Response to comment

If it makes you feel better, if you go by hour-by-hour breakdown, I spent more time being terrorized by small children on airplanes than enjoying recreation activity in Hawaii.

Seriously. I'm a convert to the idea of a no-fly list for children: you can't keep your mouth shut a certain percentage of a flight, you're off. Especially when people are trying to sleep. Parents have multiple tools at their disposal: reasoning, Tylenol PM, and duct tape.

I was telling some friends, in not so many words, that if my body could talk, it would say, 'I'm so confused: this morning, we were snorkeling, and now we're shoveling.' I might say, 'technically, it was yesterday morning, but I appreciate your confusion, because you've not slept since then. Because the child sitting in the row behind you, diagonally, loudly demanded something of her parents every half-hour or so.

I could go on, but I have to keep prepping for this AVD party that no one is coming to, because of course the very people who convinced me that it must happen--in spite of my explanations of how much work it requires and how tired and jet-lagged I'd be (they even said they'd help, that's how much the party had to happen)--aren't going to make it. At least now I have solid ammunition for this being the last one.

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I'm amending the above post for Sunday morning. I regret the tone but not the content (I regret nothing about suggesting duct taping the mouths of rowdy children; I feel some compunction about slamming my friends). I, too, have backed out of parties for legitimate reasons (illness, exhaustion). Just like I don't blame my parents for not wanting to drive down for Thanksgiving--but I'm annoyed because they insisted on doing so and then at the last minute decided not to come at all because it occurred to them the weather in November would not be great for driving--I'm not annoyed at my friends for being sick or tending to their sick children. But the thing is, I said a month ago I wasn't having this party because it was so much work and I wasn't feeling it, and I was overruled. There is so much I'd rather be doing right now: reading the Sunday paper (I'll probably do the Times now and Post later; catching up on Daily Shows; going for a walk; etc. But instead, I'm cleaning and cooking for a party that people convinced me to have, and it's stressful. So, fine: this is it. Last time.