Queen of Rambles

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My poor mother. She had the worst birthday party in the history of the world, today. I think only a death or major medical emergency could have made it worse.

And the fault? Lies with crazy granny, of course.

We wanted to have the party at my mom’s favorite pizza place, but my grandma went ballistic because the pizza there “tastes like cardboard” and decided we had to go out to Mexican food since that’s what my mom likes. A Mexican resturant with the three rugrats wouldn’t be much of a party so I put my foot down, which was the first strike against me. I almost don’t think it could have been worse if we would have taken everyone out to a resturant.

In the end, I compromised and said we could have it at my grandma’s house. Notice, I say “I compromised.” My sister didn’t see why it would be bad to have it at a Mexican resturant and it was supposed to be a suprise party for my mom (though no one was invited, other than us) so she couldn’t put her foot down. Someone has to have a little sanity in these gatherings.

As soon as we walked in the door, grandma showed us the table and then started yelling at my dad about a chair he broke. I was confused, wondering when he had broken one of her nice chairs. He was confused, wondering the same thing. It turned out that he was transporting the chairs after my grandad’s funeral 25 years ago and one chair blew off the back of the truck and broke. We were all bewildered, but I was the only one brave enough to ask if she was really going to yell at him about something that happened 25 years ago.

You may notice a theme in this story. I am a bitch. I can’t help it. I don’t mean to be. I try to go with the flow. I just can’t keep my trap shut when people start talking crazy.

Ever since I’ve arrived, she’s been telling me she wants us to take a four generation picture with me, Erik, my mom and her. Great! I like the idea! Today we got the kids dressed up in anticipation of taking a few pictures–one of me and Erik, one with Lexie and her kids and one with all of us together.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

She wanted a FOUR GENERATION photo. A four generation photo only has four people in it. She doesn’t want a picture of Lexie and her kids. Do you understand? I don’t understand.

In the end, after much bitching and moaning on her end, we got a little photo shoot session set up out in the lawn. We were doing Lexie’s family first, everyone was in place, I looked at the screen and realized I was shooting directly into the sun. No way, no how would a picture turn out decent.

You have no idea how much I felt like puking when I said we had to turn the chairs around. You have no idea how much work it was to get my grandma to sit in the bleepin’ bleepin’ chair. She’s short and doesn’t want to look short. She wanted to stand on some books behind the chairs. I got some books. I was trying to accomodate her. She was teetering on them and about to fall.

So we turned it all around, got some pics, then had to swap out the kids. The kids were not in the mood to be swapped out. It turned into an all out toddler tantrum threesome. We ended up getting a whole family pic, but they are only good for a laugh, not for framing purposes.

Then lunch was ready and we were all ready to just sit down and enjoy some food. A peaceful meal doesn’t happen with three toddlers and an old woman who has to be in control of every aspect of everyone’s life, but at least we’d be getting some food in all the cranky toddler bellies.

We got to my grandma’s house and she had the table set according to how she wanted us to sit. She thought the kids should sit on bar stools at the bar and the adults would sit at the table. The kids are 2 and 3. They had no desire to sit away from their grandma and mommies. My grandma was getting more irate by the minute because her perfect little plan wasn’t working out. She’s a perfectionist and if you decide to do one little thing that she didn’t plan for/anticipate/come up with you obviously think she is stupid and hate her. She told me to put Erik on the stool and I thought she was just making a suggestion, so told her that Erik was playing and would come sit on my lap when he was hungry. Suddenly she started screaming that no one gave a shit what she thought and we all thought she was stupid and hated her and we should all just leave.

It was joyful.

Once we recovered from that outburst, she looked at my sister and started yelling that everything would be ok if my sister hadn’t stolen her booster seat. Again, the kids don’t sit in booster seats. And though my sister feels that possessions of other people are in flux when it comes to the owner, I know for a fact my grandma gave her the damned thing. It’s sitting in my parent’s garage, but I think we should take it over to her tomorrow.

I just felt bad for my poor mom. What an awful, stressful birthday. My mom and I both have nervous stomachs, so we were out in the driveway spitting up all our cake. I hope that saved me some calories.

At least my mom loved her quilt! I’ll post pictures when I’m back. We also took the kids to the big park and let them run wild for a couple of hours. None of them took a nap today and they were some seriously tired little people. Mine, of course, was the last to hit the sack. The other two usually take a nap, but so far Erik’s only had one nap since he’s been here. He’s been sleeping about 13 hours at night.

I guess I better wrap this up and get it posted. Time for bed! I’m still jet-lagged.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.