This time, instead of driving myself to complete exhaustion and then driving through the house... I cut 2 corners. I ordered a vegetable tray instead of cutting up my own, and I hired a cleaning crew to clean my 3 bathrooms and my kitchen before the party. Little did I realize, I should've hired them for during and/or after the party.
Drama always comes with our large family get togethers. Usually it stems from strong personalities getting together, many of whom clash with the other strong personalities (or straight up do not get along), but my MIL stayed home because she was tired, so the rest of us got along great! haha Imagine that. So, this time the drama had to find it's way into the party through other means... Don't get me wrong, we still had some bragging, oddly placed bragging, with my Dad for the second year in a row (at the SAME kid's birthday party) going on about his new home and his golf cart. Showing pictures to my family members who are his EX family members, and probably could care less AND also would probably just love to be able to retire, let alone retire to some swank retirement village with private gates to keep out the 47%... well except for the few they need to fix their pimped out golf carts or to scrub the ben gay and efferdent out of their sinks. Anyway, that wasn't too bad and it wasn't very exciting as far as drama goes.
Nope, it wasn't people, but a series of mishaps that made the shit hit the fan... or the floor in our case. First, we start off with some poor, unsuspecting party guest opening an exploding 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. Soda was everywhere... on the floor, counters, in the "Green eggs" (deviled eggs in honor of Green Eggs and Ham), on my kitchen mats, and another guest was wiping it off the floor than wiping the counters the food was on with the same rag. I ran in to clean up the mess, and pull that rag out of her hand, and try to explain to everyone that the eggs were now green and brown, but were totally edible... they were just party eggs with a hint of caffeine. Whew, we got that disaster out of the way... smooth sailing now, right?
Haha
no
I finish cleaning up the soda, grab some food, and the moment my tired tuckus hits the chair, someone calls me into the bathroom. There is either tar or the sole of a shoe ground into my bathroom floor, and tracking down the hall and into the kitchen. I put on my cleaning gloves, and get to work scrubbing it up. It's stuck, as if it's glued on. Meanwhile, a child has to pee. I realize it's taking forever and send her upstairs to another bathroom, and about 10 minutes later I give up with a tiny bit still stuck. It remains a mystery as to what it was. No one found anything on their shoe.
So now I'm crunched for time, and I abandon my food, start the party games, get through all 3 games, do the pinata, and then on to the cake. I had to cut the cake (see below, censored LOL) that I made, which always breaks my heart a little, but everyone was eager to get a piece of it. Once everyone was served, I grabbed my own piece. By then, people were leaving and I had to go take pictures of them behind the life sized, headless Thing 1 and Thing 2's I made. (Everyone got their own blue hair, and everyone loved the photo op, but it took a long time to get through everyone). Needless to say, when I got back to my cake it was gone.
 |
| The Cat In The Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and The Lorax |
 | ||||
| This was my 3rd time working with Fondant, the first time was 10 years ago |
I thought it would be nice to grab myself a new slice of cake, and go sit with my grandparents for awhile. The moment I sat down at the table with them to visit, our toilet decides to overflow and bring up everything that had previously gone down. It was everywhere in my entire bathroom and hallway. So there I was, in my party clothes, shit scrubbing... literally. My husband did come help me, I will give him credit for that, and together we mopped and bleached, threw away rugs, saved shoes from being flooded out, fixed the toilet, and tried not to cry. Of course, another guest needed to use the bathroom. They had to wait, as they could not climb our stairs, and that made me feel even worse. Well all know I'm a bit neurotic and particular, so I also started to worry my guests who were unaware of the toilet issue thought I had really gone off my rocker and decided to hand scrub, with bleach, everything from my bathroom, down the hall, into the kitchen (where they did not realize brown water had been tracked) just because I couldn't stand to wait to get chip crumbs off the floor. I'm nuts, I'll give you that, but I'm not that nuts. My mother, aunt, and sister kept the kids out of the way, and fed them while we worked. My mom also packed up the food. I didn't get to visit with my grandparents, and I had abandoned my second piece of cake.
So, there you go, 2 lost cakes, 2 bathroom fiascoes, a sticky kitchen, and one batch of brown green eggs later, the party was over. My husband says that next year we are having the party in a barn. Now you see why I think I hired the cleaners for the wrong time.
Just in case you are one of my readers who happen to know me personally, you can rest assure that I have now cleaned the bathroom, hallway, and kitchen, with bleach and lysol (alternating) 6 times. This situation really brought out my issues with being a bit on the obsessive compulsive side.
I'm still recovering from the hectic weeks leading up to the party, and then the manual labor required to make that cake, then sleep for 4 hours and survive that party. If anyone wants cake, the Lorax is left. :)
Since most of that was not funny, unless you pictured me with my sparkle-pocket jeans and blown out hair with my jeans rolled up like I was diggin for clams, my purple converse on which matched my purple cleaning (elbow length) gloves, while I dug not for clams, but for feces (BTW "Is it poop or is it chocolate?" is NOT intended to be a party game.) That maybe had some humor in it for someone who is not me. But, for the other lack of funny, I will leave you with this little overheard gem....
(This was said in a Shoshanna Shapiro *google her* voice)
Girl who's head is perma-tilted to one side So we totally gave our scarecrow boobs. Yeah, AND we made it skinny. I mean, who wants a fat scarecrow, right? I know.
You're welcome for that.
