The good news, and the bad news.

The good news, and the bad news.

First off, the good news is that I’ve had a brilliant idea, and today was day one of implementation. Brilliant might be a stretch, but I took the best part of November, and made it part of December.   Every year, on November 1^st and December 1^st we get out our Thanksgiving tree and Advent tree respectively, and hang those suckers prominently on the wall. This was my younger, more ambitious parenting-self that bought these big felt trees years ago at Pottery Barn.

Anyway, for Thanksgiving the tree has a pouch for each day counting down to Thanksgiving, and each day the kids write a thing they are “thankful” for on a little card and put it in the tree. Then on Thanksgiving day, we read them out loud during dinner. It’s one of my favorite traditions.

So this year as I hung up the advent tree with the little pockets that the kids were already requesting certain candies go into, I hatched this new idea. Each day the kids have to put some real thought into doing something “thoughtful” or “kind” for someone (other than themselves…I felt the necessity to note this specifically to them because they would have taken advantage of the lack of clarity). They write down the act of kindness done in the day (for example, yesterday they each did one and put it in the pouch for the 1^st), and then I swap the notes of kindness with a treat of some kind.  Today I swapped it for these cute jelly bean challenge boxes (where you get two of each color but half are super gross flavors like grass and armpit…ok, maybe not armpit, but other gross stuff).   Two of them, and they will remain nameless (but you can guess) actually complained that this treat was a little sucky because who wants to eat grass? So, MY KINDNESS of the day is to look past their ungrateful attitudes and do this again tomorrow.

So that’s the good.

Now the bad. I took my passport picture the other day…because mine expires shortly and the thought of not being able to flee the country leaves me feeling unsettled and vulnrable. So I went into Triple A and got a picture. It was horrible. Well, not horrible, but I looked at it and though, “eh, really??” I was bummed that my $16 produced nothing better. My hair was sort of messy, there was a weird shadow that made it look like I had face makeup on and then stopped short of my eye (which wasn’t in fact the case). Overall, I was thinking “no can do, this is not acceptable.” So what did I do? I wasted ANOTHER $16 (and this time I went somewhere else because I was too embarrassed to go to the same place). This time I did my hair, did my makeup…I felt like I looked pretty darn good. Then I got the picture. WHAT the WHAT?? It sucked. Even harder.  Really? Really.

So there you go. Shameful. I wasted $32, have two sucky pictures, and am seriously considering doing a third set except that I think that might make me totally crazy AND vain. Yet I’d be lying to say I wasn’t thinking about it. Let’s put it this way…my passport renewal application is still in the car…jury is still out on what happens next.