The Cult of Parties: Staying Focussed When Planning Children’s Birthdays

When I turned six we went to Showbiz Pizza and there exists only a simple Polaroid picture of me wearing a crown.  For my fifth birthday I remember getting a tricycle that was tall and red.  For my fourth birthday my mother made me a strawberry pie and I got a peacock-blue paper parasol.

There were no big party stores selling aisle after aisle of themed paper products back in the early ’80s.  There were no goodie bags handed out as guests left the celebration.  And we all know there was no Pinterest and Instagram. (If you’re like me, then you are particularly irked that you had to plan an entire wedding without a virtual pinboard and had to haul around a scrap-book.)

These days parties are color-coordinated creations full of photo-ops and party favors.  Starting with the very first birthday, they include an elaborate spread where all the food, cakes, plates, and straws match each other.  Striped straws, to be exact, preferably in little glass milk-bottles filled with the perfectly colored beverage (sans food-coloring, naturally).  We create backdrops, not only for this optimal display of edibles, but also for pictures of all the gorgeous, exceptional children attending.  For more flare, we even use photo props as well, like a little gold-glittered bow-tie on a stick to hold in front of a toddler (he will lick it). We have hand-crafted party games complete with costumes and take-home gifts.  The cakes are covered in fondant and the pictures of the darling Little eating that cake?  (It’s called a “smash cake”, by the way). They were taken two weeks ago in an antique high-chair in the middle of a pasture, bathed in golden sunlight.

No Two Hours Alike

I’m wearing headphones right now, listening to Van Morrison sing “Tupelo Honey”. It’s a little after nine o’clock tonight, and I’m hoping to go to sleep soon. The song is repeating for the first time now. Tomorrow when I get up I’ll set up a yard sale for my mother and hope to successfully get strangers to haul off the crap that has clogged her garage for seven years. Since coming to live here in April I’ve been attempting to make her home a better place, by using my youthful energy and my need to expend it.

Body Moving

My supportive undergarments have begun to fall off, and sadly, I do not mean my drawers.  Since I stopped breast-feeding, and I stopped producing milk, everything went back to normal.  The size “D” I had been flaunting (yes, flaunting), has resumed it’s humble “B” status.  Perhaps two inches lower, and perhaps possibly a “C”, but most certainly not the booming bosom of a month ago.  When it’s over it’s over!

Priorities

I cannot write.  I can’t think of a single thing worth writing about.  At least, nothing that is longer than a Facebook status update.

First I’m gonna make it, then I’m gonna break it till it falls apart.  Hating all the faking, I’m shaking while you’re breaking my brittle heart.

Young G is napping and I think about sleeping, but shouldn’t I do productive things while he sleeps? There is laundry to do right now. Wash, dry, fold, put away.  I also have a pot of beans to freeze.  “A bag of beans produces about 7 cups of cooked beans.”  This is one of the ways I work to save us money.  I feel like we earn so much, but at the end of the month there’s never anything left.  Because it all goes into savings.  Hundreds of dollars a month is put into savings and IRAs.  Every time HD groans about taking money out of savings we have to say, “that what it’s there for!”

We need to buy my plane ticket home.  I’m not looking forward to flying with an infant, because I’ll be going alone, and probably coming back alone, too.  The HD got his ticket through the Army since part of the trip will be at a conference.  He’s getting to go to more than one conference this year, too.  One is for forensics, and he’ll be gone over his birthday.  His thirtieth birthday! My boy’s growing up. The forensics course is special for the HD because he’s on a select team of forensic dentists here.  Then, over Memorial Day he’ll be in DC at a conference he was nominated for to represent junior medical officers to the joint chiefs, or something.  Finally, in July he’s going to New Orleans for another conference he received a nomination for to represent the Army at large.

None of these conferences include me.  I’m disappointed.  Part of the fun is getting to travel with your husband and stay at fancy hotels and swim in pools.  I’ve done that once, and it was great.  But now it’s too far to fly.  What about the baby? It’s not like we could go out in  the evenings.  It’s just easier if I stay here.  I’m scared that this is the beginning of Diminished Me.  Once the notorious socialite, now the unshowered mom who is freezing beans.

So I think maybe I’ll write more.  I’ve got to stop thinking I’m writing for an audience.  Audiences stifle me, I talk best when I talk to myself, or if I’m talking to you, of course.  Then, just as I think I’ll write more, I think of something else to do… Read a book! Crochet some little things! Start a home business! Find new friends!

There aren’t enough hours in the day to do things and I have no idea how to prioritize things on a list when they all have the same priority.  Nothing is really important when Young G is asleep.  He has what he needs, and nothing else matters.