Summer 2009 Issue

It’s 1:00pm and I get a chat message from my husband. His best friend’s girlfriend has just invited us out to dinner to celebrate her birthday…just us (and our child ) and them. At the time, I am coping with our cranky two -and-a-half year old who has refused to take a nap, and am skeptical about how on earth I am going to get him to a restaurant in just a few hours without him falling asleep in the car on the way to dinner and then being an emotional mess when we have to wake him up to go into the restaurant. I’m a little annoyed at the last minute nature of the invitation, but I also worry that it will be a disappointment to them if we can’t go, plus we haven’t seen his best friend in a while. So I say, “Let me see if I can get Orion to take a nap. If he takes a nap, we can go.” I then spend 45 minutes trying to coerce my son into taking a nap. Eventually it works! Success! We can go to dinner!

I tell my husband, so he passes on to the birthday girl that we can join them for dinner.
A couple of hours later, she responds, asking if the local fancy-schmancy fondue restaurant will work at 7:00pm? Um. Sure, let’s take our small and willful child to the place with the open flame on the table-top, the boiling pot, and the extra-long pointy forks. Not to mention the snooty atmosphere. My husband tells her that that particular restaurant won’t be a good place for our son. Could we go someplace else? She responds, “ Well, another time then.”

What. The. Fuck.

So now that I have gone out of my way to try to accommodate your last-minute plans so we can enjoy an evening together, we end up being uninvited because you picked a place that is not only not kid-friendly but downright dangerous and you don’t want to alter your plans? I wasn’t expecting them to want to go to Chuck E. Cheese or Pizza Hut or anything. I think we could have successfully made it through an evening at even a relatively nice cloth-napkined restaurant. There are a lot to choose from – just please don’t pick THIS one.

I know these people don’t have children, and I shouldn’t hold that against them, but seriously? Alright, well, the two of you go enjoy your fancy birthday dinner ALONE. I’m going to waddle my eight-month pregnant self into the kitchen to find something edible to make for dinner. I hope you choke on your boiled lobster. Happy birthday.