Weekend Madness
We’ve been crazy busy, yet again. Same old song and dance, right?
We spent most of Saturday painting and cleaning, with an adult birthday celebration thrown in. The birthday celebration was very low-key–just our family and another family at the bowling alley and then at their house. It all would have been pretty good, but I was behind Elsa and she jumped really hard, knocking me in the chin with her head. It was such a good knock-out that I saw stars. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I was woozy enough to lay down on the bowling alley floor instead of trying to get up. I’m sure it was an attractive sight.
I let Erik finish my game for me (I was literally on the last ball of the last frame) and he was sad that he didn’t hit anything. He came over to me and saw tears pouring out of my eyes and thought I was crying because I didn’t break 100 and was mad at him. Poor kid!
I felt pretty off the rest of the day, but managed to eat a giant piece of chocolate cake in between wondering if I needed to go to the ER for x-rays. My ears were my main complaint–it felt like they needed to pop.
Today I have a tiny little bruise on my chin, but the whole area is swollen and sore. My jaw was really sore this morning, but seems to be ok now. If it still hurts tomorrow I’ll call my primary care and see if they want to see me.
Today was Father’s Day in the US, but our family is not big on celebrations so we didn’t do much except give Mike cards and pictures of the kids. And painted, of course. The painting will never end. Current job: putting the finishing touches on the ceiling. I’m trying to be careful and not get white paint all over my fresh blue walls, so I’m hanging plastic drapes all over the walls. It looks like I’m prepping for a bloody murder.
Erik brought home a birthday party invitation for today on Thursday, which should have been my first sign that this party was not going to be organized. It was for his best school friend and we didn’t have any other plans, so we RSVPed yes and went to the party. I’ve been a mom for 7 years so I’ve been to all manner of parties. Some are better organized than others, but this was by far the least organized party I’ve ever been to.
I was so confused when we first arrived because there was a Hispanic family using the reserved picnic shelter and I was 100% sure that the birthday boy was from a Middle Eastern family. I had no idea what to do, but finally I asked if we were in the right place for XXXX’s birthday party and a lady popped out from behind a pole and told me I was in the right place.
The Hispanic family was not supposed to be there, so they had to put out the two grills that they’d started and go find somewhere else to have a picnic.
It was really awkward because we were the first ones there and we were not even early. In fact, we were about five minutes late, which isn’t much I suppose. The mom was at the park alone, so Erik didn’t have anyone to play with. The birthday boy showed up about a half hour later, which was just weird.
The mom handed me some streamers and told me to decorate, then she also said I would have to think up party games for the kids to play. I hoped it was just a miscommunication, but maybe she really meant it. I don’t know!
We kept waiting and waiting for the party to start, but hardly anyone showed up. Even though we were at a park, the picnic shelter was set far away from everything so there was really nothing to do. At one point I took a few of the kids to the playground, but then one kid left after ten minutes, so we had to go back to the party to make sure he was with his parents and not kidnapped by a molester in the woods.
All the kids were complaining that they were hungry, but no food was being offered despite a buffet on the picnic table. No drinks were offered, either, until a mom finally went and asked if there was any water anywhere. They had two full coolers of drinks, just had not thought to share it with us.
F-i-n-a-l-l-y the dad showed up with pizza and cake. But! We were not allowed to give the kids the pizza because they wanted to cut the cake first.
There were four classroom moms, the celebrating family and then a bunch of their friends. The four classroom moms were getting buggy eyed and cranky because this was such a poorly executed party. It’s not like we were even all friends or anything like that. I’d never met them before. We were from four different countries with four different cultures. But we all had one things in common: we wanted our children to get a g-damned slice of pizza.
Someone decided that cutting the cake before serving dinner was a bad idea, so we were finally able to give the kids pizza.
But what about the buffet?
No, no. We had to wait another 30 minutes until some more friends arrived. This was about 20 minutes before the “official” end of the party listed on the invite, and 2 hours and 40 minutes into this never ending party with zero entertainment.
Finally they let us eat, though most of the food was so spicy that I couldn’t handle it. They didn’t have any forks, either, which was not the end of the world but was sort of a pain.
Eventually they served cake, but there was not enough to go around. Also: no forks or spoons, so if you wanted a piece you had to eat it with your hands (or face, as Erik chose to do).
They never did play any party games or let the kids do anything fun. The boys kept asking me to take them back to the playground, which I would have been fine doing if someone would have asked me to do so. I couldn’t exactly take off with the party guests without the hosts’ blessing. I told them to ask the mom or dad, but they were completely ineffective and disorganized (obviously). Their four year old son threw a Fanta can at my head. Good thing it was not as hard as Elsa’s skull. The other three school moms and I all boggled, but none of us knew what to do about it.
I spent most of my time talking to a lady from Slovakia. She has four kids and only does laundry once every three weeks. She says she can’t have Erik at her house for a playdate because the floors are not safe to navigate. Also, she tried to give me a “healthy” recipe that was basically smashing up avocados and sardines and spreading it on toast. She was a nice lady, but I’ll give that recipe a pass!
We left at the same time and as we were talking down to the cars she goes “don’t say a word. Not a word! The children, they talk! We should consider it an honor just to be invited since they usually never invite anyone outside their own culture.”
So yeah. That happened. I’ll never get those four hours of my life back. The lady kind of jokingly asked Erik and her son if they enjoyed the party and they were both enthusiastic about it, even though they didn’t get to do anything but run in circles around the picnic shelter.
I can’t even really chalk it up to cultural differences. I’ve been to several parties hosted by people of this culture and they were definitely not like this party! I was actually the only native American (not Native American, but you know what I mean, right?) but I was certainly not the only one completely irked by the lack of organization.