birthdays

10,816 / 75,000 (14.4%)

Can you count it if you're adding a rough chapter that you still have to go over and fit neatly into the hole? I hope so. I feel like a fake, since I'm just ordering chunks, but right now, anyway, those scenes go there. And I haven't slept in I don't know when, so any freewriting I do at this point is going to be very, very messy, anyway. Between the toddler whose brain must be developing the ability to have nightmares, and the German mentality that having meetings until 10 pm is perfectly normal, even if you have a drive ahead of you and you have to wake up at 6:30 the next morning, I'm exhausted. (And CAN there possibly be a more convoluted sentence than that? You see why freewriting is a bad idea right now.)

On a totally different topic, I am one of those people who HATES to use the phone. I always call people in the middle of dinner, no matter what time I call, or I wake them up, or interrupt something important, or whatever. Plus, it's all in German now. But I got up the courage to call a couple of parents and invite their sons to our house for a little birthday celebration for my oldest. I'm trying to do it VERY low-key, with maybe the only planned event decorating mini pizzas--then the kids can just play, and eat cake. I'm actually not the kind of mother who thrives on birthday parties--directing Fun! Activities! is not something I feel good at, and birthdays are High Stress for me. But really, what my son needs most for his birthday is good friends--for his social little soul, for his language development, for his academic progress, etc. So we're going to try this. I hope they all come--the parents all said yes, and sounded excited, but the kids all told my son at school that they were busy. They're in third grade, so I hope they just don't know their schedule--I think/hope 8-9 is too young to have mastered the art of the polite brush-off. And two of them just came by to look for my son, anyhow (who had just gone to third-grade choir, which, judging by their blank expressions, they aren't doing this year.) I'll just be glad when this weekend is over! And then we are blessedly birthday-free until August. (I'm not counting the toddler. We don't have to invite anyone for that.)