The Best Laid Plans

I began working on our annual family holiday card around, oh, July. A very sweet, talented, and philanthropic friend of Nana’s, Betsy (www.betsycolephoto.com) generously offered to make the trek from Owatonna to Minneapolis to photograph our little family in their natural habitat. Once the photos were developed and we had narrowed down our options (based primarily on the presence/absence of Mama’s “double” chin), I recruited a very sweet, talented, and philanthropic friend of the family, Krista (http://kristahaubrich.com/) to design the card. It is, after all, our baby girl’s first Christmas. I wasn’t about to slum it with one of those pre-fab Walgreen’s photo cards. Fast forward to last Tuesday, when I excitedly logged in to my Photobucket account and with the click of a mouse, ordered 40 copies of our “homage to Lili” holiday card to be printed at Target. With a week and a half to spare, and having received only a handful of holiday cards from friends and family, I was well on my way to sending out a timely Christmas card. Even after Mama stopped by Target the next night and discovered that our order had not, in fact, been printed, I managed to keep the panic to a minimum and calmly resubmitted my order through Photobucket. I received my e-mail confirmation within minutes, and headed out to Target the next night to pick up our photos. This time, however, there was no hiding my rapidly increasing anxiety as the Target photo lab technician looked for the order under my last name…then my first name…then with the holiday cards…and found nothing. She suggested I call Kodak customer service to find out why my order wasn’t being sent to Target. Since sitting on perpetual hold with Kodak sounded about as appealing as Lili’s diaper after a jar of winter squash, I opted for an alternate route. Why not place my order again, but have it sent to a *different* Target? Surely, the Richfield Target maintained some culpability in the case of the missing holiday photo cards, so transferring the order to Edina (a SUPER Target) would most certainly resolve the issue. I placed my order (third time and counting), received the (apparently meaningless) Photobucket e-mail confirmation, and waited an hour before calling the Edina Target to make sure they’d received my order. By this time, it came as no surprise to hear the requisite “What’s the last name…wait, tell me the first name….nope, nothing here”. Fortunately, Target photo lab technician #2 couldn’t see me pinching my temples as I left my telephone number and asked her to call me when the order had been processed. By the time 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I hadn’t heard anything, I called back and was told that they STILL had not received my order, and that my best bet might be to bring the photo in on a CD and print it directly in the lab. Fine. It’s rush hour on a Friday night, Belinda Jensen is predicting a winter storm warning with -35 wind chill, and Captain Eagle is running dangerously low on windshield wiper fluid, but fine. I will bring my photo CD to Target to print.

I wish this story had a happy ending. But after arriving at the Target photo lab, inserting my alleged photo CD in the printer, and being confronted with the dreaded “no image available” icon, I came to the screeching realization that there would, in fact, be no happy holiday ending in the land of Photobucket. It seemed a shame, though, to let our community effort holiday card languish on my laptop, so I share the image, at least, below. In an ironic and fitting twist, I am unable to share the actual holiday card, as the image turned a rancid shade of green upon being uploaded.


Merry Christmas, ya’ll. From our digitally impaired family to yours.