The party - posterity post

Top on my list of hateful jobs I never want to have is Wedding Planner. Followed by Event Coordinator. Followed by Performer of Any Sort. I hate entertaining. This is not to say I hate celebrating - I flip right the fuck out for holidays, and spend entire days cleaning and decorating and cooking and drinking. Family traditions are my favorite; party games are my natural enemies.

So I took the whole day off to tackle Leif's party. One hot plate and one toaster oven vs. 10 lbs of chicken, potato salad, and a birthday cake. Got up at 5:30am, rolled out the brioche dough I had made the night before, set cinnamon buns to rise, and managed to get them cooked and stuffed into the kids by the time Gavin had to get to school*.

This was a good start, and I organized an assault on the rest of the menu items, searing and simmering and broiling with my ridiculously inadequate appliances. By lunch, one of the part-time kids arrived home from school, because kindergarten lets out early in the first week.

Being an only child to a single mother, the dynamics of large families are confusing to me. And these boys in particular are difficult for me to relate to - they do things like deliberately break their toys, play games that involve crashing and throwing, and they hurt each other, then cry because they were caught, not because they realize what complete dicks they were. On Sunday our friends came back from vacation with their daughters, and when the boys chased the youngest up a tree to pelt him with hard projectiles like something from the Hunger Games, the girls felt so bad about it that they organized everyone into making flower crowns for the kid and dragging him around in a laundry basket like a sled to make him feel better. The girls have empathy. The boys have a sense of justice - and it is not yet in tune AT ALL.

This is all to say that I have not been dealing very well with suddenly having 4 boys around half the time. The volume and crashing and stampeding of feet makes me want to run away to Ontario. The  kindergartner in particular has been making my hair fall out (or it is falling out anyway, maybe because at this point I am about 70% hair) and so I brought out the mixer and made the two small boys help me assemble cakes - determined to be the model of serene matronly love and comfort, damn it. And it worked. They helped me stir, licked the beaters, ate the cake tops I cut away to level the layers, and tested the ice cream to make sure it wasn't poisoned. I WIN AT FAKE PARENTING. Or real parenting, not sure.

When stuffing the piñata, I made sure to only pack it with toys and chocolate, because hard candies are the turds of the devil. Conveniently, not all of it fit, and I put aside a pile of mini kit-kats as a grown-up tax. Gavin got home from school, found my stash, and helpfully crammed it all into the piñata. I was thwarted.

By mid-afternoon I had won the battle against the hot plate and toaster oven, so we packed the car and hauled everyone over to the ball park. Here I collapsed under a plate of potato salad and wings and let the party take care of itself. The guests arrived, the children played, the adults drank prohibited beverages from plastic cups, the men strung up the piñata, I lit the cake and made everyone sing, the boys went into a frenzy over the presents, and DONE. Home by bedtime. May secretly be a natural party-thrower. A skill which I never plan to hone or cultivate. Unless it involves panty-hose potpourri or cakes on fire like Amy Sedaris.

 

I like you, too, Amy.

 

* Oh yeah, and school has started ALREADY. I made him pose for a picture on his first day of 4th grade, and he slumped and made lemur face. I tried.