I don’t understand a lot of what goes on at home, I just do what I’m told. Sometimes I think Tracey keeps me in the dark on purpose so she can be in charge. I’m okay with that.
That being said, from the moment I heard the two women at daycare swapping chit chat, I knew exactly what it meant – I was in for a hell of a night. We all were.
I didn’t hear everything these ladies said. I didn’t need to. In fact, all I heard were three words.
‘…room photos tomorrow…’
“Bugger,” I muttered.
“…ugga..,” said Miss1.
“Oh, shit,” I said, before I could stop myself (fortunately, she didn’t repeat that one).
The reason I knew my night was shite was because there is nothing more important in the year’s calender than prepping your kids for the official class photo. This is their whole year immortalized in one shot. Everyone one knows that for the rest of their lives these are the photos which come out to haunt them, and you, at birthdays, bar mitzvahs and political rallies.
No, I don’t think so either, but I’m not going to argue about it with Tracey because I like living here.
My best hope for a relaxing evening of Youtube was if Tracey hadn’t got the note saying they were taking the photos.
Wishful thinking.
“Bruce, send them in!” Tracey called from the bathroom when dinner was finished. “Youngest first.”
Sure enough, the sound of a hairdryer was soon reducing me to reading lips.
One by one the kids stepped out, hair shining, and I dressed them for bed. Bedtime in this house is usually 8pm. It flashed past us like it’s bladder was about to burst and the bathroom was at the other end of night.
“Don’t let them near the fridge!” Tracey called from the bathroom at one point. “There’s yoghurt in there.”
It wasn’t until there was only Miss9 left that something finally occurred to me.
“Hey?” I said to Tracey over the sound of the hairdryer. “Why are you scrubbing up all the kids? The photos are at daycare, not school too.”
“I’m not doing the school kids for photos,” Tracey told me. “They’re getting haircuts tomorrow.”
That made less sense to me, not more.
“So you’re telling me you’re getting their hair looking all nice…so they can have it cut off?”
Apparently, Tracey wouldn’t expect me to understand. Thank goodness for that.
When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’ Facebook Page.
’raising a family on little more than laughs’