Monday Mission: Imperative

(This week's exercise is 300 words written in the imperative. I've flouted the length requirement again because I couldn't have told this one in a short space.)

How To Run a Child's Birthday Party

First, get the date wrong when you email your friends. Put the correct date on the paper invitation and don't bother to tell them what happened. Apologize for the confusion several times. Then cancel it altogether for a snowstorm. Your daughter will be disappointed. Feel like a heel. Reschedule for January.

In the meantime, eat the snacks you'd bought for the party. Wonder why your blood sugars are high.

Re-purchase the snacks in January.

On the morning of the party, pour milk on your daughter's breakfast cereal. Realize that you are out of milk. Realize that you can't make icing for the cookie decorating without milk. Decide to be ok with this because you can go out and get milk when your ex comes over to help set up an hour before the party starts (at 1:30). Begin the frenzy of final preparations: scrub the table, scrub the snack bowls, put out coasters and napkins, sweep, mop, set out crackers, fruit and cheese. Find yourself holding a stack of half-read books, a notebook, an armful of stuffed toys, a dirty glass, two plastic forks and a half-eaten apple with no earthly idea how to put them all down again. Almost put the forks in the fridge and the apple in the sink. Knock your head against the wall. Remember: it will be over soon.

Watch the clock. Become increasingly grumpy while watching the clock. Get yourself dressed, get your daughter's outfit ready. When she asks you for the five millionth time that morning if she can get dressed now, say No, I don't want you getting your party dress dirty before your guests arrive. When she asks you for the six millionth time if she can decorate cookies yet, say No, that is for when your friends are here. When she asks you if she can dump out another bin of lego, say No, for god's sake I just cleaned up in here. When she begs you for Horton, say yes. Let her watch Horton, for the love of all that's holy, and tape up streamers. Nod your head when your daughter advises you to put them up straight, like this. Continue to let them hang. Remember to keep watching the clock. When it is 1:15, fume. Ask the air: where is he? What is taking him so long? Doesn't he know you're out of milk?

Run out to get the milk as soon as he shows up. Find three of your friends in the parking lot all arriving at exactly the same moment. Apologize. Get the milk. Run home. Pressure your guests to eat the food you set out even though they all just finished lunch.

Make far too much of four different colours of icing (pink, teal, green and white) and the sprinkles and sparkles. Set the Shrek plastic cloth out on the floor. Cover it with the decorating goodies, a bunch of plastic knives, and the brown-sugar shortbread cookies (hearts, flowers, dinosaurs and circles). When the sprinkles get dumped in moutainous heaps on the plates, and the plastic knives are scrubbed by a guest's tongue, and the round sprinkles bounce and roll across the floor like a hundred brightly coloured miniature ping-pong balls, and everyone wants to use the green icing all at once, and they insist on eating the cookies now even though chocolate birthday cake is coming, and the knife for the pink icing ends up in the blue, laugh.

Later, when all of your guests have gone home, look at the leftovers. Groan.

Posted by Andrea at January 14, 2008 12:22 PM under Beanie Baby Brags , Monday Mission

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