Kouryou-chan's birthday party.
Nov. 22nd, 2009 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs... in which my Y-chromosome is overwhelmed.
It was another in a long-line of birthday parties, this one themed on the television show Avatar. Kouryou-chan invited seven girls over and although one didn't make it, the remaining six had a great time and two of them even stayed the night.
I, on the other hand, spent the entire day either with my butt in the car, driving higgeldy-piggeldy about town trying to get everyone everywhere, or engaged in planning, support, and transport.
It started well enough; I went downstairs to the office and began hacking on a project for a friend of mine. I managed to make more progress in that hour than I had in the previous week, mostly because I chose to bite down and teach myself Catalyst. I shifted over from the XHR engine (which is not cross-domain capable) to using an iframe with a remotely built iframe, informing it with the original iframe request, and letting the remote server guarantee the subscription state. I wrote a clone of the handler page, without the wrapper, which lets me get away with a new visual look and feel, one suitable to an iframe pop-up.
After an hour, I went upstairs and made scrambled egg sandwiches, some with cheese, some with bacon. Then it was time to hit the road: first, Omaha had a quasi-political thing to go to, then I had to hurtle home and get Kouryou-chan ready for dance class. Lisakit had already taken Yamaraashi-chan off to the local mall, so she was effectively out of the way.
Then, I ran back down and picked up Omaha, and we all went to dance class where the adults rehearsed with the children. That was actually fun, and it surprises me just how organized even the first and second graders can be.
I took Omaha and Kouryou-chan back home, and ran down to the mall to pick up Yamaraashi-chan. That was a nightmare. I swear, shopping malls are like roach motels. Once I'd found Yamaraashi-chan, quite a challenge in itself, getting out turned out to be harder than I'd thought. First, the parking lot has a design flaw in which every row is one way, alternating, except the last row. This hangs some people up, and the traffic jams are terrible. I got caught in one. Once out of the mall property, there was a car fire between us and the freeway. After a twenty-minute wait, I went around, escaping out the back way.
I got home with the kidlet an hour later than planned, but still with enough time to vaccum the living room, re-arrange the couch and put away the storage boxes underneath. Then the giggling monsters started to arrive.
Ah, it wasn't that bad. Omaha led them through games and baked a fabulous cake, and it was well-organized and a heck of a lot of fun. I tried, mostly, to stay out of the way of the whole thing, and succeeded. I baked pizzas to feed the hungry masses, also a good thing, and eventually parents came to take them away, leaving us only with the two who had agreed to sleepover.
They all congregated downstairs to watch five episodes in a row of Avatar: The Last Airbender before we herded them off to bed. I swept floors and put away dishes and ran the dishwasher and a load of laundry and really could have used a longer shower than I got, but you take what you can get under those circumstances.
For breakfast this morning I made pancakes with chocolate chips and blackberries, very happy-making all around. The last two children disappeared by 11, and good timing too because Omaha had a haircut scheduled for noon.
It was another in a long-line of birthday parties, this one themed on the television show Avatar. Kouryou-chan invited seven girls over and although one didn't make it, the remaining six had a great time and two of them even stayed the night.
I, on the other hand, spent the entire day either with my butt in the car, driving higgeldy-piggeldy about town trying to get everyone everywhere, or engaged in planning, support, and transport.
It started well enough; I went downstairs to the office and began hacking on a project for a friend of mine. I managed to make more progress in that hour than I had in the previous week, mostly because I chose to bite down and teach myself Catalyst. I shifted over from the XHR engine (which is not cross-domain capable) to using an iframe with a remotely built iframe, informing it with the original iframe request, and letting the remote server guarantee the subscription state. I wrote a clone of the handler page, without the wrapper, which lets me get away with a new visual look and feel, one suitable to an iframe pop-up.
After an hour, I went upstairs and made scrambled egg sandwiches, some with cheese, some with bacon. Then it was time to hit the road: first, Omaha had a quasi-political thing to go to, then I had to hurtle home and get Kouryou-chan ready for dance class. Lisakit had already taken Yamaraashi-chan off to the local mall, so she was effectively out of the way.
Then, I ran back down and picked up Omaha, and we all went to dance class where the adults rehearsed with the children. That was actually fun, and it surprises me just how organized even the first and second graders can be.
I took Omaha and Kouryou-chan back home, and ran down to the mall to pick up Yamaraashi-chan. That was a nightmare. I swear, shopping malls are like roach motels. Once I'd found Yamaraashi-chan, quite a challenge in itself, getting out turned out to be harder than I'd thought. First, the parking lot has a design flaw in which every row is one way, alternating, except the last row. This hangs some people up, and the traffic jams are terrible. I got caught in one. Once out of the mall property, there was a car fire between us and the freeway. After a twenty-minute wait, I went around, escaping out the back way.
I got home with the kidlet an hour later than planned, but still with enough time to vaccum the living room, re-arrange the couch and put away the storage boxes underneath. Then the giggling monsters started to arrive.
Ah, it wasn't that bad. Omaha led them through games and baked a fabulous cake, and it was well-organized and a heck of a lot of fun. I tried, mostly, to stay out of the way of the whole thing, and succeeded. I baked pizzas to feed the hungry masses, also a good thing, and eventually parents came to take them away, leaving us only with the two who had agreed to sleepover.
They all congregated downstairs to watch five episodes in a row of Avatar: The Last Airbender before we herded them off to bed. I swept floors and put away dishes and ran the dishwasher and a load of laundry and really could have used a longer shower than I got, but you take what you can get under those circumstances.
For breakfast this morning I made pancakes with chocolate chips and blackberries, very happy-making all around. The last two children disappeared by 11, and good timing too because Omaha had a haircut scheduled for noon.
