Pie's Party. . . and My Subsequent Panic Attack.

On February 10th, my son Ry the Pie turned 7. If you'd like (or if you never have, I'd encourage you to), please read The Story Of The Pie to familiarize yourself with just exactly what a miracle it is that he's with us.

Anyway, so to top last year's Gross-Out party theme, this year Pie's birthday theme was Knights. The invitation (which we hand-delivered to each guest's house) went something like this, in Vivaldi font on antique parchment paper, complete with the official family crest at the top:

By order of the Fellowship of the Dining Room Table
Your presence is requested
At the Feast of Celebration
In honor of the Natal Day of
Sir Pie Karma

Saturday, February 7th
in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Nine
at two o'clock in the afternoon
at the Karma Ancestral Estate

Please park trusty steeds outside the castle walls.
Dragons will be strictly forbidden.
Armour optional.

Respond to Lady Penny Karma

The guest list included Tito, Anti-Stella's boys, Pie's friend John, and a boy from Pie's class whom I'd never met before. We'll call that one Junior Douchebag. That little jerk won't be invited back.

R and I put so much time into planning this party. It was very much a collaborative effort, and we had a fantastic time coming up with creative ideas for the theme. Behold.

R built a castle facade out of MegaBlocks.

These are Excalibur Cupcakes. Really, they're the pumpkin muffins from the Hungry Girl cookbook (which I highly recommend). Somehow, my cupcakes don't suck. Just my cakes. Weird.

I was SO proud of this. I'm not an artist by any means, but I made this dragon for a variation of Pin the Tail on the Donkey that we called Dragonslayer. The swords were the equivalent of donkey tails, and Sir Cooper won the coveted title of Dragonslayer.

I also created a Quest for the guests. It was a treasure hunt with clever, rhyming clues which led them throughout the house and ultimately to a treasure chest full of plastic gold coins.

Oh, speaking of gold coins, R and I thought a great party favor would be those chocolate coins, so we went to Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate and found them available in packs of 8 for $2.95.

So I told them just exactly where they could kiss me.

Unphased and even more determined, I went to Hobby Lobby, got some of those chocolate things that you melt in the microwave and pour into various molds, yielding a chocolate version of the whatever you want. I found one that could pass for a coin, so R and I made our own gold coins for a fraction of what Chocolate x 3 would have cost us.

About halfway through, I realized I should just wrap the huge chocolate chip-looking things in the gold paper rather than melt them and pour the melted chocolate into a mold that basically looks the same as the chip did before we melted it, but whatever.



Before is on the left, After is on the right. I guess the melting process makes it shinier and eliminates the embarrassing nipple erection. Anyway, here's what we ended up with -



The party started out great. When each boy arrived, I directed them to the dining room table where I had crowns, glue sticks, and plastic jewels so they could decorate their own crowns. Clever, right? Until the jewels didn't stay on very well and some of the kids got a bit frustrated.



No problem, let's eat! We poured grape juice into fancy goblets, shouted HUZZAH, and served the Excalibur cupcakes.

Unfortunately, we were done with all of the cool games I'd planned and still had 40 minutes before parents came to get their kids. My backup plan, consistent with the theme, was to put on The Princess Bride for the kids. And I think if this one particular kid, Junior Douchebag, hadn't been there, it would have been good enough, but this kid got bored and was quite vocal about it.

Junior Douchebag began exploring my house. Including my bar globe. SO not cool.



Eventually he found the stash of foam swords we had set aside to give each guest as a lovely parting gift. And then all hell broke loose.

Before I knew it, all six boys were in my front yard beating each other (or, more accurately, Junior Douchebag was beating everyone else) with the foam swords I'd found at the Dollar Store. And we all know the quality of Dollar Store Anything...



So, long story short, the swords broke, rendering me completely out of ideas. And there was a kid sitting on my front porch crying when his dad came to pick him up. And I felt HORRIBLE. Pit-of-my-stomach sick, horrible.

I've waited this long to write about the party debacle because I'm still suffering from continued retro-stress. I've retro-stressed about this party so much it's even caused me to retro-stress about other stuff that's in the past that I can't do anything about. Get this - I woke up at 1:30 Saturday morning freaking out because I was afraid I had forgotten to make Tito's lunch for him to take to school the day before.

I still can't believe how much anxiety this caused me. I've been very diligently taking my meds. It's completely ridiculous. I'm embarrassed. It was over and there was absolutely no reason in the world for me to be worrying about it at that time, but there I was, in the middle of the night, heart pounding, thoughts racing, retro-stressing. It was so bad that I almost woke Tito up to ask him if I had remembered to give him his school lunch, but I couldn't get myself out of bed.

My anxiety, upon reflection, had two root elements. I worried primarily about Tito panicking and not knowing what to do. I've told the kids not to charge food in the cafeteria without prior authorization because years ago, Beeb honestly believed that all the food was free... until we got the bill... and I was really upset. I was afraid he would think I'd be angry if he charged his lunch and would choose to go hungry. I wouldn't be mad at him, of course, I'd be mad at myself for flaking out and not packing a lunch for him.

And of course there's the other part of me that worries about what the teacher must think of me. Tito's already told her that I drink and drive almost every day. I was afraid he would tearfully tell the teacher that Mommy would be SO MAD if he charged a lunch. I hated the thought of the teacher trying to comfort my hysterical little boy by telling him that sometimes mommies make mistakes.

Oh, my children are well aware that mommies make mistakes. One morning when I was making Pie's lunch, I opened his lunchbox and found two slices of bread apparently left from yesterday's lunch, immaculate except for a single bite mark in each slice. I asked why he only ate the turkey part, and he said,

"You didn't PUT any turkey in it. You gave me A BREAD SANDWICH."

I'm pretty sure I'll never live that one down. The kids still give me shit about it.

Anyway, Saturday morning when Tito came into our bedroom, I asked him if I remembered to send his lunch on Friday. I was so relieved when he said, Yes, you did remember. But I couldn't remember myself actually in the process of making it.

You know how when you do the same thing every day you don't really remember any day as being any different from any other? That must be what happened to me. I couldn't remember, and, for my own peace of mind, I desperately needed to, but I just couldn't recreate the event in my mind. And I had a total, full-on, middle-of-the-night panic attack over it. And it was like being awake in a nightmare.

Hopefully I won't have anything to stress me out for a little bit. Our next major event is our Spring Break Road Trip to San Antonio, which means I don't have to spend Easter with the InLaws. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we're off the InLaw hook until Mother's Day. I missed it last year with Strep Throat, as you may recall.

Got my fingers crossed for a kidney infection.