The Letdown

   It happened again. I worked my *ss off to clean the house and set up our garage for another birthday party. The attendance was underwhelming. It's the turkey's fault. We had a medium sized turkey sitting in our freezer for God knows how long. The freezer it was sitting in was in desperate need of defrosting. I got a small idea of what it was like to go on an arctic expedition. We found a lot of frozen artifacts and it was a miracle I was able to get the bird out at all. What do you do with 15 to 18 pounds of defrosting meat when your family has only three people? Throw a party, of course.
   The party in question needed to happen in the fall but not too far into the fall. We put people in our garage and since the doors stay open, we need warmer weather. Picking a date was a huge pain because a lot of our guests were continuously busy until finally, I just picked a date and stuck with it. Once the invitations went out, people started dropping like flies. I got several texts from people who were going to be hours late! I began to be grateful they were still showing up at all. The whole thing became ungodly frustrating and almost felt personal, although I have no idea why.
   I had enough fun racking my brains for gift ideas leading up to this and now I'm not I'll even see them and half the suggestions were ignored anyway. I really need a better game plan. I am never sorry when I get the house clean, despite the fact that it never lasts. It would feel like there was more of a payoff to all that effort if it was for a grown up gathering. Kids, and my spouse, are oblivious to whetther the house looks good. The birthday princess in question is also a huge fan of sleepovers. I'm always late to the party on these things but it looks like we will be going the small sleepover route for next year.
  It all worked out in the end, of course. The only drawback was a stupid amount of leftover turkey.

This, dear reader was written pre pandemic. Hilarious to think of the things I kvetch about that seem like such small potatoes now. This year, we will have to deal with our first quarantine kid birthday. Now There's a kvetch waiting to happen!