically - photoflage, but you know, when you've lived with things in the same spot for so long, it messes with your mind to have them out of place. (I call that funk-schwei.) 

So, now I have to repaint the hall wall.  Oh, and the downstairs bathroom - I just never really liked the color.  But not before I redo the upstairs bathroom, which will happen after I restain the exterior of the house, waterproof the deck, finish the mudroom and lay the rest of the rocks for the path out to the driveway. Yeah, I really don't have time for this blog... but here goes!