This company does not produce wisdom

I mean myself, of course. I have a cold, either again or still, depending on how you define ‘healthy’. My nose has been running heartily since yesterday afternoon, and in a fit of laziness I have been using the closest paper product near my computer as a nose wipe. What is it? Oh, paper towel. Good old abrasive paper towel. The folly of pummicing away the skin of my nostrils is becoming painfully evident.

For those waiting for an after-party report, I can say that things went well. Fantastically, in fact, once you take the surprise snow storm into effect. Light flurries my big white hiney. Everyone we were expecting to show up did show up, even if the snow made them a little late. The venue was great for the kids; I can recommend the Boys and Girls club to anyone with a kids party to throw.

It was great to watch Max in a pack of excited kids, all of them running and squealing and laughing and occasionally crying. My worries about his socialization are now officially put to rest.

And if you ever want a harrowing experience, try being in charge of the presents at a 3-year-old’s birthday party. We waited until the end of evening, so the kids were already crazy from the proximity to bedtime and the excitement of the party. They circled around me and Max to ‘help’ open the presents, and it felt like a swarm of zombies reaching out to grab me and eat my brains. Max was too wound up to even look at the presents as he opened them, and he just wanted his loot bag. By the next morning he was calm enough to actually look at the gifts and play with them. The wife and I needed at least 2 days of recovery. Unfortunately, we got about a day each, and I had this cold roll back in to bother me.

You say it’s his birthday?

Well, happy birthday to him! It was Max’s third birthday yesterday. I am a little surprised at how big a milestone this one felt like. Birthdays 1 and 2 were steps along the path to maturity, but both were still clearly within the baby/toddler era. This birthday really feels like the entrance into the next phase of his life, the phase that contains going to school, learning to read and write, and other mind-blowing achievements.

It’s funny that this birthday is triggering two opposite reactions  the wife and I. I am entirely consumed with thoughts of the future and the amazing things he’s moving towards, while she is (understandably) remembering the lead-up to his birth and his arrival in this world. I tend to avoid thinking about that time. I’m trying to encourage old man time to blur my memories into a hazy, stress-free and vague recollection of the hospital, the waiting, the chaos of the first few weeks.

I am so jazzed by the little dude’s continually improving communication skills that I can’t wait for each new breakthrough to happen. It is only 19 months until my little guy heads off into the big new world of junior kindergarten. Sniff.

Particulars of the party yesterday?  A small family affair of the people who have lived with Max during his three years: me, the wife, my best chum Ryan and my sister-in-law (who brought the extra gift of possible illness contagion with her. Thanks!). I made a chocolate cake with peanut buttercream icing, with gummi worms and crumbled cake on top to make it a dirt and worm cake. The taste was good, but I didn’t mix well enough again, and the cake was rather dense. I swear that I will someday produce a fluffy cake. IT WILL HAPPEN. There is a second party today, the big kids to-do. It turns out this is another event type that I had no idea how to plan, so things are a little rough, but enough pizza and swimming should cover up any social gaffes.

I haven’t recieved notification of your emnity

Here’s a terrible business idea-feel free to take it. A service, wait, let’s call it an e-service to hip it up, that notifies people the moment you decide that they are no longer your friend and are now in your enemy list. You can call it ‘E-Nemesis’. Which is close to ’emesis’, the formal title for vomiting, so that will either help or hurt your business case. Not sure which.

Why am I talking about this? Well, I’m wondering if I have reached enemy status with a few people in my life now. It’s not a tragedy, because for the most part I don’t like these people anyway. My increasing inability to put up with other people’s nonsense or keep my trap shut probably makes enemy-making an inevitability. It would be nice to know ahead of time if I was in a state of war with someone, before we end up at the same birthday party or car wash and things get weird.

It’s a strange time in my social life, overall. The casual friends I accumulated during high school and the wasteful years that followed it are no longer people I have a lot in common with. And, it feels like we’re just coming out of the isolation phase of parenthood, when the lad took up so much of my mind and focus that I just couldn’t imagine socializing or accomplishing anything non-child-related. I wonder what kind of social group I will fashion for myself from this point on. Truthfully, I am not someone who needs hordes of friends or a continual parade of social activities, but talking to adults is pretty high on the ‘do not label as crazy’ checklist.