oh. my. stars.

there are five 12 year olds running around screaming in our backyard.
it's 7pm, but pitch black.

i'm just waiting for the neighbours to complain.

i hope no one breaks anything. i think someone just fell down the back stairs. i'm not looking unless there's screaming and/or blood. i feel like i'm under siege in my own home. like i'm being set upon by a brigade of crazed, semi-pubescent midgets hopped up on sugar.

i'm glad they're too scared to go to the park in the dark, though. (they're afraid of "stalkers.") i'd rather have them closer at hand. now i think they're playing hide and go seek in the backyard. the lady who is mean to her dog has taken to turning her porch light off these days (or maybe it has burned out from all that over-use) so the backyard is actually really, really nice and dark.

like last year, j got only money (rather than gifts -- a new trend?), and, like last year, people barely touched the birthday cake i bothered to make. am i the only one who likes chocolate cake?? it's weird. it's an awesome cake -- delicious and chocolaty with a chocolate-mint icing -- but each kid only hate half his (admittedly huge) piece. (seriously, though. i would have barfed from over-eating as a child before i left cake on my plate. c'mon guys! it's CAKE!!)

kourtenay was the only girl for the bowling part of the party. she went home after that, leaving the remainder who are here for a sleepover. she was a trouper (literally. she's a cadet), and by far not the worst bowler. she's a funny monkey, that one. we chatted a bit, being, you know, girls. she's a military brat and is going to the target range tomorrow. (i can't tell you how weird i find that.) maybe this is part of where j gets his gun thing from. or, rather, maybe this is one of the things that makes him hold onto the idea of the coolness of guns as tenaciously as he does. she was chasing the boys around the bowling alley trying to put their hair in ponytails. remember that kind of thing? any excuse to connect with someone when you don't really know how to.

i kind of feel like i'm still like that.

ugh. someone just knocked over the huge, very full box of recycling that we have been saving to get money back for. do you think they'll clean it up?

what's your bet? my vote is for a half-assed attempt distracted by the start of a new game.

robbie is here -- he was my laser tag nemesis last year. i swear that kid can teleport. i actually really like him, even though he doesn't like me at all. i think he's hilarious and cute and charmingly dark spirited. you can barely see his face for the poker straight dark brown hair that falls closely on either side of it. tonight i'm going to spy on him to discover his inner nature.

nick is such a bruiser. he's smart, streetwise, pessimistic, and addicted to eating crap. i think our healthy food scares him. i confronted him with this and he denied it, claiming that he "loves vegetables and dip" (which was somehow supposed to prove that he likes "healthy" food, even though i've never fed him veggies and dip in my life, and even though celery coated in ranch dressing isn't particularly healthy).

david is annoying. and is a blond, hyper, oblivious kid who does things regardless of whether you asked him not to with the look of adrenaline rush always on his face. i think he's an adrenaline junkie, addicted to being a punk. after bowling was over, he kept sneaking away to hurl balls down the lanes, despite my reprimands, and the bowling alley people bawling him out. i imagine him growing up into the sort of adult i avoid.

then there is bob. poor bob, saddled with a grown-up name, a quiet introverted personality, and a droopy, slightly pear-shaped body. i've never met or heard of bob before, and am not sure why he's here. he doesn't seem like the type that j likes. he has no edge. he's a tag along, a frumpy wallflower, an audience for the more active kids, a spectator in his own life. i feel like bringing him inside and trying to pay attention to him. trying to coax the person out of him.

bob ate the least amount of cake. sort of chubby, like his mother, i think he may be on weightwatchers, too, like her.

she (bob's mother) was at the bowling alley before i was, which was embarrassing (we had cab problems. it took over half an hour for one to even show up, which is really unusual), and she stayed for the bowling part, helping me to keep score (when i realized that i had never kept bowling score before, and that you didn't just get one point per pin knocked down), then she went to walmart while we ate, and came back and drove a handful of kids back here. robbie's dad drove the other half. i rarely feel like a stupid kid trapped in a woman's body because i don't drive, but tonight i did. anyway, bob's mum is, amongst other things, a romance novelist. it turns out she's a member of the romance novelists of bc society, or something like that. i'm thinking of going to a couple of their workshops to see what it's about. i confessed my taste for ladies in metal bikinis brandishing swords and riding white tigers, and she said that fantasy-romance was super hot right now. should i swallow my literary snobbery and try writing some chick-lit? anyway, she gave me her card.

two of the kids just took the hugest, stinkiest dumps in our toilet and the smell is wafting throughout the house. jesus. what the hell was in that bowling alley pizza? maybe it's just been a while since i spent time with the shit of people who eat meat. ugh. it reeks. (like, preternaturally.)

hm... worrying silence coming from outside. i told them to tell me if they go anywhere else... hm.

well. if they're gone, they're gone, and there's nothing i can do about it until they come back. i told them, before we went in the house, that these are the rules: no running inside. no throwing *anything* inside. no going in my room. no going downstairs. please put the toilet seat down after you pee.

that's it.

when they went outside i told them i wanted to know... ah... now i hear them again. good.

whew.