Cranky Mama

I confess. I am a cranky, cranky Mama now. I've been fighting a terrible cold. I'm tired. I slept just five hours last night; woke up at 4:30 A.M. to get my Halls black cherry cough drops and still couldn't fall back to sleep until 6:10, to snatch one hour until it was my turn to drive Figgy to high school.

We just moved into the condo on Sunday, and she asked if she could have first four, then seven, then ten friends tops over after school today to watch a movie in the private screening room downstairs.

By the time I got back from my Dad's, tired from running around and then feeling as though I hadn't done nearly enough for him [he fell right after I left, but is ok], there were 15 high school freshmen watching The Haunting in Connecticut, a movie you could not pay me to see. Figgy owns it.

Feeding a Crowd
Guess I'm not truly a gracious hostess, because if I were, I wouldn't be kvetching, right?

H. made buttered popcorn, and we ordered three pizzas and an order of wings. Served watermelon wedges, baby carrots, water and chocolate chip cookies made from a mix by Milk & Cookies, a sweet little bakery on Commerce Street in the West Village [milkandcookiesbakery.com]. They sell it on the website, but I got it on sale in Kings. [When high-end gourmet foods are fresh and perishable, high-end stores like Kings and Williams-Sonoma deeply discount them after a certain shelf life. I've scored great deals on Barefoot Contessa mixes at Kings.]

After that, they had a "dance party" with a playlist on her Mac and a pretty light show dancing on the computer screen.

I spent half the time worrying the neighbors would complain. It got loud. Some people here have babies. But it was really only about 7:30 P.M.

While You Were Sleeping
But even with a private movie screening, dinner and a dance party, we can't avoid the damn sleepovers every weekend and school break. I told you, I'm a grouch tonight. I can count on one hand the number of sleepovers I had as a girl. My cousin Veronica slept over for a couple of days once when I was a single-digit age, and in high school, my friend Nancy once slept over. I honestly think that's it. I don't remember sleeping at anyone's house, not even for sleepover birthday parties, which Figgy has had almost every year.

She's also had a gazillion regular sleepovers. Don't know if it's because she's an only child, or what. But little Punch & Judy is coming over tomorrow to spend the night, and I wouldn't have minded nuclear family solitude right now.

At our house--the one that's all broken now--she and her friends sleep on the pull-out sofa in the small living room and jockey for a turn in our one bathroom. Here, Figgy has a giant wing [I'm exaggerating a bit] with her own big bathroom. Her bed is king-size and a few of them can fit on it. Luckily, only one friend is staying tonight.

Teen Watch
It's not that teens are so much work. They aren't. It's just that you have to worry, cross every i and dot every t, just as a writer does on a final draft. Did they blow out the scented candles in Figgy's room? What about the incense--is that still burning?

I'd like to be happy and graceful. I can't bear to count the days until Figgy will graduate from high school and go away to college--so why am I so unhappy about her wanting to be home with us and her friends?

I know perfectly well that I will be crying in my tea when my Fig is nowhere in sight.