The Voices in My Head Plan a Party

Staring Martha & Common Sense with heckling by The Insecurities.

We have a July 4th party every year, on or about July 4th. This year it’s the 2nd because the 4th is a Monday.

Naturally Martha has delusions of grandeur. This year it will be different - 50 guests, handmade theme décor in the yard, fun theme goodie bags for the kids, a large spread of color coordinated food & drink for people to enjoy, hours of fun in the sparkling clean swimming pool and lots of different age appropriate games for everyone to play.

Common Sense just shakes its head and The Insecurities are so overwhelmed with material they don’t know where to begin heckling.

I mean my god Martha! I bought a $3 flag tee shirt at Wal mart to wear! What more do you want?

Martha always has delusions of party grandeur & is always sadly disappointed by reality. But Martha is resilient, she never gives up home that someday I will channel the Goddess of Home - Martha Stewart herself.

And when I hit the lottery & can pay someone to do all the work – I will. Promise, Martha.

Common Sense is thinking – well the shade cloth on the sides of the porch is full of holes from being chewed on by the dog, so we could hang the the pool cover up instead. It’s blue. And some red paint got splattered on it when DH was touching up some work he did on the roofline. So there you go – theme colors.

The hecklers wonder if Common Sense knows where the line between realistic & trashy is.

Common Sense suggests if the hecklers are concerned about things being trashy they go clean up the yard because really, an uncluttered yard is about as close to ‘décor’ as we are likely to get.

Martha really wants theme decorated food.  She especially loves the idea of a flag cake made with fruit like you see in magazines this time of year

Common Sense sighs,  Martha… Havoc is allergic to strawberries, and no, we’re not paying for the volume of raspberries that would be needed to replace the strawberries. Not to mention it’s much too hot to bake a cake & Chef Foodie refuses to buy a premade one, they are too dry & the icing is icky. How about a box of red, white & blue Rocket Pops?

Martha thinks that isn’t even trying. Homemade rocket pops would be better & we have ice pop molds. White grape juice, dyed blue & red.

Common Sense gives in but insists the rest of the food be the traditional make your own kabobs, corn, red beet salad & whatever side dishes the guests bring.

Speaking of guests… we never get 50 people. Generally we get our closest friends & their families, about 12-16 people. We never get our invites out in time & people have already made plans.

Martha thinks I should make cute “Save the Date” cards with flags & glitter dipped firework explosions & send them out in mid May.

I’m sure you can hear the laughter from the hecklers where you are sitting.

Martha refuses to believe I am as hopeless with the scissors as I actually am.

As for games…

Martha wants DH to make a cornhole/tailgate/bean bag toss game decorated with a US and a British flag.

Common sense actually loves the idea but accepts it’s never going to happen.

Making games is about #57 on the House Project List.

Even if they are just a sheet of plywood with a hole cut in it set on a couple bricks.

You have to buy the plywood, cut the hole… buy something to cut the hole since nothing we have is the right size…find the bricks since no bricks will be bought because there are bricks around here somewhere…paint…do we even have any paint…

It’s all just too much.

Instead I bought 4 pool noodles at the dollar store & made 8 more lightsabers, giving us a total of 12

So everyone from the 3 year old to the 55 year old can have a Star Wars good time.

The rules are simple.

By Picking  Up a Lightsaber You Agree to the Following:

1. You agree you WILL only attack other people holding lightsabers

2. You agree you WILL NOT deliberately hit anyone in the face or head

3. You agree that you WILL inevitably get hit in the face or head and you waive your right to whine, complain, tattle or in any way retaliate.

4. Dangling by your fingertips from the roofline IS NOT permitted.

Then there is the ManBearPig who infests our woods on holidays & comes out around dusk to make the children shriek & run around & chase it with flashlights in the woods.

Always a fun time when the ManBearPig shows up.

And safe since we have not seen the real bear in a month & will be make enough noise to scare off an entire zoo worth of bears with the firecrackers, bottle rockets & smoke bombs we set off for the kids after dinner while waiting for it to get dark enough to do the real fireworks.

Do you have anything planned for the 4th (assuming you’re in the US)?