Parties, Suitcases, Vacuuming, Laundry

~ Laura

I sent off another article to the Atlantic last night. I'm going to stick around the house this morning to help promote the article, but then I need to hit the malls and the supermarket. I have to put on the housewife cap for the next few days. 

We're having a party for Ian and his friends on Friday. I always have some nagging guilt that Ian and his friends don't have as much fun as their typical peers. They don't get invited to their birthday parties, and there aren't many after-school activities for them. Playdates are rare. So, every once and a while, I throw massive, over-the-top parties for them.

On Friday, I invited all the kids in his class, plus some who aren't in his class and told them to bring their siblings. I spent a ton of money on special foods. I'm decorating the house with heart shaped banners and candles. I invited the teachers. I have beverages for the adults. I think we're going to have thirty people in the house on Friday evening. I have a ton of cleaning, cooking, decorating to do for that. I'm a guilt-ridden Martha Stewart. 

Then on Sunday, we're flying to Puerto Rico. (The blog will be on hiatus for a week.) This upcoming trip brings with it another set of chores. Overhead suitcases were purchased on Monday; that chore can be ticked off the list. Clothes are a bigger problem. Summer clothes were shoved without ceremony in some boxes in the basement last September. I am weeding through them and determining whether they are too worn out to be seen in public. I think everyone needs new shorts. I have to get over my allergy towards paying full price for clothes, because there are no sales on summer clothes in February. Do we have flip flops? Sweatshirts? Bathing suits? How nasty are my toenails? Do I need a pedicure? I really hate when we go on vacation looking like hillbillies, but I suspect that three days isn't enough to straighten up. 

 Reading material. A vacation requires brain dead reading material. Wendy has thoughtfully suggested some appropriate fun reading. More ideas? 

Published by Laura

11 thoughts on “Parties, Suitcases, Vacuuming, Laundry”

  1. We’ve always done small, cheap at-home parties for our kids, but a couple parties back, one five-year-old shut another five-year-old’s hand in a door, so I’m starting to think about venues with safer entertainment. If we can get in, there’s an indoor play place that I’ve got my eye on for the next birthday that has thousands of square feet of inflatables and very reasonable rates. We’re used to keeping birthday budgets under $100 total, so going into the hundreds just for venue will not be enjoyable, but the kids are getting bigger, and I need to put some more effort into getting to know their classmates and classmates’ parents. Like Laura, I’ll be inviting each classmate, parents and siblings.

    Like

  2. Our house really isn’t big enough for a party given the size of the class and the number of them with siblings. We used a local kids museum. Seems to be what most parents at our school do.
    We did go to a party at one of those places with all the inflatable whatnots. Those seemed great. Like Chuck E Cheese, but very much easier to limit how much money goes down the drain.

    Like

  3. Book recommendation – The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. Steve will like it too. Short listed for Man Booker any various prizes. Cross between Deadwood and Coen Brothers with some Cormac McCarthy thrown in. Quirky, funny and a bit violent.

    Like

  4. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks.
    My daughter recommends The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.
    Several friends have recommended The Hare with the Amber Eyes.
    Anything by Neil Gaiman or Neal Stephenson.

    Like

  6. Ooh, I was reading “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” but now I put it aside on the theory that it would be perfect reading for our vacation in March. I recommend it highly.
    Maybe some people are looking for something lighter, but, seriously, each chapter is only a few pages, there are lots of pictures, the historical analysis is no deeper than it could be when entire eras and civilizations get three pages, and having been produced for a popular market seems to have toned the leftist cant that makes an appreciable percentage of academic work unreadable for me.

    Like

  7. Books I have given 5 Stars on Goodreads.com this year, and would be good for the beach:
    On Beauty (Zadie Smith)
    The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
    Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)
    Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
    The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)
    Funhome: A Family Tragicomic (Alison Bechdel — a graphic novel)
    For non-fiction/ history, I started reading “A World On Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War” based on a positive Hendrick Hertzberg review in The New Yorker, and it is very good so far.

    Like

Comments are closed.