Awake Over '09

Em's birthday wouldn't be complete without without an exercise in sleep depravation for her old man.

First we got her ears pierced, of course, and then she had a two hour cheerleading/drill team 'camp,' basically two hours of dancing, and then the relatives for cake and presents.



I bought the 'Happy Birthday' candles when I realized that this is the year that makes the right number of candles on the cake, 13. Since Em's actual birthday is also on the 13th, I'm told this is her 'golden' birthday. That's the birthday where your age matches the date of birth.



As the family party started to wind down, I started mixing pizza dough for the Main Event, when four of Em's BFFs were coming for dinner, two of them for an overnight stay.



My Dad commented that I was making the pizza from scratch. I'm like, well, yeah. That's the only way I make pizza. It's also how I make birthday cakes, or beer for that matter. From scratch is the most satisfying way to make anything.



Of course, by 'from scratch,' I don't mean I never open a can or anything like that. When four of the five kids voiced a preference for red sauce and Em agreed that she could stand red sauce, I opened a jar of Scimeca's Marinara. But stuff like the dough, you gotta do that yourself.





I experimented with doing a hand-tossed crust instead of rolling it out. I'd read up on this a bit since last time I made pizza. And I understand the principles, and I can see how it works, but I'll need some serious practice before I can give up the rolling pin. And I got flour all over myself.





Meanwhile, the girls had fun painting their nails in elaborate ways. One of the guests brought a kit that apparently makes this very easy.





When I polled the guests about what pizza toppings they liked, I got a surprise. One of the guests, the quietest one in fact (so quiet, I can't see how she ever got to be friends with the rest) said she liked mushrooms, black olives and jalapeño's. Really?



Well, I had all three of those, baby portobellos for the shrooms, in fact. So I made half a pie that way figuring I'd get three of the four slices from that one. Think again, this kid powered down three slices rapid fire. I'd so adopt her.



The coup was supposed to be the chocolate fondue. I borrowed my Bro's fondue set and bought some 100% Cacao Ghirardelli and some heavy whipping cream. The recipe called for 12 oz. of chocolate to 8 oz. of cream, so I had three 4 oz. bars of the 100% stuff, a bag of 60% semi-sweet and two half-pints of heavy whipping cream. Then I forgot something important.



Not the vanilla, I put some high test Mexican vanilla in. But, reading the instructions on the fondue set, it told me I could use the stove top to heat the pot up and save heating time. So I did, thinking of how much chocolate will cling to the sides if you melt in the microwave and then transfer.



The thing I forgot was how you need a double boiler to melt chocolate on a stove. Chocolate is incredibly delicate, and this stuff didn't melt so much as it congealed and separated into nasty stuff nobody would want to eat.



I had some semi-sweet chips I melted in the microwave as a fall back, but after transferring them to a pot over the flame of the fondue set, they set up pretty hard, too. The girls didn't seem to mind, eating the fruit and marshmallows (three kinds, plain, strawberry, and toasted coconut), and dipping in the fall-back chocolate until it congealed.



I had done much hemming and hawing over movie choices. Em slept over at one of these kids' houses one time and we found out later they had watched an R rated movie after the grown-ups were out. Another of the guests (who was also a guest at that sleepover) has parents who generally don't even allow PG-13 stuff, so it was kind of a thing at the time, everyone in trouble.



The mother of the kid who hosted that sleepover told me how when she confronted her daughter, her daughter freaked out and claimed it wasn't rated R, it was 'unrated.' It was the 'unrated' DVD of There's Something About Mary.



So checking the ratings on the DVDs I had checked out for Em's party, I got some surprises. Trains, Planes & Automobiles is rated R. I would have thought PG, but I guess the fucking scene at the fucking car rental counter where Steve fucking Martin uses the fucking F-Word a fucking excessive amount of fucking times got under the fucking skin of the fucking MPAA rating board and got the fucking rating bumped up to fucking R.



Sorry. But this kind of thing makes the MPAA ratings worse than useless. When you make Office Space or Trains, Planes & Automobiles rated R and then give a PG to Jaws, how is anyone supposed to know what is benign and what might be too much for their kids?



Then the girls didn't want to watch a movie anyway, so much ado about nothing. Much Ado About Nothing would probably get an R rating if it was a new movie instead of a Shakespeare play.



Another surprise was how early they started dropping off. Times past, they've really beaten the night, but the quiet one was a sleep by midnight. Em and the other were on the couch talking when I gave up, and were still there when I got up in the morning. When I asked if they were still up, they said no, they had just woken up having fallen asleep right where they were at about 1:00.



Breakfast? Let them eat cake. This worked perfectly as there were exactly enough slices of cake left to make breakfast for all but me, and that kept me from downing those calories on, say, an excessive midnight snack tonight.