De Partee

Well the dust has settled on the dancefloor, final rounds were at midnight and Cinderella slipped out to her carriage at around 1.30am
I've marked the occasion and I'm shagged.

This last weekend has been a riot of people arriving,people eating, people drinking and seedy people leaving. We(my family and I) had around 200 people arrive for the joint 21st party for my daughter and my niece. They were born one day apart and have always been joined at the hip. They are more like sisters, to the point they disagree on many things and just generally give each other grief and love in equal amounts.

Our first family members started arriving on Thursday night. I've driven around 300km this weekend in Airport trips alone. My family is not small, I have 5 sisters and one brother, plus partners, together we have around 21 kids. Only half of the nieces and nephews came because it was just too expensive.

So Saturday morning and afternoon is a mixture of making decorations, cooking food, airport trips and prepping the local club where it was held. We managed to set up in one hour flat before heading home to share two showers with 23 people......

My daughter had spent the morning being exfoliated, massaged and preened before having her nails acrylicised. The afternoon was spent shopping with her father for a new cellphone and shoes. Its hard being a princess :)

I arrived home from setting up at around 5.30pm, one hour to get ready before we were to be back at the club...hmmmm.....blood pressure increasing by one point per minute. I'm one of those freaks that is addicted to straightening my hair....I have a mane.....this is not a 12 minute job. Why didn't I do it earlier? Because I bloody well didnt, thats why. So I dive, literally, into the shower, scrubb like I'm in Silkwood and slither into my clothes so quickly that patches of my skin are still wet and clinging to my clothes....I tell myself, be calm honey-bunny, breathe, you are not competing in the Olympics, breathe. I drive over to my sisters house so someone with calm hands and 360 degree vision can do my hair. No one is at the club at this point, its 6.40pm, invites say 7pm start, its a ten minute drive, at least...
My sister (the mother of the daughter who is sharing the 21st) walks in wearing shorts, a tee-shirt and sandshoes, looking like she's been for a run. WTF???? I ask if shes ok? why isnt she in the shower? where are her clothes? Errrr she needed to pack the car with stuff? NOTE* Women in my family are control freaks, we do not delegate, we do not collaborate, only we know how to do things "right", because there are alot of "wrongs" out there. Luckily this illness in me has decreased to the point that I no longer worry about the cut of the sandwiches, the fold of the fucking napkin or the tie of the ribbon, but thats me.

So I leave because I immmediately realise that no one will be there to greet anyone, anywhere. My hair is half done, the underside is straight, the top remains bouffant. Its a new style, never seen before, trust me it'll be all the craze shortly.

I arrive at 7.02pm, people are milling around, the kitchen is in chaos which means we have alot of food to prep and my two friends are trying to make sense of our family system.

Its ok, within 30 minutes everything is back on track. The guests arrive and seat themselves, the music starts and away we go. The club is full to capacity and the smokers sit outside enjoying the rain (yes, its raining) and everyone is happy. I'm walking the floor like a prison guard, asking if people are ok, need anything, happy? ecstatic, cool, need a drink? why not. Am I calm? no, Stressed? just a little (mountain).

We have the speeches at 9pm, my daughters father gives a very good speech (do I sound surprised? I am...very) and my brother-in-law makes his daughter cry by being sentimental and loving, let me hear a collective awwwwww, it was spesh. I did my three minute speal and there were no 'Office' moments. I'm used to public speaking (surprisingly)and I don't flinch, sweat or lose my words. We hand over to the grandmothers to say a few words and this is where I should have picked up the tranquiliser gun. Ole nana can't get off the mic, she loves being in the spotlight and damn she loves the volume on this thing. She loves it so much she's adopted a fake british accent like our girl Britney. WTF? 3 minutes turns into 6, which becomes 9 and finally 12. People are getting restless and scrapping charis because a)its boring, b)no one knows what the hell shes talking about and c)can you get her the hell off? My own mother, when she managed to grab the mic off the Talkalitis Nana kept it to 2 minutes flat, one minute for each birthday girl. Ma, you rocked it like it should be.
The girls blew out their candles on a chocolate gateau and everyone ate a mountain of food, powered through 2k worth of free alcohol and rolled away into the darkness (in cabs) at midnight.
I helped clean up and a couple of us went to a friends hotel (gay male, no action)room to talk and have a few drinks. I ended up crashing out on his bed because I'd been up since 4am the day before and I was well and truly munted.
I drove home at 5.30am and rolled around in my own bed until 7am until I couldn't stand it anymore and finally got up.

I drove to my sisters house to find her wide wake like myself.....overtired and running on empty. Sisters of a feather, control together.

We had breakfast, silently agreed that we were glad it was over, gave each other a hug and debreifed on the events of the night before.

By the time our tea was finished everyone was awake and it was time to take the first lot of people to the airport for departure. Robotics kicked in and we put our tired faces away, put on our chipper faces and rolled.

I got home from my last trip to the aiport at 10pm, went to bed and played possum until 6am this morning.

Its over, it was great and its done
Carpe Diem

H2