Saturday, January 21, 2006

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!

7 comments:

  1. OMG! A limo! You are a way cooler mom than I will ever be.

    A happy happy birthday to Miss Poppette!

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  2. 1. A stretch limo? So awesome.

    2. Steak and herbed butter is one of the greatest things I ate during my first (and so far, only) trip to France.

    3. How do you like the Bake n' Fill? I considered getting one the last time I was at "Bed Bath & Beyoncé", but decided the look of it creeped me out and bought pink 600-count sheets instead.

    ReplyDelete
  3. May I write a post of FiL-ish verklempitude?

    -J.

    ReplyDelete
  4. P.S. There's BEER at Chuck E. Cheese's?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Badge: Not at all. I am a dork with a credit card.

    I will convey your kind wishes to miss P.

    Jazz: I wish I could have ridden in it myself. But we led the way in the family station wagon. See above remark about dorks and credit cards.

    Steak plus anchovy butter or roquefort butter or herb butter == yummy. Just plain butter? Only for cholesterol fetishists.

    Betty Crock Bake n' fill? You were better off with the super fine pink sheets. I'll post about Bake n' Fill debacle to Horrifying Foodstuffs.

    Joke: Knock yourself out with the verklempitude. Just don't start waxing eloquent over the joys of breastfeeding her, or I'll have to intervene.

    And yes, there is beer, or a reasonable facsimile, at some Chuck E. Cheese's. There wasn't any at the one we went to yesterday. The girls felt really ripped off, too, because they had a designated driver.

    ReplyDelete
  6. verklempitude??

    Ah, Poppy...must go clean my monitor again (the coffee stains are getting hard to read through, and most of them are your fault....

    Happy Birthday, Poppy Lite!

    ReplyDelete
  7. is that BLUE eyeshadow she's wearing?

    it appears that it was a terrific birthday...

    tell her we send best wishes from Tuvalu.

    and that I hated breastfeeding.

    ReplyDelete

Gentle Readers:

For the time being, I have turned off comment moderation. Please don't spam; it's not nice.

xxx, Poppy.