Last Minute

Last fall, I asked Alyssa what she wanted to do to celebrate her birthday. Yes, it was the fall and yes, I was asking about a January birthday, but I don’t like to leave things to the last minute.

She decided that she wanted to have her birthday party at the gym where she takes gymnastics class.

Okay. Great. I got the paperwork from the lady who works the front desk and asked her about the logistics of planning a party. She said I would give her the date, she’d check with the coach and let me know if it worked.

I originally selected January 12, it was just two days before A’s birthday. Great, wonderful. She wrote down our name and the date.

And I heard nothing one way or the other.

December came and went and on the first Thursday after the new year, the first class Alyssa attended, I asked again about the party.

The lady gave me a confused look and asked if I’d checked with Miss M. about the date.

Uh, no. I thought that was something the lady at the front desk did. No, she said, I was the one who needed to talk to the coach.

And guess which coach wasn’t at the class that night? That’s right, Alyssa’s. So I said I’d talk to her the next week but in that case, we’d need to move the party to January 19th because, well, asking about the 12th was not going to work if you were asking about it on the 10th.

Following?

I was still nervous about having to see if the 19th worked because that was still only giving us 9 days before the actual party to get invitations out to Alyssa’s friends/family. I felt like we were pushing it as is.

On the 10th, we arrived at class to find that Miss M was, thankfully, in attendance. Wheee! I asked her if she’d be available to be there for A’s birthday party on the 19th. She said she thought she could but she really needed to go home and check her family calendar and get back to me.

I replied that I understood but it would be great if she could get back to me as soon as possible so that we could get invitations to Alyssa’s friends. She said she’d get back to us soon.

And then she didn’t. The weekend came and went. Monday passed with no word.

Tuesday afternoon, January 15th, she called and left me a voice mail at 8:15am saying that January 19th worked great for her for the party and I could just call her to let her know what time.

Uh, wait. That is four days to get invitations to friends and hopefully hear back if they could come or not. I felt bad enough about the idea of sending them the Friday before, which would have been eight days before the party. There is no way I was going to send out invitations on the 16th, which would have been the earliest I could get them to the school, for a party on the 19th. That felt like extreme rudeness on my part.

I called her back and very politely told her that at this point, the 19th was not going to work for us because it was just all too last minute to get invitations out. I asked, still as polite as possible, if she could maybe check her calendar and see if she has time open during either of the first two weekends in February. I said I’d talk to her on Thursday after Alyssa’s class to see what day worked for her.

I have not yet put down a deposit so I’m not out anything except my own frustration and time. I feel like this has been so much harder than it had to be. If the lady at the front desk had told me to talk to the coach myself, I’d have done so. I’m one of those people who just want to know what I need to do to make something happen. I mean, look at my whole house buying experience.

I feel awful for Alyssa, though I will say that at ten, she’s been great. She understands that sometimes celebrations have to be postponed and she’s fine with it as long as it actually happens.

I feel like at this rate, we’ll be throwing her a pool party in July to celebrate her birthday and half-birthday because this whole gymnastics party thing is turning out to be a lot of freaking work. (Not that we usually throw half-birthday parties…that’s just a little, um, extreme.)