Big Bash at Cockrofts

The party was hopping downstairs. Upstairs,

this. I don't know why Merry looks so glum, especially since she's watching a fun movie about three girls who dance on the stage on the computer with her friend Catherine. Maybe it was getting a little tight two-to-a-desk-chair, or maybe Merry is bemoaning her humdrum life.

It's 9:39 and the kids are just in bed. If they call me one more time I swear I will pull all my hair out, strand by strand. Painful distraction may be the only way to keep my temper at this point. Elspeth just informed me "Mommy, it's just that I can't go to sleep when it's dark."

Downstairs we have had thirty or so students eating two dozen cupcakes, a chocolate cake, and three Mexican layer dips with chips, not to mention Martin's famous chai. As always, they packed into our relatively smallish kitchen until it got so hot and swarmy that they began to trickle into other parts of the house. We have an open house twice a year on the first night of exam week. While I have actually talked to the students in past years, my role has lately been more like this: bake, frantically clean the house at the last minute, then retreat upstairs with the kids, where I supervise them until bedtime. This time I had five girls upstairs--the two extra are good girls, mind you, and I love them both dearly--but all to say it was, at times, a mite challenging, especially since Merry and I did not sit down to her homework until after nine. And now I know I should go downstairs and be social, but dang-diddley-doo, if I'm not 'solutely tuckered out. I believe during one party I fell asleep upstairs while breastfeeding.

Listen, I need to share a bit more of the craziness with you now. Are you ready for this?

Friday. The sunroom. Elspeth with the scissors. I know the satisfying feeling of snipping and watching hair fall from the blades to the floor. I cut the girls' hair on a regular basis. So I can understand, but not excuse, the fact that Elspeth became intoxicated by the snip-snip sounds, since there was hair all over the room. Stuffed dog hair, doll hair, another doll's hair, and yet another perfectly coiled ringlet.

Even the picture of Martin's mother and her baby cousin was snipped in two and placed like an offering on top of the Fisher Price doll house.

Later I found that she had snipped her own shirt cuffs. Who would guess that a tiny pair of play scissors could be so efficient in such a short time? Any tool in the right hands. . .

But here's the coup de gras: Elspeth trailed Bea around the room, cutting off much of Beatrix's right locks. Earlier that same day, I was upstairs coming Bea's hair that morning and wondering Why is her hair so thin? Is she healthy? Is she eating enough veggies? --and at the same time my mother was walking into the sunroom and finding piles of hair. Everywhere.

Thankfully, Beatrix has a lot of hair, so you it's hard to detect the mangy look unless you look pretty carefully--then you can see how chunks of her hair are hacked off close to her scalp. And now I will state the obvious: at least hair grows back. And sanity? Does that grow back for a woman on Crazy Week who is hiding up her bedroom, wishing she had saved herself some dip?