Make mine Manhattan(s)

Today is my daughter's ninth birthday.

No, you don't need to run away. I'll spare you. I'm not going to write a post that starts "Today you are nine years old. I never thought ... blah blah blah ... You are so ... blah blah blah ... Your father and I ... blah blah blah" and ends "blah blah blah and my life will never be the same." My daughter, who is the one who would really need to hear this, doesn't read my blog. And for some reason, I don't feel the need to tell the internet all about my mommy verklemptitude.

OK, back to that birthday. Since her birthday was actually on a Saturday, we decided to take the birthday girl and her favored nine guests to Chuck E. Cheese's. This was my daughter's idea. As far as I'm concerned, Chuck E. Cheese's sucks for many reasons. On the other hand, it has the following going for it:

1. My kids like it.
2. There is pizza.
3. There is also beer.
4. There is no need to keep my children amused. Give them a cup of tokens and let them loose.
5. It's not Mcdonald's.

Plus for kids' birthdays, you get tokens, pizza, cake, drinks, and goodie bags for $14.99 a head. Sweet, right?

I carefully pruned the guest list so that Mr. Poppy and I could drive all the guests in our two cars. But I forgot to factor in my daughter's weird ideas of what constitutes a "friend." And I realized as I was distributing the invitations that she had neglected to invite the three girls who have actually come to our house to play. On top of that, two of them actually invite my daughter to play at their house. Naturally, being a selfish slack-off excuse for a mother, these are relationships I treasure and want to nurture. These are girls whose mothers occasionally stand in loco parentis. They do not deserve to be blown off in favor of some whatever random girl who told a funny joke at lunch three days ago.

So I added those girls to the invitation list.

This meant I had a total of 10 girls. More than I can fit into the two cars. So I did the obvious thing. I hired a stretch limo:


So there was the picking up of the girls. And the driving to Chuck E. Cheese's. Where games were played, pizza was eaten, moves were busted




Candles were blown out.
BTW, she wished for world peace.

Then home again,


to bake the birthday cake with the Betty Crocker Bake n' Fill she got for Christmas.

Baking became boring, so it was time to go discover the wonderful world of mother's makeup.


Then dinner, which was steak. With butter. Don't ask me where she got that idea.

Then cake.

And presents.



And ethanol. Not for the birthday girl. No, for the mother who made it happen, baby, yeah!