ABOUT TIME: My Mortgage is My Party Space by Kathryn Merrifield

We live in a service industry.  We have our nails done.  Our hair done.  Our houses done.  Our all done.  Our clothes bought.  Our food prepackaged and made for easy-but- not-too-easy-that-it’s-not-homemade-enough, preparation, so we fell better about our domestic skills.  We have our lawns cut (some of us) and watered, our kids entertained and scheduled, our TV programming specialized to our needs, when and how we want it.  There is no waiting or setting aside time for a “program.”  It’s recorded.  It's not an event.  Our mail is delivered too fast via e-mail and too slow in paper.  Our stars are in the same place.  Our Earth spins. 

What do you do for you?  I can’t sew, because my great grandmother labored at it and didn't want her daughter to suffer so.  My own grandmother did, though the clothes were a bit weird and the Halloween costumes, less so (weird, intentionally).  My mom, was a fine artist, turned interior designer, turned environmental activist (a legacy).

Our priorities have changed.  Everything is made for us.  So we don’t know about each stitch that goes into it.  We don’t know how bacon, or chicken, or flank steak is made – it’s killed and sliced and shipped, in case you were wondering.  Stuff is sewn, industrially.

You may have all that pedicure stuff, but you may not use it.  I do, because polish always chips when I do have it done, max four times per year, because I swim in a chlorinated pool to help my back and this is not good for beauty or nail polish or hair color longevity.  So I utilize the stuff I have.  I do it because there’s no impact with the drive or the the pick, or the push, or the brush, and there’s nothing that makes me wake up to the world like a WARM pool, so I won't change that.  It’s horizontal, the swim, maybe that’s it.  Blue Mind, maybe.  Maybe I’m born again.  There’s a reason for water and it’s to swim.  There's a reason to have stuff to do stuff to not depend on anyone.  

Be a self-starter.

So once I had a party at home, there was no other way.  I’ve tried to convince them kids of the better venue to make my life easier, but they won’t fall for it billed as a more exciting option or because so-and-so, liked it.  It's the same every time at the This Place and That Place and Good Place and Bad Place.  They like to be at home, with its own canned party which I’ve nailed down to a two-hour segment of play (hopefulness at good weather that always seems to cooperate), pizza or baked Costco chicken nuggets and Ore-Ida fries, more play (sports or cupcake decoration), then cake feasting (this time Costco despite my objections because I usually make it), then piñata, then part favors, then thank you and goodbye.

It's simple.

Honestly, I think that I’m just too lazy to schlepp all of that stuff to and from a venue.  Perhaps I just don’t want anyone orchestrating my child’s party and making money off it.  Maybe (ha-ha), I have too much time on my hands (hardly).   Or, there's "Control Freak."

Make it what you want but I orchestrated #25 birthday party last Sunday and it ROCKED!  Yes, two E-vites were never received and I have to do a make-up party because I feel like an asshole after apologizing to parents and kids and... feeling like an asshole, later to be rectified with more cupcakes or brownies and more kids here, so I don't feel like an asshole.

Perhaps, I just want to infuse my home with the happy presence of friends who make my children and me get through another day.  That’s it.  It’s the time with them.  It’s the amnesty of legal hardship because someone may fall on their (collective or individual) face at my house, but thinking that no bad things will happen or spiral or domino.  It’s watching them play soccer in the driveway and remember the story my mom told me of my older brother’s first birthday party, at home, where he and his friends ran up and down the driveway. No one needed to entertain them and they didn’t need to be entertained.  They had a driveway.

Kids don’t need to be entertained.  Give them room and let them be.  Give them time to roam.  Inhabit birthday venues as needed but not for the Jonses’.  The Jones’ don’t do anything different, anyway.