The start of birthday party season is upon us. For years now I have dreaded these days, when the schoolmate b-day invitations begin to roll in. I was always miffed when Charlie Brown would moan about the fact that he was never invited to a party – personally that would be the sweetest thing ever. I recognize a part of growing up is attending birthday parties, eating cake, being merry, blah blah blah, but when there are 20+ kids in a class and party politics require that everyone be invited to every party it can be a drain on the family time social calendar and on the wallet. Secondarily, or maybe this is my primary fear, is that this means I will have to now invite non-family members to the Bear’s 4th birthday extravaganza in March and that those folks that do not know the Bear (or us) very well or at all will arrive with gifts of an undesirable kind (dolls that end in the letter Z or princesses from a company starting with a D – for example…you know the stuff all girls are supposed to be into). Can you write “No Shitty, Slutty Gifts please” in the invite? I am weighing my options.
The party tomorrow is from 2-3:30 (meaning that the household must be football fans as the playoffs start after 4pm – I already like these people) and at their home, which is nice. For the gift, we decided on the Squiqqles book I reviewed here, along with a snazzy 24 pack of watercolour pencils and the 1st Gustafer Yellowgold DVD (read my interview with Morgan). I couldn’t help myself with the Gustafer purchase ’cause #1 it helps out the band and #2 it is just so cool and unique…which is more than one can say about those Z’s and D’s. I wanted to package Justin Robert’s “Meltdown” and Francis England’s “Fascinating Creatures” discs with the Squiqqles Book as the gift but I thought of it too late to order from the artists themselves and I simply refuse to pay $18 for a CD in a big box stores. I did pay $17 for Gustafer in B&N but it’s a DVD/CD combo so I felt like that wasn’t too insane (plus it’s only $2 more than the band charges in person).
Hopefully the Bear’s friend will dig it all – the Bear is on record as telling us that this girl likes art…so there you go. For the Bear’s party, we are definitely probably holding it at World Cafe Live during the Justin Roberts show and we without a doubt are not inviting the whole damn classroom even if it means we are destined to be “those people” – after all that is who I always dreamed of becoming.
