My husband David and I complement each other in many ways, but our mutual destruction is assured unless we can figure out some way to curb our shared love of SEVERE over-planning.
The following is the actual schedule that faced us as we headed into last weekend:
FRIDAY -
MORNING - Shop for, decorate and clean house for the surprise birthday party of a family friend I'll be hosting this evening. A sit-down dinner for 10.
NOON - Make tragic, weekend-screwing mistake of checking Craigslist and discovering there is a murphy bed, which I have been wanting for our guest room, on sale for a great price. Order said murphy bed, thus assuring own doom.
NIGHT - Throw friend's birthday party in state of high-frenzy. Remove guests from home before falling into bed at midnight leaving kitchen disaster in our wake.
SATURDAY -
PARTY NUMBER TWO! It's the BIG Snoodie First Birthday Extravaganza!
MORNING - We know we're scheduled to visit a sick friend to visit for most of the morning - so best to get a jump on the day! We're out of bed with Snoods at 6am! As David attacks the kitchen fiasco, I begin making giant mound of cupcakes (pausing only to run to the neighbors to frantically beg for cupcake liners, which I have neglected to purchase during yesterday's maniacal shopping outing). Snood yells miserably from his play yard for sweet freedom, but we eagerly explain how worth it this all will seem once he sees the great Feast of Snoodie we are preparing!
LATE MORNING - We cease work to visit the aforementioned friend. Upon return (around 11am), I realize we have approximately 8 hours of preparations to complete before the party starts at 4pm. BUT, instead of helping with this, David now has to leave to go get a UHAUL and pick up the ill-advisedly purchased murphy bed. He estimates that the entire undertaking will last about 2 hours...
AFTERNOON - ...he is wrong. By early afternoon I am texting him frantically.
12pm-
ME: Where r u???
DAVID: Turns out Murp bed actually belongs to ex-boyfriend. He dsn't want 2 sell.
1pm-
ME: Where r u now???
DAVID: Convinced b-friend - getting cashiers ck. then heading bck to buy bed.
2:30pm-
ME: Where r u???
DAVID: Disassembling bed I'm gonna B a while.
By 3pm I give up on the texting and decide I better concentrate on frantically shoving detritus into every conceivable inch of closet space in our home, while simultaneously attempting to speed-ice cupcakes and hang birthday banners.
3:55pm finds David back at home! The two of us unload the final pieces of our massive new murphy bed into the guest room in the waning moments before our first guests arrive. The early arrivers help me take out the garbage and set the table before - THE PARTY BEGINS!
4pm - David emerges from a 60-second shower and joins the gathering revelers. The party is an enormous success! I've taken a friend's good advice and kept it small and super-simple. Snoodie crawls around with a handful of other babies and then shoves an entire cupcake in his face. BIRTHDAY ACHIEVED!
9pm - Our guests have departed and David and I lay semi-conscious in our backyard only to realize that we now need to start packing for a two-week trip that begins first thing tomorrow morning. I offer my husband seven million dollars if he will just let me die in the middle of the lawn instead, but he refuses. And so, I get up and follow him into the house, where we start pulling out bags and throwing in a haphazard collection of clothing before crawling into bed around midnight.
SUNDAY
5am - Wakey! Wakey! We're out of bed in the dark before dawn to head for LAX looking like rejects from the cast of Zombieland.
So, the weekend nearly killed us.
BUT now that it is behind us we are thrilled to have our new murphy bed and glad to be on our nice vacation. And as for the birthday party? As I mentioned in my last post, one friend advised me that all you really need to come away with to deem a 1st Birthday Party a success is a picture of your baby wearing a hat and covered with cake.
And to that I say - - - CHECK!
