Weird weekend

This weekend was weird. You ever have a weird weekend? Yeah. This one? It was weird.

It begins, as weekends often do, with Saturday. Saturday morning, we went to the farmer’s market. We got home. All was fine up until this point.

But then suddenly…somebody tossed a Weird Bomb into the Den. There can be no other explanation for the weird weekend we proceeded to have.

My husband went off for a men’s thing in the early afternoon, and was gone well into Sunday. This may have accounted for some of the weird, but as his comings and goings are both frequent and random, well. Actually, it can’t really account for much of the weird.

Also, I am taking a new allergy medication. Maybe that was part of the weird.

But probably not.

It was just a Weird weekend.

We were having Danger Mouse’s birthday party Sunday. So Saturday I was trying to get ready for the party – and the Denizens were doing everything in their power to make this impossible. Captain Adventure was in a constant state of meltdown, only happy when being held. The girls were fighting. Nobody was willing to eat anything I put in front of them.

Things weren’t where they should have been. Everything from laundry detergent to coffee beans simply were not where I swear I put them. I’m wondering if perhaps we have a bogart in the Den, because I can’t think of any other way so many basic things could have gone AWOL in so short a time.

Night came, and with it Things That Go Bump. It wasn’t just the children – I was hearing them too. Odd dog-noises from around the neighborhood. A lot of bumping. A few thumps. Loud radios going up and down the street. The children were having nightmares, including Captain Adventure (I think). He kept waking up and shrieking until I came in to cuddle him back to sleep, right up until almost 3:00 in the morning.

My bogart suspicions were being substantiated. Somebody was pinching that baby. Seriously.

And at 6:15, I awoke to find Boo Bug standing next to my bed staring at me.

I hate it when they do that.

I hate it so much.

Because it is creepy the way they will stand there, silently and unblinkingly staring at you while you sleep, waiting for you to wake up so they can tell you they just had a nightmare or want a drink of water or, my personal favorite, “Mommy…I hafta go potty”.

So go already! What, you want me to put an article in the paper?! For Pete’s sake, just do what you’ve got to do and go back to bed!

ANYWAY. So Sunday I’m standing there utterly overwhelmed with everything I still had to do. We were doing a ‘Bratz Fashion Makeover’ party (OK, you know what? Shut. Up. I can so totally hear you all sniggering.) so I had the hair curler thing to set up and the body art tattoos and the lip glosses and cupcakes to bake so they could decorate them OH DEAR $DEITY WHY DID I SAY I WAS GOING TO DO THIS?!?!?!

Just as I discovered that the box of cake mix I was sure I had wasn’t there (oh.come.ON! I so totally have a box of rainbow sparkles cake mix in that cupboard…) some allergen or other got into my eyeballs. In spite of my new allergy medication (which is supposed to prevent such things), my right eyeball began to swell. This is a freaky thing to behold, it really is. My whole eye turns bright red, and the membrane begins to swell out away from the main body of the eyeball. Science fiction stuff, people. “Oh look, it’s a Frog Woman from the planet Ack-Thefpah!”

And also it hurts.

A lot.

It wasn’t long before the left one started throwing in its oar as well. It started to get hard to see, and the tears were falling down my face like a waterfall but not doing their job, to wit, weeping whatever had gotten in there out and now I’m wondering if I dare risk taking another antihistamine, given that I just started this new prescription stuff but gee whiz I’ve got to do something, because I’ve got seven little girls arriving for makeovers in less than two hours…!

By the time the husband got back from his men’s thing and (bless him) started helping, I was a wreck. So was the Den. Because when I said, “Go upstairs and clean up that mess, and don’t play around!” what they heard was apparently something like, “Go upstairs blah blah mess and don’t play at it!” and created a Mess of Epic Proportions.

It may make the 6:00 news tonight. “This just in: House so overwhelmed by filth it defies description! Film at 11!”

And then my from-scratch cupcakes came out of the oven unfit for human consumption. In point of fact, I don’t think I could feed them to pigs without PETA coming after me.

What did I do wrong? I have no idea. But given that I was cooking blind and extremely distracted, it is entirely possible that I used baking soda instead of powder, or left out the salt, or put in a tablespoon of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder, or any number of other ways you can ruin a perfectly good recipe for chocolate cupcakes.

ARGH!

So I washed my eyeball with saline, swallowed a couple over the counter allergy tablets (Dear $DEITY please don’t let this put me into a coma although on second thoughts that would get me out of this party so maybe just a little twelve hour one would be OK thank you amen), jumped into the car, raced off to Albertson’s and grabbed the first chocolate cake that came to hand. TWENTY DOLLARS, for a store bought cake.

!!!!!ARGH!!!!!

T-minus thirty minutes and counting! But the house, she is coming together! Goody bags are made! Piñata is filled! Happy Birthday banner is hung! Balloons are up! Ribbons festooned! OK! Hey, know what?

We’re ready!

The doorbell rings and it is Girl #7, who can only stay an hour. YAY! Danger Mouse and Girl #7 (who is a Best Friend) immediately disappear into her bedroom, leaving me standing at the bottom of the stairs saying, “Uh, don’t you want to do the hair and stuff? Because she’s only got an hour…OK…well, let me know if you need me…or anything…”

Doorbell rings again and one of Eldest’s classmates turns up. YAY! Eldest seizes hold of her, drags her up to her room. “Um…I have body art tattoos…OK, well, uh…OK!”

I’m starting to feel like the dork kid at this point. “OK, well, so, good seeing you! Let’s do this again soon, OK? Hello? Goodbye? Anybody?”

Doorbell! Hey, it’s my grandmother! YAY! She doesn’t ditch me!!

But I am putting curls into Girl #7’s hair at this point and forget to make coffee for us. She has hair like mine, poor creature – it will not curl, no matter how loudly you threaten it. But she is putting on many body art tattoos and appears delighted with the ‘wave and bounce’ we do manage to get.

And then she and Danger Mouse vanish upstairs again. They do not wish to do nails, or lip gloss, or discuss Russian literature with me. The second dose of allergy medication is hitting me good and hard right about this time, and I am both cheerful and extremely drowsy.

Or possibly high as a kite. In any case, I don’t mind that there is a lot of noise in the house or that I can’t understand a word my Gran is saying. I just keep nodding and laughing when it seems appropriate.

Time passes.

More time passes.

Yet more time passes.

I look at the clock. It is 1:45. The party is from 1:00 to 4:00.

I’m guessing…this is all we’re going to get…?

That’s right. Two (2) children. Out of sixteen invitations and six (and a half) confirmations, we got…two.

And one of those had to leave at 2:00.

Wow.

That’s…pretty sad.

At 2:00, Girl #7’s mom arrived to take her off to her next engagement. We bid her farewell and looked around. Eldest and her schoolmate were off by themselves. Danger Mouse had nobody but Boo Bug to play with at this point, and I was absolutely floored.

We had cake and piñata for a dozen children, and only one (1) extra kid.

Fortunately, Danger Mouse didn’t take it hard. I was waiting for her to be upset that nobody came to her party, but her take on it was actually extremely upbeat; as far as she was concerned, there were new presents and lots of room to use them, so she was happy.

What the heck was going on this weekend, anyway? The moon isn’t full, nothing is in retrograde…seriously. I’m grasping at straws here, people.

The first time, we got way more than we technically expected. This time, way fewer. What gives?

**sigh**

This morning I needed more flour so I trudged out to the garage and yanked one of the 25# bins of flour out of the cabinet.

The shelf above it promptly collapsed.

It is going to be an interesting week around the Den, methinks…