The Only Slumber Party

When #4 was in the third grade she turned nine and asked for a slumber party. I jumped at the chance, erroneously believing it would be a) cheaper and b) less time-consuming than a regular party. No loads of games and activities to plan; the girls would be largely self-sufficient.

I recalled slumber parties from my own childhood, where there were usually five of us and we’d be camped out in someone’s basement and the latest we were ever able to keep our eyes open was 1:00am.

At one slumber party I went to the birthday girl, Jeanette, mandated a no-talking rule promptly at 11:00pm and anyone who broke the rule got pointed at and her name written neatly on a piece of college-ruled notebook paper, which was to be given to Jeanette’s mother in the morning. I got my name written down for trying to talk someone into sticking someone else’s hand in warm water to see if we could make them pee their sleeping bag. We expected to have to write sentences- I will not talk at the slumber party– just like in school, but I don’t think that actually happened.

On the Friday night of #4’s slumber party, approximately 11,000 ~~velociraptors~~ nine-year-old girls arrived in our living room. I had invited them. On purpose. This is the point at which I suddenly understood, on a cellular level, that we did not have a basement. Nor did we have carpeting, or any absorptive surface in pretty much the whole house.

It all started off okay. They ate the junk food we bought. We did the few activities we had planned and they began entertaining themselves, doing little girl type things. The night passed happily, if loudly. I knew I could stick it out because soon enough they’d all be dropping off to sleep and we would once again have (relative) silence in our house.

I had never imagined that there might possibly exist 11,000 nine-year-old girls that were capable of going entirely without sleep, and that they would all be in my highly reflective living room, which was directly under my bedroom, at the same time.

Around midnight we called #4 upstairs and said, hey, tell your friends it’s time to quiet down and start to go to sleep. We weren’t too bothered yet, being that we work nights and usually stay up til 2:00am.

We called her up again around 1:00am and repeated the conversation a little more loudly.

Around 2:00am I called out, gently but firmly, from the doorway of the living room, “Girls, it’s time to go to sleep. No more talking.” Which was met by a stunned silence, then a fit of giggles which escalated into an even louder bedlam by the time I was at the top of the stairs.

Is there anything worse than a pack of nine-year-old girls who are acutely aware of their power? Where the hell was Jeanette?

By the time it degraded into us actually yelling at our birthday party guests somewhere after 4:00am to no avail, I just shut the door to my bedroom, set my alarm for 8:00am, and put my iPod on.

In the morning I discovered that they had eaten all of our other food during the wee hours of the morning and we didn’t even have anything left to make breakfast with.

We shoved the girls outside to play while CC went to the grocery store and made breakfast. By this time they were all fighting because not one of them had gotten a single minute of sleep. Some mothers began to arrive to pick their daughters up before breakfast was ready. It was awesome.

Got any slumber party stories to share?

One and Done

When I was on the road as a touring stagehand, many Sundays began at 8am. No, I take that back. They began more like at 6am after about three hours of sleep with me frantically packing all my crap that I had been putting off dealing with until the last possible minute into my suitcase and then trying to find coffee and a muffin and make it to the theater by 8am for box call. We would pull the empty road cases off the semi trailers they’d been stored in and line them up in prep for the load out. Then we’d do a show. Then we’d do another show. Then we’d start the load out. Usually we finished up around sunrise and headed to the airport for the next city, where we would begin loading in shortly after we landed.

But some Sundays were different. They were “One and Done!” Sundays. These were during multi-week stops in bigger cities like Chicago, Philly, San Francisco; we’d do a matinee only and then have 48 glorious hours off until we had to be back for Tuesday night’s show call. We didn’t have to move the show. Nothing needed to be packed. It was like Christmas.

I’m not on the road anymore. The show I’m on in New York has a One and Done Sunday every week. Sometimes I even take Sundays off and then it’s like, double Christmas. Still, I love the spirit of One and Done Sundays-the sense of possibility and of not being rushed.

So I’m starting a new feature here under that name. Every Sunday I’ll post a picture. And I’ll post five links that will totally be worth your time to check out. Nice and easy.

Except today I’m posting two pictures, because I feel like it.

This is a picture from #1’s graduation at the end of June. She’s standing with her best friend, whom we refer to as #1A. I love this shot of them.

#1A left for college last weekend. It’s only been a week and we miss her like hell. It totally feels like we’re down a kid.

They liked to make this face a lot. I called them the Happiest Graduates of 2011:

We miss you, #1A!

Here are five links that are totally worth your time:

What happened to your pretzels, your favorite underwear, and quite possibly your lipstick: Charles Gulotta at Mostly Bright Ideas

You missing the Yardwork gene? I am: I’ve Become My Parents

Witness the best hippie-inspired intentions going down the crapper: Lori Dyan

Grammar. I has it. The Bloggess

The best post you didn’t read this week about surviving rape: For This I Am Thankful at The Monster In Your Closet.

Yours, Mine, and Ours

I’m lucky enough to belong to two great writing groups, one of which meets in New York every week.

We meet in a Public Space near Julliard close to Lincoln Center. I had never heard of a Public Space- spoken of in capital letters- before I met these excellent people. A Public Space is a place where you have the right, just by being a member of the public, to be there. Seems like a no-brainer, but it’s something of a big deal here. They don’t kick you out because you’re taking too long to finish your cappuccino or someone else wants your table; they only kick you out for being seriously annoying and/or dangerous, in which case the cops do the kicking. Not that I would know about that.

At the Public Space in which we meet there is a Public Restroom. These are rare and highly valued in New York. One of the reasons I’m not revealing the exact location is so that you don’t show up and I have to wait to use the restroom because you got there ahead of me. I live in Jersey. We don’t play nice.

There are actually two public restrooms in this Space, but one of them has no door handle and while you would think you would just be able to push the door open and go in, you can’t. I have no idea how to open the door. I’m not writing about that one.

I’m writing about the other one.

I had to be sneaky to get these pictures. Every corner of this building is under surveillance, and authorities here don’t take too kindly to people taking pictures of the insides of buildings.

A Unisex bathroom. I’m down with that. Except. . . it has multiple stalls. Huh.

Even though the door goes all the way to the floor, it’s weird.

Because girls go here…

seatup — you are totally allowed to leave the seat up

And so do boys.

It got me thinking. Somehow there’s a very European feel to this restroom. I base that on absolutely nothing, because the only two places I’ve ever been to in Europe are London and Berlin. While I did have a unique restroom experience in Berlin which you can read about here, that restroom looked nothing like this restroom, with its instructions on how to flush:

And how to panic:

(Here’s the panic button. You can’t miss it)

My natural inclination, upon walking out of a stall and running into a member of the opposite sex in a public restroom, is to panic. However, to date, I have restrained myself from hitting the panic button. It’s poor form.

Have you ever run across multi-stall unisex restrooms? If so, where? Is it weird, or is that just me?