It was a leg-scalding kind of day.

Punky met Santa today. I wish I could provide you pictures to show the sheer cuteness of the moment (rather than being terrified, she was baffled by Santa's [real] beard), unfortunately, we presently don't have any.

It was a bad trip.

Here, I'll tell you.

After much debate, A. and I finally came to the conclusion that we really should take Punky to see Santa, being her first Christmas. She's generally pretty sunny with strangers, rather than pictures like the one I google-searched and posted (again -- not my kid in that picture), so what the heck. Let's do it.

We agreed to take her on Sunday, A.'s day off, first thing as soon as the mall opened to beat the lines. All was well until Sunday morning rolled around. First, someone at A.'s record store no-call-no-showed (apparently such thing is wont to happen when you hire 17-year-old stoners, whose integrity and basic work morale is surprisingly low). Being Christmastime, it is not a time to be short an employee, so A. realized he was going to have to go in and work.

I was not doing this bullshit without him. Oh hell no.

So I was already pissed, disappointed, sad, whatever. But alas! A. said we could go now before the line got long, get it over with, and he would go to work. Okay, that's great. Unfortunately, there's been a fabulous accumulation of ice here in the middle of BFE, and my car was coated in about a solid foot of ice. Try as I did to scrape it, defrost it, etc. -- it wasn't moving. It would take a good half hour of scraping and defrosting in the subzero windchill to get this car road-safe. And we didn't have half an hour. So A. had to go to work, and Santa was put on hold.

I was so frustrated by this that what ensued was me going completely PRIMAL, sheer rage on the windshield with my little $1 scraper, and I ultimately broke the scraper and slashed my hand in my fit of rage. Sometimes Mommy just needs a release, kids.

Then after he left, I decided I was sick of all the ice, and in my sheer brilliance, decided to boil a pot of water to dump on the windshield. THAT will melt the ice! God, I am SO FREAKING SMART! So I boiled a huge pot of water. I carried it carefully to the porch. I carefully, so carefully started down the porch steps, and...

WHOOSH!

My feet go flying out from under me, and in a strange singular motion, I dumped the pot of scalding water on my legs and slid down the steps flat on my ass with my feet over my head... all the while SCREAMING at the scalding hot water on my legs, and the only thing I could think to do was throw myself into the snow and thrash violently to make my legs stop burning.

Yeah. It was THAT kind of day.

Eventually, A. was able to get out of work, and came home. It was then we decided to resume our plan to see Santa at the mall. We arrived just in time to realize Santa had left to go on his hour lunch. So we wandered the mall... on the weekend before Christmas... for an hour. Did I mention that we hate crowds, people, and generally being outside the house? We're not social animals, my husband and I. Finally we made it in time to get in a half hour wait line to see Santa. And we waited.

We humored the baby, we juggled her, we danced with her, I got into a passive-aggressive fight with people who thought that if you put your THINGS in line, that counts as BEING in line (it doesn't, and you're a bitch, and your punishment is looking the way you do after three kids because if my ass was that big, DAMN, I'd kill myself). Finally we got to the front of the line and were met with a poster advertising picture packages.

"Hold up," I said, remembering the dozens of Santa's lap polaroids in my parents' photo albums. "You have to actually pay for pictures?"

You do, it turns out. An insane amount. Like, $15 for a 5x7 and that's the cheapest one.

Fuck that noise.

That's when I noticed parents taking pictures with their digital camera.

"Did you bring your camera?" A. asked.

"No. I thought we'd get a free polaroid or something. That's how they always did it." (Apparently they don't even make polaroids anymore. Whatever, I never leave the house, how the hell am I supposed to know this?)

I wasn't going to spend $15 on a goddamn picture. No. I'm not.

So after 1 hour and 45 minutes of waiting, Punky met Santa for the first time, gazed in wonder at his beard and then smiled and giggled happily, and this is the best I have to document the entire debacle, courtesy of A.'s cell phone (yeah, we were THOSE people):


Fuck it. I'll dress her in the same outfit and go back tomorrow with my camera.