A couple of weeks ago I emailed my friend Julie through Facebook and was all, “Hey, did you know November is National Novel Writing Month? Let’s jump into the crazy and write ourselves some novels!”
Or something like that.
I’ve been on this planet for, oh, nearly 40 years now and it seems every year I forget how much of a shit storm of stress November is. It seems most of the adults in my family and Nathan’s family thought February and March were excellent months to get down and do the nasty, the end result being that 88% of our family has birthdays between November 16 and December 17. And of course there are a couple of other high-stress holidays packed in there as well.
Let’s also add that Autumn has been talking of nothing but a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party for months. I didn’t want to do a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. Nathan didn’t want to do a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. We’ve had something far classier planned as a birthday surprise ever since we heard The Wizard of Oz would be opening at The Civic Theater the weekend after Autumn’s birthday.
But the girl just would not shut up about Chuck E. Cheese, so Nathan and I decided that we’d invite our friends to join us there to celebrate Autumn’s birthday, opting to buy everyone pizza rather than book a formal party.
However…there was a miscommunication between husband and wife and the husband went all rouge and attempted to alter the social calendar without first checking with the wife, which made the wife lose her shit and stress the hell out even more.
Translation: we are now booking a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party.
And that brings us to the cake dilemma. As you may know, or not since I seemed to have forgotten this year actually had an October in it, I just concluded eight weeks of cake decorating classes. For eight weeks my life was all about cake and frosting because I wanted to make Autumn an excellent cake that would not cripple my hand from piping hundreds of little stars (see exhibit E from 2007).
But now we’re doing this Chuck E. Cheese birthday party after Autumn’s birthday, which has me stressing about whether she’s going to want a cake on her actual birthday. First world problem, I know, and if I had more than one child I’d probably drop a Twinkie on a plate, cover it with Reddi Whip and call it good. However, both of my grandmothers are still alive and hoping to celebrate with their great-granddaughter. Having warned them away from Chuck E. Cheese, I sort of implied there would be a celebration at my house on Autumn’s birthday.
Thankfully I do not have to work that day, but my GOD I have a kid in kindergarten who’s also expecting treats for 26 classmates minus the one kid with food issues.
So you can imagine how I felt when I saw November 1st approacheth on the calendar and decided to completely shut down. Halloween night, while Nathan was out trick-or-treating with Autumn, I logged onto Hulu, watched back-to-back episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ate back-to-back bars of Peanut Butter Snickers, which I discovered I may love more than Reeses peanut butter cups. I actually love them too much and had to ignore the last few groups of trick-or-treaters because I ran out of candy.
That being said, with the exception of a five page office orientation document I drafted for work last week, these words are the most I’ve written since my last blog post in September.
Julie has dutifully emailed me progress reports on her writing and I have dutifully replied with flaky responses about how busy I am (who’s not, right?). She has kicked out over seven thousand words to my zero words and I’m so very proud of her because this whole writing thing is very hard when you’re not whining about how life has you by the balls.
So here’s what I decided about the whole birthday thing. As 88% of my family knows, a birthday in the vicinity of either Thanksgiving or Christmas means your birthday celebration can be readily postponed until Thanksgiving or Christmas. The great-grandmas can wait until Thanksgiving, pumpkin and/or apple pie can stand in as a birthday confection and I’m only going to worry about busting out one fabulous cake and 26 treats minus the one I don’t have to make for the kid with food issues.
Happy November, everyone!
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