....I am a party pooper.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

....I am a party pooper.

Planning a birthday party for my 5 yr old. We have set a budget for everything, including his present. It is a STRICT budget. It is a race car birthday, as deemed by his majesty the birthday boy. We are making most of the decorations and the race car track. I am making the craft we will do. We are getting the $5 pizzas from Little Caesars. Homemade cake.  You know, going all out.

I get a little stumped today on what to use for homemade decorations and so hop online to GTS (Google that shit. For future reference).

Holy spoiled  kids. My wedding wasn't as elaborate as some of these parties. Real hubcaps on the walls.  Cake tables with bigger cakes than most wedding cakes and a spread of food fit for a Las Vegas buffet.  All they needed was half naked girls with feathers on their heads, cheap booze, and legal prostitution and they could have called it a destination birthday.

 "Hey!! You turned 5!!! No one else on earth have ever achieved such a feat!!! You deserve a day long extravaganza with as many people you can think of and some you don't even know and a cake bigger than mommy's wedding cake!! Oh, and how about $200 in some decorations we are going to throw away in 2 days!! $100/day is pittance compared to what an amazing, intelligent kid you are for turning 5!!"

He didn't graduate college at 16.  He didn't win the Nobel Prize.  He did something that EVERY kid does 5 years after they are born.  He turned 5.

And just think, you will have to top that the next year. And the year after that. You have a minimum of 15 years of parties for this kid and you take year 5 to this level? 

I am a professional face and body painter.  My living is 99% birthday parties.  I have seen it all.  It just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.  Moms feel like they have to top other moms.  Dads trying to keep up and rolling their eyes at me every time their wife sends them to the store for "more of that good brie." (This actually happened at a 3-year-old's birthday party).  

College girls walking into the house hung over, in their street clothes and emerging from the powder room transformed into Cinderella, or Snow white.  Like the little girls actual future walked into the bathroom, and emerged as what she thinks it will be like. 

I'm not an exception to this.  I have to put myself in check (and sometimes my cash flow does it for me).  I have to step back and think "He can have a good time and a fantastic birthday whether I spend $500 or $100." And what a great lesson for him (and me) to learn.  Money doesn't buy happiness.  And neither does Hubcaps on the walls. 

This all is part of a bigger picture I'll explain in pt. 2 of this topic. Stay tuned!

Becca

Update:  Here is Pt. 2