If you’re gonna catch a cold, the best time to do it is the week before your 5-year-old’s birthday party. That way, you can obsess over the fact that no one is RSVP-ing to the damned thing all week long, and you can lay in bed, doped up on Tylenol-Sinus, drinking Gatorade, and doing the mental math required to add in the requisite number of therapy appointments you need to set some cash aside for, because everyone you invited to your 5-year-old’s birthday party hasn’t really RSVP-ed yet and if no one comes to your kid’s party, your kid will be devastated beyond all repair for the rest of her life and IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT.
You can lay in bed and obsess over the fact that the only one who has RSVP-ed is the mom that’s got that CRUMB-PHOBIA. So, you know SHE’S coming, but you’re so EXHAUSTED and beat down by this nasty cold that the idea of actually getting up and brushing crumbs off of all the furniture before Saturday, let alone putting away months of acculumated CRAP that’s balanced precariously on the edge of every table top or counter top and then actually running the vaccuum and dusting all the furniture in the house is enough to send YOU back into therapy, so rather than get up and start cleaning, you start doing more math in your head to see if you can afford any extra therapy for yourself. Which you can’t, because you’ve just dropped every last extra cent you’ve got on a gigantic half-sheet birthday cake with Madagascar characters all over it, not to mention the $1500 you just dumped at the dentist’s office to repair tooth decay that probably is a result of previous birthday cakes with various other cartoon characters dancing all over the tops.
So, after a few days of hacking and coughing and sneezing and filling all the garbage cans with used tissues, and feverishly checking your email for any more RSVP’s other than the one crazy lady who’s got that THING about crumbs, you realize that you’re just gonna have to prepare for both contingencies: either everyone will show up, or no one (except for the Crazy Crumb Lady) will. So, you get up out of bed and start cleaning. And you let the kids watch extra TV and you laugh hysterically at the idea of opening up any school books, and you take your kids to their activities even though you want to cancel them all because you really need all that time to finish cleaning, and you think vaguely about whether or not to offer any games at this party, and you decide to not do any seriously complex food because let’s face it, no one is coming to this thing and your kid will be scarred for LIFE. But you keep on cleaning. Just in case.
And then, like 48 hours before the party, all these RSVP’s come in one after another, and it turns out the EVERYONE is coming. You’re gonna have 17 children stomping through your house in 2 days, you’ve blown off coming up with any sort of games to play, and the weather forecast has now changed to UTTER DOOM AND GLOOM a slight chance of rain in the afternoon which means you’ll probably need to keep all those kids and their parents happy for 2 hours INSIDE the house, and it turns out that the neighborhood is having their annual suburban-wide yard sale the same day, so parking will definitely be a serious issue.
So, the only thing you’ve done right at this point is to order that half-sheet of cake. And the day before the party, you stagger (coughing and sneezing) into a dollar store and load up on plastic crap that you can put into gift bags, and you just happen to find a Pin the Tail on the Donkey thing there, so you grab that, and then you rush home and get online and search for some party game ideas and then you rush back out to Target to pick up two hula-hoops and a red kickball and some string. And it takes FOREVER to find where they keep the string in Target, by the way. Like, when’s the last time you had to run out to the store for STRING, for God’s sake?
So then, you’re up to the night before the party, and your husband says to you, so what are you planning for food? and you tell him oh, nothing much, just some fruit and veggies on a tray and the cake, and that’s about it. And he says, what about drinks? And you say, RegularSis said she’s bring some juice. And he says: well, what about for the grownups? And you say, Um, maybe some water? And coffee? And he stares blankly at you. And then you say: Do you think this hula hoop game will be okay?
Then, the next morning, the kids wake up at the crack of dawn, and they’re all like: Is it time for the party yet? And you’re all like: if you don’t let me drink my coffee in peace there ain’t gonna be no more parties EVER. And happy birthday, honey. Then you put on the Disney channel and go lock yourself in your office for a while.
Then, it’s back to more cleaning. And more cleaning. And when people ask you for breakfast you show them things like bananas. And water. And nothing that involves dishes that will need washing. And then RegularDad says: Is it time for me to go to the store yet? So you send him to the store with a list and he takes the kids with him so you’ve got a good hour of quiet alone time that you use to clean out the fridge so there will be room for the cake and the veggie trays.
And he comes back an hour later with everything on your list plus all sorts of extra goodies that will be the hit of the party: mini corn dogs, juice boxes, sodas, bottled waters. And he’s bought all fresh fruit because the prepackaged trays looked gross. And he slices up all sorts of fruit and makes the tray himself so you don’t have to worry about it.
And somehow the rain holds off, but the heavy cloud-cover keeps the majority of garage-salers away for the day so parking isn’t a problem after all, and the crazy lady with the CRUMB-PHOBIA has to go out of town at the last minute so her husband drops off their daughter instead. And everyone else arrives pretty much on time and tells you how lovely your home is, and they all offer to help in some way: to finish slicing those scallions, or to help with that game, or to pass out pieces of cake, or to take a few pictures with your camera. And at the end, everyone says that it’s the best party they’ve ever been to. And if anyone saw any crumbs, they didn’t mention it.
And after they all go home, and you get your hyped-up kids into bed, you collapse on the sofa, put your feet up, and start the mental math up again in your head, because you realize that all that money you were saving up for the therapy fund can be transferred back to the dental fund, because your kids forgot to brush their teeth after a day full of cake and candy.
But it was so totally worth it.
