Birthday Drama

With her tall, skinny, stretching femurs, her braces, dangly earrings, her primary graduation certificate, her "yes" answer to any and all babysitting calls, and her new surfboard, Jane is officially TWELVE!  She envisioned the most glamorous birthday party possible in our limited lifestyle and invited some friends to go with her to the Ice Palace.  Here is a faithful account of the drama of Jane's birthday adventure.

1) We set off on the two-lane highway that circles the island, to find 20 minutes into the drive that a power line was down on the road.  So we turned around and went the other way.  Traffic was totally backed up in that direction, so it took us almost two hours just to get to the Ice Palace. 

2) To make everything more complex, my phone died, so I couldn't communicate with friends who were meeting us down there.  But we got there, skated, had hot chocolate and pizza in the artificial winter of the Ice Palace.  I was worried that some girl might get left out as they skated around in twos and threes, but no!  It IS possible to skate together as a group of SEVEN!  There was only one collision and bloody nose.  Not too bad.

3) As we headed out to leave, one girl mentioned that she forgot she always throws up when she eats pizza.  She forgot?  She was in tears.  At the same time, another mom called (through my friend Joanie's phone, because mine was still dead), and the family dog was in his final hours, and could we meet up so that she could say her goodbyes?  So there were tears outside taco bell (we stopped for bathroom breaks) with the girl who was going to vomit in a trash can.  And there were tears inside taco bell with the girl whose dog might die and everyone else who commiserated. 

4) We eventually made it into the car to head to our designated dog-meeting place.  There, we found Joanie again (such a life-saver!), who told us we had missed the dog meeting.  So we went to the vet's office, 15 minutes away, to drop off the dog girl. 

5) By then, it was 9 p.m.  The whole ride home was filled with stories of animal health problems, including a horse with a cancerous lump in his lip who survived and the family eventually saved the lump in a jar. 

Despite the drama, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, the singing of Wicked and Taylor Swift in the car, and seeing this fun group of tweens soak up the drama of Jane's long, long birthday.