“It’s okay if everyday is not the same way” or “my head will explode” haven’t settled on a title yet

Saturday was one of those days that I look forward to and dread simultaneously. All month I knew I had wrapped myself in a pinch with three important events all happening at the same time. And Francis’ Birthday party at the local Fire Station #5, being the most important, was accidentally scheduled during a major event I had to work at and both events just so happened to also conflict with my Saturday darkroom class that I just started teaching last week. These kinds of days happen to me occasionally and unwinding everything is always nerve racking. On top of everything, this was the first birthday party I had ever arranged. In the past Francis has always celebrated the day with his god brother and a couple other boys. This time we decided to go forward with the joint birthday the only smart decision followed by a series of fumbles.

In order of importance. Fumble one. Combined we sent out forty invitations thinking that no one will show. Bad idea. Never send out forty invitations and think no one will show. This triggered a series of sequential issues. A domino effect. The other issues will all be irrelevant next year, because next year the invites will be e-invites to only five parents. Problem solved and still fun!

This year planning preparations became a bit of a logistical mess when over half of the forty invited RSVP(ed) yes and not just yes but yes and don’t you remember we are a family of 11 and unless you just want us to drop our child off we will all need to attend. And faster than you know it we are planning for 40 x 11 and everything began to get scary! How would we prepare enough food? How many fire hats can we find for cheep? would the fire department enforce the fire code for room capacity? parkinggggg???

On top of the avalanche of attendees,somewhere in there the news kept saying “it’s going to snow”. All month I kept wrapping mind around how this would all shake down. Sub for my class, leave early from the event, order lots of food, ask the fire station about room capacity and on and on until Chris who had been sitting on the sidelines observing said…”we’re never doing this again.” and everyone else began to loose their hearing.

The morning arrived in a rush of getting to work and watching the weather. Finally, as I was driving home from the morning event with 4+ inches of snow, I began listening to Galaxie 500. If you’ve never driven through a snow storm listening to Galaxie 500 alone in the car, it’s a must. At some point the song Another Day came on with the words “it’s okay if everyday is not the same way”. And it all stopped. I was feeling completely relieved hearing those words over and over in my mind. It would all be okay as long as I didn’t crash the car on the un-snowplowed roads, because driving in Florida never taught me how to drive in snow. Getting in the car I had decided to take off my coat thinking, “I’d rather be found without a coat”. Once Another Day came on all of these thoughts subsided and I felt alright.

At this point, I should get to the exchange or non exchange about the weather. We were absolutely not canceling, after already planning and preparing for over forty people. Francis’ god parents had baked at least fifty cupcakes and a four layer cake. I had ordered food for around 100, there was no way snow was stopping us we never even mentioned it. At this point we knew we should have at least two balloons for everyone but now we expected to celebrate alone. When I walked in the door Chris said, “if there’s one more thing, my head is going to explode”. Exactly. And had I crashed the car that would have been the one more thing.

Fortunately, about a third of the families invited braved the weather. The party was a go even with seven inches of snow. And when it was all over, I knew it had been worth every moment of borderline mental breakdown and the chance of Chris’ head exploding.

Today I’m so glad to be in recovery rest mode and that there was not one more thing to make anyone’s head explode. My only chore was to get a decent portrait of the boys to send to Brett Edenton for a commissioned painting. His work is amazing and you can see it on his website.In order to get Francis to cooperate I had to photograph him in his fire fighter outfit first. Since I wasn’t able to get a great shot with the two together Brett might be making a composite using a few pics. I have no idea how he is going to do this.