I'm starting some 3x5 cards

When we were growing up we had some good family friends, the Knudsens.  When their son, Andrew, went on his mission, his mom said she had some 3x5 cards with things about Andrew that made her crazy so she could remind herself not to be too sad.

I think it's genius.

Braeden (completely without my permission or encouragement) is turning 17 on Saturday.  We're not a birthday party every year sort of family.  Well, more accurately, I'm not that sort of mother.  The kids wouldn't mind birthday parties every year.

Braeden had an invite-half-the-free-world birthday party last year.  There was not one slated for this year.  He wondered if he could "have some friends over"for his birthday.

I said, "You're not having a birthday party."

He said, "Oh, I know.  I just want to have some friends over." (Braeden knows that I'm almost always OK with that.)

"How many?" I asked.

"Six," he said, "Seven."

"OK," I said, "Seven. Probably. I'll think about it."

Then Monday--because he's wily--he texted me from school, "So can I invite my friends?"

I texted back "OK."

He came home from school. and told me who he'd invited.  "How many?" I asked.

He wrote a list, counted them up.  There were 14 on the list.

Fourteen.

"No," I said, definitely.  "No."

"I already invited them."

Braeden carefully explained why he needed, in his complicated social world, to invite each individual.  Without invitations, there would be people feeling left out, there would be hurt feelings, there would be the boy that doesn't know all these other people as well but knows that one.  Then there's the one you can't invite without inviting this one.

I looked over the list and saw noisy, big, hungry.

Adam asked, "Are there girls on the list?"

"No," Braeden said, like that made it better.

"I wish there were girls," I said.

"Why?" Braeden asked, startled.

"Because they're smaller.  They eat less.  They smell better."

It's not the boys.  I like them all.  It's not the food.  Little Caesar's Pizza will do the cooking (one per boy is a winning ratio.)

It's that I feel taken for a ride, bamboozled, and blind sided by my first born who knows me well enough to expertly take me for a ride, bamboozle and blind side me. 

It's going on a card.