Gee, how this blog has suffered as of late. There’s actually a pretty decent reason for the suffering, and I’ll explain in a couple of posts from now, which leaves you all with a lot of breathe to bate, I know. The way I’m leaving you hanging, it’s not all that different from when I used to watch that crap apocalyptic show Jericho starring Skeet Ulrich and then our DVR missed the final episodes and I was overcome with BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE POOR STRANDED APOCALYPTIC PEOPLES, LEAD BY THEIR FEARLESS LEADER NAMED SKEET.
Not that this is any kind of excuse, but I could plead the fact that our weekends have been very busy recently. Not with shopping (like I used to do), or gourmet meals (like I used to eat), or witty adult conversation (like I might have had once no promises). Oh, no. The weekends have been just chock-full of birthday parties. Kid birthday parties. Gymnastics party after dance party after paint-your-own pottery party after Huh! Tony Said He Invited You to His Party, Too? The Invitation Must Have Gotten Lost in the Mail! [furtive smushing-down of top papers in recycling bin] party.
Without further ado:
Everything I Have Learned About Kids’ Birthday Parties But Never Really Wanted to Know
1. Pray as you might, the invitation will never say “Parents, feel free to drop off!” This will make you stomp around a little. Possibly a whole lot.
2. Though you may have bought the birthday girl/boy’s gifts weeks ahead of time, it will never be wrapped by the time you leave. Nor will the card be signed. When it is signed, you realize your daughter is using an apostrophe in place of a comma and the card says Love’ Aura and now you’re going to be late because of a conversation about possessives since I DIDN’T WASTE FOUR YEARS ON THIS ENGLISH DEGREE FOR NOTHING, KID.
3. No matter how many birthday parties you have been to in the same month with the same exact parental set, you will inexplicably wear the same exact stomach-hiding sweater every time. The good news: No one will know about the Belly of Many Jigglish Bits. The bad news: Everyone will think you’re either spectacularly poor or spectacularly bad at laundry.
4. Even if there are 20 million other parents around, you will be the one inevitably stuck talking to Batman and you will be the one hearing his “Where do I live? Oh, I live by THE CAPE. Get it? It’s a joke because I WEAR A CAPE.”
Your kid might be roped in, too, and grimace madly in discomfort. Suffer one, suffer all, I say.
5. You will tell every adult in hearing distance that this time you’re not going to eat the cake. You will then eat the cake. The cake will have a Batman logo iced in black frosting and no one will have the heart to tell you that the black rubbed off on your upper lip and you now bear a frighteningly eerie resemblance to history’s most hated German. Your husband will tell you later at home, in between great big sobs of hysterical laughter.
Anyone care to add anything? I see a Cafepress T-shirt in ALL of our future.
