I feel I must take a few moments out of my hectic schedule these days to post something. If only for my own sanity! I’m cramming quite a bit of work into these few days and it’s driving me nuts.

Every time I receive an email in my work in-box I hear Buzz Lightyear ask, “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” Sometimes it rings true. Entirely too true.

Enough of that. On to other things.

Matilda’s seventh-birthday-extravaganza was held this weekend at a local water park. That was mistake number one. Water park. That’s insane. What were we thinking? The second mistake was actually inviting anyone outside of the family. The third mistake was holding the party during the day, under the cruelty of the sun. The fourth mistake was allowing the Brownie Bitches (more on them some other time) to stay with us. Yargh.

The party went well. Most of the kids are of the age where they are okay to wander this relatively small park alone. However, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t walking around the park looking for the kids half the day.

One kid, who lives hear us, is obsessed with being accepted. For an entire week, this is all she could say, “I don’t know if I’ll enjoy the party if other kids are there. They probably won’t like me. I think you (Matilda) should do everything with me and not your other friends. I’ll be lonely if you don’t. I’m not sure if I could be your friend anymore if you pay attention to the other guests. Why did you invite them? They probably won’t like me and they’ll make fun of me.” And on and on and on.

We have pictures of this child watching Matilda open her gift on her actual birthday. Matilda is beaming with pride and happiness over her new American Girl doll while the neighbor has this look of pain and anger on her face.

But, she ended up doing fine at the party. For the first hour she wandered off alone and didn’t pay attention to the other children, which clearly didn’t give them the chance to hate her as she planned.

For the most part the other girls were great. All my nieces and nephews, of course, were wonderful and had a great time. However, one of Matilda’s friends did not. Her father stayed with her, much to my chagrin. This is a vibrant, intelligent child who is funny, loud and excitable. Except when her dad is around. Then she’s withdrawn, embarrassed, shy and almost on the verge of social collapse. He does this to her by protecting her within an inch of her life, always standing over her, coddling, cooing and fixing everything.

We invited this little girl over once. Her father nearly had a heart attack when he realized he couldn’t weasel his way into staying. He stammered and backed out of the house apologizing to his daughter. She batted her eyes and waved back, sadly. As soon as the door closed, she turned to Matlida and bellowed, “So what do you want to do first??” They played for three hours and screamed like wild banshees, having a wonderful time. The father called every thirty minutes to make sure she was okay. When I told him his daughter was walking around the house acting like an elephant he nearly passed out. He double-checked to make sure we were talking about the same girl.

She came down with a mysterious illness shortly after lunch and went home. I did not find out why they left until the day after the party being as they left without saying goodbye.

Baby Gertrude had a blast! She flopped in the water as if she had lived there for nine months (come to think of it . . . ). Once she got over the fear that we were about to apply Baby Magic all over her hair buds, she relaxed and just giggled with sheer joy. She even stuck her face in the water. Granted, she was trying to grab something that wasn’t there and didn’t realize there was a barrier between her face and her goal. The important thing is that she didn’t cry or drown. I think she viewed it as a minor accomplishment, based on the look on her face, which seemed to say, “Well . . . I won’t do that again.”

I think the adults had a good time too. Except for the portions of my body that are now teeming with tumors brought out by the UV Rays of the sun, which on Sunday was extremely active with cool explosions. Not that we could see it or anything, but there’s particles everywhere! There might even be a neutron passing through your brain right now! RUN!

Overall, I learned a very important lesson. Perhaps I already knew this and needed a refresher. However, if you ever plan on entering the water feet first from a high-speed water slide, hold your nose. Otherwise water runs straight up it, acting as a nasal enema.

I think there is still some water lodged up there in the cavities somewhere. At night I can still smell the chlorine.

On the flipside, the kids thought it was funny as hell. And that means they were paying attention to me for at least a nanosecond. And that ain’t bad.