dailydiatribes

It's 5:30 a.m on Memorial Day.  All of you are still asleep, which is as it should be.  The brave men and women who died fighting for our country would want us all to still be asleep on a government holiday.  It's the American way.

Unfortunately, Abby had eight of her little friends from school over to spend the night last night.  When Tim and I went to bed at midnight, they were still going strong.  Tim informed me that at 3:30, while I was snoring (his word, but I don't snore..I just breathe loudly), they were still going strong.  Now at 5:30, they are still going strong.  When I got up to go to the bathroom, Abby the birthday girl, poked her head in and chirpily said good morning.  I volunteered to beat her into silence with a shoe, but Tim restrained me.  I asked her if they stayed up all night. 

"Only five us stayed up all night," she said cheerfully.  Hmmm, more than half.  Some mothers in town are NOT going to be thanking me.  Teensy, your daughter was not one of the five!

Yesterday passed in a flurry of preparation for the party.  I tied a length of nylon rope to my waist, anchored it to the iron stair rail, and prepared myself to go into the treacherous wasteland of my daughter's room.  There are not adjectives enough to describe the horror within, but let's just say it filled an entire garbage bag.

Downstairs, I dusted, I swept, I vacuumed.  I vacuumed up a bottle of bubbles and jammed the hose.  I had to unplug the vacuum cleaner and use a pair of scissors to extricate the bubbles.  You know my track record with vacuum cleaners. 

Finally, the big moment arrived, and 12 year old girls swarmed into my house like a herd of locusts.  "Did we really only invite eight?" I asked Tim fearfully, as they plunged into the house.

While they frolicked outside, Tim and I slaved in the kitchen, preparing their nutritious meal of cheese sticks, pizza rolls, and taquitos, with a side order of french fries and chips and dip.  When we announced the food was ready, they swarmed into the kitchen and began devouring everything within their reach.  A truly frightening spectacle.

From the kitchen, they swarmed down to the basement to watch a movie.  The screaming began.  Ten minutes later I walked downstairs to see why they were screaming.  The floor of the basement was covered with Nerds.  For those of you not acquainted with the term, I do not mean the bodies of Abby's less popular friends.  No, Nerds are a type of candy, brought to you by those wonderful folks at Willy Wonka.  They are tiny pebbles of sugar in bright, technicolor shades.  They crunch underfoot and I wobbled a little as I made my way across the room.

"What happened here?" I snarled in my nicest voice.

"Oh nothing," Abby replied airily.  "Just a little accident." 

I trudged back up the stairs and got the broom.  I brought it back down and thrust it at her.  "Clean it up," I told her, and went back upstairs.

Ten minutes later, I came back down and the Nerds were still on the floor and the broom was also on the floor, in two pieces.  I was visited by a sudden premonition that this would be a very long night.  To be fair to the girls, the broom was about to break anyway and it probably didn't take much for it to die.  Still...

Tim and I settled in uneasily to watch a movie.  The screams from downstairs continued, punctuated with the occasional loud thud that shook the foundations of the house.  He would look at me like I was somehow responsible.  At around 11:30, they trooped upstairs and the screams continued from above.  I felt like I was on the set of a horror movie.

At midnight, I went up and read them the riot act about being quiet.  Then Tim and I went to bed.  I turned on all the vent fans in the bathroom and turned the radio on really loud.  At first, we shut the door, but then Tim worried they might try to sneak downstairs to do something dastardly, like scream some more.  So we left it half open.

And so here we are at 5:30.  They are still screaming.  Tim is in bed, trying to catch a little more sleep, but I have yielded to the inevitable.  There is no more sleep to be had.  So I got up, made some coffee to cheer him up when he finally concedes defeat, and now I am recording this for posterity.  The one consolation is we drove to Krispy Kreme yeserday to get donuts for the invited guests.  So I plan on inhaling a half dozen or so.  Gotta have some sugar to keep me awake because the little varmints don't go home until noon!!