Miss Information

Miss Information is annoyed by a celebration

It hadn't exactly been a great weekend. First thing Saturday, she was driving her car on the perpetually under construction highway when a stone hit the windshield. Usually these things sound worse than they are and Miss Information has been peacefully co-existing with a stone chip for about 2 years now but no, this one looks like a little snowflakey, starbursty, spiderwebby thing and she's going to need to replace the whole damn thing. Bummer.

Then, the evil bitch counter woman at McDonald's refused to accept Miss Information's money. Admittedly it was counterfeit. Quite obviously counterfeit, too--wrong shape, wrong texture. (It is the right colour, though.) But still not Miss Information's fault.

So she was bummed out before she even got to her niece's birthday party. There is nothing quite as depressing as being the only childless person in a room full of mummies. Unless the room in question is the Egyptian wing of the British museum in which case it's probably very isn't depressing whether or not you have children. Except for the knowledge that you're going to die and no one's going to fill a pyramid with bling and bury people alive in your memory. But back to the subject...

For most of the afternoon, there were 5 little girls at the party, two of them named Chloe. There was "baby" Chloe who was 2-years-old and there was "big" Chloe who was 2.5. Apparently a 3rd Chloe ("even bigger" Chloe) sent her regrets. Good thing, too because Miss Information couldn't tell the first two Chloes apart. She just started calling everyone Chloe--even the fathers. In the evening additional guests arrived and the Chloe to non-Chloe ratio approached normal levels again. It was too late, though--Miss Information's spirit was crushed.

The women at the party had no idea that conversations could be about things other than their children, leaving Miss Information to try to have intelligent exchanges with the little people...most of whom were under two and did not appreciate Miss Information's witty anecdotes. None of them could actually respond, because the extent of their vocabulary is the word "mama", and one of them spoke only French ("maman"), anyway.

Luckily the hostess of the party, Miss Information's sister, had "planned" the party in a very vague way: "What? Dinner? Oh, sure, there's a frozen lasagne, somewhere, I think, no I don't know how long it should cook for...be a dear and pop it in the oven?" (She was such a control freak before the children came along.) All leaving Miss Information with many exciting kitchen chores to attend to.

Eventually the party wound down with the an obligatory arts and crafts session and a moonlight walk around the block. Miss Information opted out of the walk, choosing to stay behind, enjoying the tranquility of the backyard...all alone. But wait. What's that noise? Did someone else stay behind? It was getting pretty dark at that point and she couldn't see anyone...besides humans don't make those sounds. No, to her dismay she realized the party had been invaded by her arch nemesis species, raccoons--a whole herd, no, flock, no, busload of them. She stumbled around in the near complete darkness trying to rescue the remaining food and presents from their evil furry hands. Bastards.

Soon, the other guests returned from their walk. Miss Information reported the incursion. Everyone ran for the safety of the house--leaving Miss Information to continue to fumble around in total darkness trying to save the possessions. She hates to seem bitter, but she really does think that somebody could have helped.

posted by Miss Information @ 3:30 PM