A Simple Plan

Know what bugs me?

I go nuts when simple things don't remain simple.

Things like a toaster not working. One plug. One button. No rocket science. And if it doesn't work, I get frustrated.

Because simple things should be easy. I don't expect working calculus to be fret free. I don't think brain surgery is a no brainer. Riding a unicycle even... definitely not simple.

But making bland postcard birthday invitations instead of purchasing a theme-oriented pack of cards? That should have been easy-peasy.

And yet, one full-fledged adult conniption later, I'm ready to admit that I should have let Clay make his own invites.

Problem number one? Our printer was out of ink. Things went downhill from there.

A quick trip to the local office supply store for the ink cartridges included a side trip to Hobby Lobby for some colored cardstock paper.

Home again, home again, jiggety, jig!

I printed the appropriate number of sheets and cut each sheet into four postcards with my handy dandy page slicer thingamabob.

Then I sealed two invites into addressed and stamped envelopes, put the bulk of invites into Clay's backpack for his teacher to distribute to the boys in his class, and took the last one to another friend of Clay's when I dropped Clay off for a play date at his friend's house.

And then I realized that I had planned Clay's birthday party for 2-4 p.m. on a Friday when school is still in session.

Everybody exit the building. No need to run, but proceed directly outdoors. Because MOMMA'S GOING CRAZY!!

All I can say is that I have too much on my plate, I'm taking muscle relaxers for this never-ending backache and they're making me loopy tired, and my oldest child's birthday falls during the summer. Always has, always will. I'm just not accustomed to working his party around this school business.

But summer break is the very reason we are scheduling my boy's party early this year. Vacationing friends leave slim pickings for party goers.

I called and retracted the date on the hand-delivered invitation.

Then I reprinted, with a revised date, new invitations.

And that's right about the time that the blade in my handy dandy paper slicer thingamabob went dull. After several ugly attempts to "make do" with it, I had some seriously hacked up invitations... and blood pressure readings that were equally as ugly.

Where are my scissors?

Oh. Yeah. Those.

The kids lost (hid?) those about a month ago and I have yet to recover them.

Fine. Kitchen shears will do in a pinch.

Just need to clean off the bacon grease from where I used them to cut open our pack of heart attack for breakfast.

Nobody said that postcard invitations had to be one uniform size anyway.

Now then.

Time to unseal the two envelopes holding the erroneous invites. (Because they were stamped, people! And the price of stamps just went up. It's like sticking gold filigree on envelopes.)

I could be a career criminal. I am truly that good at unsealing stuck envelopes. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.

But my children would lead to my arrest.

Because I couldn't find a drop of Elmer's glue in this house with which to re-stickify those envelopes once I inserted my new, improved, date-corrected invites.

Again, I'm not shooting for perfection here. At this point, I just wanted to strike something from my TO DO list. Scotch tape would suffice.

Oh. Yeah. That.

The kids absconded with it about a week ago. Haven't seen it since.

Oh for the love of Pete...

I slapped on the widest piece of packaging tape I could find, put the invites in the mailbox and raised the flag.

The flag on the mailbox.

But if I'd had a white flag, I would have waved it in surrender.

I was done.

I just want simple things to be simple.