Post-Birthday Fatigue Disorder

I have been suffering from PBFD since last Saturday. 

My daughter’s launch into the teenage years was a huge success, including the “whipped cream pie in the face" event.  But after managing through an 18 hour birthday sleepover shift (with approximately 6.5 hours of restless sleep included in that time frame), I spent virtually all Sunday afternoon recovering from the festivities by sleeping and reading the New York Times in one of our living room easy chairs, getting up only to quench my thirst with a cold glass of water or Diet Coke. 

You’d think approximately 4 hours of being stationary and/or (for one of those hours) asleep would have accelerated my recovery  -- but no.  I really am getting old.

So this weekend, I am taking it relatively easy (other than to do battle at the nearest Whole Foods for possession of a 16 pound, fresh and "Free Range" turkey) in order to be rested and ready for Thanksgiving at my parents’ home next week.  I’m cooking for 8 and, actually, I love making Thanksgiving dinner while watching the Macy’s Parade in the morning…. 

I will likely be AWOL from this blog until after the holiday, so I wish you the joy and comfort of friendship, family and food – the truly wonderful ingredients for a happy Thanksgiving.

Gobble, gobble.  Count your blessings.  Amen.

The Birthday Bash

My tween is 13.

 

This weekend 12 of her friends will decamp to Casa Sedd for a ‘60s themed  sleepover celebration, whatever that means.  My husband and I will have custodial responsibility and party management chores from 4pm until 10am the following morning.

18 hours.  That’s right, we are nuts.

Assuming that these girls -- or some combination thereof -- sleep for 6-8 hours, that still leaves me with roughly 10 hours to fill.  So here’s my plan (with some limited input from my daughter).

4-4.30pm:    Meet, greet, and enjoy hors d’oeuvres in the living room (Please note:  this is my daughter’s idea and I’m a little worried about my sofas…so jury’s out on this one)

4:30-5:00ish:   Whipped cream pie in the face fight on the backyard patio (her idea).  My daughter seems to think that shower caps will serve as sufficient coverage to prevent an evening of icky hair for participants.  Jury’s out on this one, too.

5:00-6ish:  Get party started in the family room and make sure it stays there.  Charades, anyone? Karoake?  Dancing to the Beatles, Cream and Led Zeppelin, perhaps? (Remember:  The theme is the ‘60s.  And I haven’t a clue why that appeals to my daughter, other than to encourage her parents to sing along with Robert Plant or Eric Clapton.  Not.)

 6:15:  Pizza, pizza, pizza.

7:00:  The ritual opening of presents.  Always a decent time-killer.

7:30:  Cupcakes, candles and hot fudge sundaes served up buffet style.

7:45   Any decent movie that isn’t “R” rated from “On Demand.”  Only criteria is that is is at least 100 minutes long and not too violent.

9:30ish   Order (nicely) partygoers to get dressed for bed.  Pop some corn. Help party guests locate a few square feet of floor for their even fewer moments of sleep.

9:45  Movie #2.  Same criteria as above, although a 90 minute running time is preferred given the lateness of the hour.

Midnight.  Lights out, parents head upstairs, ghost storytellers and gossip girls compete for attention…and I’m in my own bed, door closed, can’t hear a thing, I hope!

This is a busy week, and I have the royal bash to prepare for, so expect my next report fron the domestic front sometime next week.

Until then, Peace (sign). Sigh.

Doing the Math

I’ve never been particularly good at math.  Even though I passed my end of year Algebra exam with a 99 and my Geometry exam with a 96 in high school, I barely passed Intermediate Algebra and Trig and stayed as far away from Calculus as I could get.  Today, if presented with a basic algebraic equation, I’d struggle – trust me.

So I’m observing with understanding, sympathy and some concern as my daughter experiences her own challenges learning 7^th grade, pre-algebra math.  She can execute the computations and get the right answer, but she can’t always tell you “why” or how she completed the problem.  If you ask her to break the solution to the problem into serial operations, she’s entirely lost.  (God knows, I’m no help to her!)

I hope my daughter is better able to navigate and survive the landscape of academic math than her mother did.  (For the record, my high school Intermediate Algebra and Trig class was my last formal educational experience in math).  And, yes, I do worry, as any parent does, about my child’s ability to do well enough in school so that she’ll go on to college and be prepared for a job that interests her while providing for a comfortable life.  But I also know this:  if she’s good at balancing a checkbook and figuring out the fundamentals of money management, she’ll probably do just fine.  Despite my computational shortcomings, I’ve proven through the years to be reasonably adept at personal money management – making it seem like I had more than I really had because of my startling ability to “triage” bill payments.  A gift, I tell you!

From the way my daughter has skillfully managed as she’s gotten older to save her own money while spending mine, I’m confident she’s well on her way to figuring all this stuff out.

 

Celebrate Good Times

Halloween is now behind us (thank goodness – not my favorite faux holiday), the clocks have been turned back to ensure sunrise by 7am and sunset by 5, and the sprint to Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the holiday season is now underway.

There’s a morning chill in the air when we walk the dog and the colorful trees are starting to fade.  But I don’t mind it at all, because fall is my favorite time of the year.

I feel more energetic this time of the year.  It puts more of a bounce in my step.   I love the annual turkey fest and the stuffing I only have the strength to make on Thanksgiving.  Because my parents are elderly and very infirm, the Thanksgiving feast comes to them as my daughter, my sister and my husband patiently join me in mom’s kitchen to chop, stir, baste and enjoy the good humor of a holiday focused on gratitude for family, friends and food.  Amen.

December is my big vacation month each year, when I use up virtually all of my remaining paid time off from work to give myself a long break – long enough to enable me to restart my increasingly creaky work persona again in January.   And then there’s Christmas, when the food is non-stop and banned indulgences like fondue and fudge are enjoyed.  Last year we celebrated over a meal with our neighbors…a huge brined turkey and oodles of treats healthy and not…great fun which I hope we’ll be able to repeat this year. 

Finally, New Year’s champagne is uncorked with our closest friends, with whom we cook a New Year’s Eve feast followed by chit-chat, dessert and a countdown to midnight.  By 12:05am they are out the door and on their way home, and we’re half way up the stairs to bed.  Perfect friends, perfect evening, perfectly wonderful.

Although they almost always are just a wee bit disappointing as they unfold, the child in me still adores the excitement and anticipation of the end of the year holidays and all the planning required to make them as festive as possible.  On New Year’s Day, when I think back on the previous weeks’ activities and look ahead to days about to unfold, I happily pretend that everything was and will be magical, even though the adult me knows it won’t be….exactly that. 

I expect I’ll be posting breathlessly about birthdays and Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations in the coming weeks.  So bear with me -- I’m a Sagittarius and this is my time of the year!

 

The Parenthood

I’m a late bloomer, it seems, at everything in my life – and most especially, parenting.
That said, I love, love, love being a parent, even the “bad parts” that involving disagreement with my husband over something to do with our daughter…as well as the squabbles, many of them half in jest, that occur between my daughter and me on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.

This weekend, my little parenthood included the following:

My daughter’s first “dance,” held at a local Presbyterian Church, for 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders.  She wore denim shorts and her “layered tank top” look, and cute little booties.  She also wore some make-up -- hey, she’s going to be 13 soon.  Three boys asked her to dance, but she said “no thanks.” (She’s surprisingly shy about that boy-girl stuff right now, thank god, unlike some of her other friends!).  When I asked her if she’ll want to go to another dance at the church (they’re held monthly), she smiled a “yes,” and added, “I loved it, Mom.”

Is my little girl lost forever???

Shopping at Target.  It’s very hard to get my daughter to go shopping with me for anything, so when she suggests she wants to go the store, I jump on it.  But this weekend, she wanted a junket to Target in search of a “top” – T-shirt, plaid shirt, sparkly sweatshirt, or slinky/fancy “Flashdance shirt”….my daughter has a “top addiction.”  We agreed that she could not go over her allowance budget for a shirt.

I rarely escape a trip through Target for under $150.  I don’t know why…sometimes it’s the mini-grocery shop that sends me over the financial edge, sometimes it’s something completely ridiculous and spur of the moment, like plastic plates for summer dining out of doors (place setting for 6, please!).

This visit with my daughter was no exception:  2 tops, 4 camis, 1 comforter and sheet set with accent pillow for my daughter’s bedroom, as well as 2 boxes of Capri Sun and some soup for school-lunch microwaving,  later and our shopping excursion was over.  Total cost:  $213 and change.  Time spent with my daughter:  Priceless.

Girls lunch out.  After a little shopping, always time for a light lunch, eh?  My skinny-minny daughter is a growing girl:  1 medium sized Margarita Pizza and gluten free pasta with marinara sauce was consumed in a scant 30 minutes by my hungry soon-to-be teen (ok, I had 2 pieces of the pizza)…fueling at least 1/16^th of 1 inch in growth overnight.

The birthday party in the Cloud.   On Sunday afternoon, I finally sent birthday sleepover/60’s themed Evites out in the cloud to 12 girls for help in celebrating my lovely girl’s entrée to teendom.  13 tweens in a 1 tween home for an overnight filled with food, loud music/karaoke, and bad Teen Nick/Netflix movies. 

Did I mention how much I love parenting????

Happy Monday.