The Party
2004-05-23...2:20 p.m.

The party went off successfully yesterday. I swear, I don't think it would have if Christine hadn't been there. I don't know if I can even come close to thanking her for everything she did. She thinks that all she did was loan me some dishes, help me set up the pavillion, blow up balloons, and put temporary tattoos on the kids. Truth be told, though, I'm afraid I may have given up if she hadn't been there. Every time I felt overwhelmed and horrified that things weren't going the way they were supposed to, she was right there with an encouraging word and sage calmness. My dearest Christine, words will never convey how much your presence meant to me yesterday.

First of all, the ramada we were going to use was occupied, and showing no sign of becoming vacant before the time of Alex's party. So we had to come up with something else. We ran back to the house and retrieved Corey's pavillion, and headed back to the park to set it up. It took us a bit of trial and error before we got it all figured out (Corey has always been pretty territorial about his pavillion, so I never got too terribly close to it when he had set it up). Then (rot in your grave, Murphy), the wind picked up. Of course, the ground stakes weren't in the bag with the pavillion. As we were trying to figure out how to keep it grounded without having to go back to the house, a couple of gentlemen approached and offered to help. We cut up the rope that we were going to use for the pinata (still plenty left over for the game, even!) and they secured it to two trees and a post for us. It was very cool. I hope their karma keeps them.

Since the park only has ONE ramada, and that's where the bbq is, we also had to send Corey back to the house with his friend Jack (he has a truck) to get our gas grill. Corey had also picked up a plastic table for setting the food up on.

To top it all off, Donna & her kids never showed up. Since Akristia was supposed to run the fishing game for me, we had to improvise. I put Melanie (Jack's wife) in charge of it.

From there on out, the kids really seemed to have a good time, even though I had a hard time taking charge and getting the games running. Still though, the people that the party was for had a great time, and that's all I was really worried about.

Melanie did a great job of PISSING ME OFF. I thought it was both her AND Jack, but no, it was just her, this time. First of all, they weren't even there for 10 minutes before Melanie was cussing at her 2 YEAR OLD daughter. And when Alex was opening his presents, their youngest boy kept getting into the presents Alex was in the PROCESS of opening. WTF? I mean, they were just sitting on the back of their truck, doing NOTHING. Oh, I take that back. She did say, "It's ALEX'S birthday, Jack." Uh huh. That was fucking helpful. And their kids wouldn't keep their fingers out of the cake. Granted, neither could Alex, but I can't keep 3 kids out of it! I can handle mine, but I only have 2 hands. Melanie and Jack were off wrestling and making out somewhere in the background. All this while I had a knife in my hand. HA! Melanie was constantly being a bitch to the oldest boy, too. I wanted to tell them to leave the kids and just go the fuck home, if they can't handle their kids. Goddamn.

Lessee...oh. I pulled a major faux pas. I wasn't even thinking, and I feel really embarrassed. I was hoping Christine was going to come in by herself last night when she brought my keys back to me (more on that in a bit) so I could apologize.

Near the end of the party, I had some extra prizes. I was going to give the paper fans I had to the little girls, but I didn't want the boys to get jealous, so I decided to give them to the moms that had come. Stupid me. I should have said for the LADIES. Because the first thing I did was walk up to Christine and say, "These are for the moms, so here's yours, and Christie, here's yours." FUCK! How can I unsay that? I didn't know how to correct myself without making it worse ("Oops, my bad, I forgot YOU are Ashley's mom, Christie..." - see what I mean?), so I just kept trucking on and handed out a third one to the other mom that was there - Melanie. ACK!

About my keys. I'm a retard. I handed them to Christine so she could get the fishing game divider out of the back of the van. She clipped them onto her pants, and while I kept seeing them there throughout the party, I kept saying to myself, "Oh, good, they won't get lost." Uh huh. Well, they didn't. But we both forgot they were there until after she had left. I must have sounded like such a turd when I asked if she could bring them back. I realized that after I talked to her on the phone, so I wanted to make it up by having everything she loaned me for the party washed and ready to go when she got here.

Anyhow, to make a long entry come to freaking close, I have to say that the fun the kids DID have far outweighed the crap that happened, and it was all worth it. I look forward to doing it again next month!

How evil are you?