A couple of weekends ago we all got dressed up, relatively speaking, to have Cat Palmer take our family portraits. First, I say “relatively” speaking because Marlo refuses to wear dresses anymore unless it’s for a sacred occasion. Like Halloween:
Leta will wear a dress to a dance at school, but that kid is so picky about clothing that I refuse to take her shopping. I’ll give her the cash she needs, but I need to be two states away when she’s shopping for clothes to prevent myself from shoving my head through a glass window on purpose. She could spend four hours in one store and come out with NOTHING and that stresses me the fuck out. And it’s fine that I’m writing this, she knows I think this already, and she knows not to take it personally. Because while I’m not normally a claustrophobic person, I am absolutely the most claustrophobic person you’ll ever meet.
SEE: that one time I had a panic attack during an MRI. SEE: I cannot sit in a hot tub for longer than three minutes and do not ever take baths because hot water makes me think I’m being suffocated (I shower very, very efficiently). SEE: I hate wearing long sleeved shirts. You will very rarely catch me wearing an actual sweater in temperatures below freezing. SEE: Department stores, especially clothing stores, make me nervous and twitchy to the point that my throat starts to close and I almost always narrowly escape bankruptcy from passing out and riding in an ambulance to the ER where they will keep me for several days because my blood pressure indicates I’m having one continual stroke.
We needed new photos of all the kids—turns out when you’d like to commission certain gifts for your significant other and he doesn’t have recent photos of his children that can be tricky. Cat fit us into her busy Fall schedule (coincidentally, on a day when I did not feel like I was dying), and we caught the end of the yellow in the trees just in time. Leta and I indulged in having our hair and makeup done, and when she came downstairs before we left and asked if her ripped jeans and Doc Martens were “okay” I asked her if she felt good about herself. When she answered affirmatively I told her she had her answer and added, “You look magnificent.”
