The Sleepover

I had the oddest dream last night.

Having recently purchased a large hotel with only the vaguest idea how to run it, I make a tour of the cavernous kitchen and its mysterious gleaming steel appliances.  I discover a massive Lavazza coffee machine on wheels behind the industrial dishwasher, but it only makes coffee one cup at a time, using single serving capsules.  Without a real sense of certainty, I am obliged to provide breakfast not only for the throngs of hotel guests who all present themselves in the dining room simultaneously, but also for our own hoarde of houseguests, who hover around in the kitchen, demanding pancakes and French toast rather than the eggs, fried or scrambled that I offer.  I must go to the grocery store to buy loaves of bread while at the same time instructing the kitchen staff, whom I have inherited from the previous owners and who appear to have been previously engaged in a non-culinary activity, like bricklaying or prizefighting, and who are even more bewildered than I at finding themselves manning a professional kitchen on a busy morning.

I wake at 5.30, my aging bladder recommending itself to my urgent attention.  Relieved that my grueling hotel management experience has been only a dream, I stagger, squinting and sleep-drunk into the bathroom.  I hear a noise downstairs.  And I remember.  It's...The Sleepover.

Yesterday was Caroline's birthday and, in keeping with a tradition we stupidly started a few years ago, we have invited several of her friends to sleep at our house.  From a distance, this appears to be a fine idea - the girls entertain each other, they whisper and giggle and mince about.  They brush each other's hair.  One has hair that reaches nearly all the way to her waist, or rather, she HAD such hair when she arrived.  Most of it can now be found in clumps on the living room floor.  She looks as if she's lost a fight with a lawn mower.  I suspect she will be bald soon.

Up close, a sleepover is a plan fraught with danger.  For starters, there is the need to provide sufficient entertainment to keep an unusually large number of children with divergent interests occupied.  Some parents resort to bowling or the cinema, but these are for the weak hearted, and we choose no such facile routes.  Instead, we provide 'activities,' usually in form of some type of craft.  Fortunately, Michele is very good at this sort of thing, and these entertainments are undertaken by the participants with a relish and gusto that I have seldom seen outside of a German beer hall.  This year, the children made bracelets and necklaces.  I thought it would be fun to offer up these adornments for sale at the next opportunity, but my suggestion was not well-received.  If it were up to me, they'd be learning useful life skills at our parties, like coal mining or how to make a really spicy Bloody Mary.

Then there is the fact that 'sleepover' is an ironic misnomer.  I suspect that "sleepover" is a tongue-in-cheek corruption of the original term, "sleep's over", but I really have no way of knowing.  I do know, however, that there is no 'sleep' at a 'sleepover'.  There is bickering and cattiness and the inevitable complaints of the sensible few whose efforts at the 'sleep' part are thwarted by those who possess a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for middle of the night inane chatter.  What the hell do these people talk about?  They're nine years old for Christ's sake - they can't possibly have had enough cumulative experience to have something to say for this long.  Perhaps they just repeat themselves, or put random words together without any real attempt at meaning, like stringing popcorn.

The last I remember it was 1.00 this morning and they were still going; a symphony whose movements all begins with a whisper, rise to a crescendo of crashes and bangs of unknown origin and end, falling all in a heap at a sharp but unintelligible paternal reproach.  In the brief interlude which follows, all is quiet.  Then someone coughs and the cycle begins again.  After a perfunctory 'last, absolutely final' warning to shut their pie holes and go to sleep, I drift off myself and, blissfully, paid them no further mind.

I lie awake, simultaneously anticipating and dreading the first undeniable 'someone's awake' noise from downstairs.  I am pleasantly surprised that it does not come until well past 7.00.  While the whoops and laughter drift up the steps, I nudge Michele and drag myself from the warm nest of blankets.  It is time to make the pancakes.

I am a free-range sort of a cook: I normally have a number of things going at once so I need lots of space and to be able to move about unimpeded, catching things just before they burn or boil over.  Sometimes I get it wrong, but usually it works out, and, to the best of my knowledge, my cooking has never made anyone sick.  This space hungry approach to cooking, however, is incompatible with a house full of nine year olds, all of whom want to 'help'.  But I don't really NEED any help, thanks.  In fact, dear little ones, I genuinely suspect you'll be more of a hinderance than a help.  But of course I can't say that, not to my precious daughter's friends.  They might shun her if they really knew what an anal retentive prick she has for a father.  I put on the best smile I can manage at 7.30 on a Sunday morning and allow them to stir the batter.  "I'm next!" "No me!" "No, MEEE!"  The batter slops out of the bowl and I can feel my blood pressure mounting.  Deep breath.  Don't yell.  "Ok, girls, that's enough stirring."  "But I didn't get a turn!"  More disappointed noises.  I chase them out.  "If you want breakfast, get out of my kitchen.  Go play.  Somewhere else.  Go on, out." "Where?" they ask.  "The street?" I suggest helpfully.

Dragging their feet, they leave the kitchen.  The bacon, in the oven to warm so that I can peel the paper thin slices apart more easily, has now been in for too long and has begun to harden.  Muttering to myself like a Times Square vagrant, I dump it in the rubbish and start over.  About a third of the way through the pancakes, the smoke detector goes off for no obvious reason.  Perhaps the downstairs neighbor, roused by the noise of what must surely sound like a zoo full of elephants overhead, has lit a cigarette.  The smoke detector is sensitive.  Except, apparently, when the kitchen is actually FULL of smoke, as it was later when I absentmindedly left an empty pan on a hot burner while I daubed impotently at the two glasses of orange juice on my dining room carpet.  Although our entire kitchen might be burning merrily without our taking much notice, it's nice to know that we'll have adequate warning if the neighbors ever burn their toast.

Most of the girls have now left.  One remains, though, and she and Caroline are surreptitiously coloring each other's noses with Sharpies and putting fairy wings on our son, who protests violently but eventually capitulates at the prospect of being promoted to Caroline's 'best friend'.  There is a great deal of banging and thumping and cries of 'stretch him, STRETCH him!'  I have neither the energy nor the inclination to intervene.  He enters the living room, his skin red and blotchy, his eyes like two bruises.  I am surprised to be saying this, but I hope this is makeup.

"Maybe this is a dream, too?"  I think hopefully.  But no.  Now I have to make them lunch.