Tracy's Camera - RIP

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Tracy’s Casio EXLIM was put to rest Sunday Aug. 3rd after being thrown over ten feet in the air (and then bouncing and sliding another 4-5 feet) by his brother Tate. The camera was born Christmas 2007 to Tracy. She waited impatiently for its arrival after dropping many not so subtle hints to Chris - resulting in an argument that made neither of them really want the camera anymore. The joy of the camera returned when it was opened and many, many pictures were taken with it. He survived by family Chris, Tracy, Cayla and Tate Perk!ns. He proceeded in death by the many other things Tate has already broken.
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Yes guys my camera is now scrap metal. After one of the most stressful days it all went down with a bang - the bang being my camera. We went to church, Tate was awful. We’d sat at the end of a pew, and just when I thought the pew was full the usher sat a family of 3 next to us – blocking us in. We struggled through the very long-winded homily and afterward went to stand in the back. Church was very crowded and even the back was full of people who were trying to pay attention to mass. Tate wanted down and Cayla and I tried to corral him. He climbed into the empty baptismal pool. He hit his head on the steps, he tried to crawl through the window (hitting his head on the glass many times), he wanted to pull down the candle. I tried to hold him and he screeched. We opted to leave church early. I have no idea what any of it was about and the people around me were probably very fed up with us. I usually don't think "it's the thought that counts" applies to church attendance, but trust me - God's bound to have given me brownie points for my effort this time.
We then headed to the grocery store. What was I thinking? I guess I was thinking that Chris was working and we needed food. We start our shopping, Cayla has to go to the bathroom, we stop our shopping and head that direction. I stand in the doorway with our cart and Tate, while she goes. We resume our shopping. Tate plays with a can of soup, he throws it out of the cart twice and I realize that he’s been eating the label. I hand him a “safer grocery”. Now Tate is chewing on the shampoo bottle and its keeping him happy. We buy some fish – the smell makes Cayla want to throw up… back to the bathroom. I buy her a sprite to try to sooth her stomach. Clean up on aisle 7 - Tate spills the sprite. We’ve now been in the store over an hour. Time to check out. Tate’s missing a shoe. I start to retrace my path (we’ve been all over the store including both bathrooms). I’m thinking to myself, if I don’t find it in less than 2 minutes I’m leaving the darn thing. I don’t care! We find the shoe quickly. We head to the checkout. The shampoo is missing most of its UPC code. Tate must have scrapped it off with his teeth. I tell them how much it was, and if it requires someone to go check the price they can just keep it. She takes my word. We check out and go home.
Tate’s teething (more molars) so he’s a bit irritable and very needy. As I unload the grocery’s he’s turning over the trash can pulling all of the condiments out of the fridge door, and climbing the fridge shelves. I lay him down to nap and he sleeps for less than an hour.
He’s up again and I’m trying to look at some pictures on the computer. He is sitting next to me – he finds an envelope and starts to eat it. I take the envelope away and hand him my camera. What was I thinking? I don’t know. I guess I was thinking how nice it would be to have just 2 uninterrupted minutes to look at the pictures. He’s chewing on the camera’s mesh string, sitting on the CARPET, and seems very content. He’s smiling and acting sweeter than he’d been all day. All of the sudden I look down in time to see the camera leaving his hand and flying into the concrete floor kitchen. It was by far his best and furthest throw ever and now my camera is dead. I was furious and sad all at the same time. Chris was still working and I was already getting even more mad thinking about how he was going to tell me how I don’t take good care of things, how I shouldn’t have given it to him, yadi, yadi, yadi. If Chris would have come in and said any of those things I was ready to bite his head off. I was beyond worked up! Lucky for Chris (either he sensed my anger or just lucked into it) he didn’t say any of those things. He instead said, you used it a lot, think of it like you just rented it for the past 8 months. We’ll get another one. Great answer Chris! You don’t even know the butt chewin’ you spared yourself from.

Now my blog is fixing to really suffer, my kids will have no pictures, and I feel pretty lost without it. Last night Tate was pushing his walker really fast down the street (only he doesn’t bend his knees so he looks like a stick figure), and I was like “man these would be good pictures”. If only I had a camera…