Cake. Without Friends.

I was tired this morning.  Because of the chronic reason of this school year.  From the beginning almost, Gabriel has stayed up entirely too late for lacrosse practice or to put his school work back together from poor choices.  And then Elise is up before anyone's alarms even THINK about going off.  After 7 days of this, I am reduced to sleeping in on Saturday (praying nothing goes south) or snatched naps (when I ought to be cleaning, doing laundry, or any number of things).

So I turned on Elise's current favorite new movie, Flushed Away, and hovered in the entirely unrestful sleep where parents go to listen for disasters, but get some needed energy.

My bells did not go off early enough today...I realized that Elise was not in the bed with me...about the time she came back in with chocolate on her face.

The chocolate from her brother's birthday party cake (for TONIGHT) that I made last night.

*sigh*

I came out to survey the damage that I KNEW must have been done, to find that the entire top half of the cake had been smushed into the entire back half of my house and the top of the (CLEAN!) laundry.  I have been scrubbing the runner rug, washing the walls, re-running the laundry, and scrubbing the washer and drier of cake ever since.  It was rather like the first scene from Encino Man when he is "defrosted".

I am thankful that I had not yet iced it, because I was able to repair it, by removing the mauled top half and cutting it down to a rhombus shape to plunk on top and filling in the holes with crumbled off cake.  It looks like a Dr Seuss kind of thing now.  It will still taste pretty great, but Gabriel's friends may think his mother is two steps from crazy...which is probably true.

Beside the frustrating part of having to clean something I had not planned on cleaning, I am faced with Amelia and Charlotte telling off their sister and the permanent assumption that if something has gone wrong, it is Elise's fault.  Which, truthfully, is not ALWAYS the case.  But because Elise does not have the speech to defend herself, she has become the Fall Guy.  And it breaks my heart...and we have come around to the necessity of speech/communication...yet again.  And so I am *again* faced with defending the (currently) guilty Elise, while I clean what I didn't want to, and reprimanding my two typ kids from being too judgemental, and calling a check to their feeding frenzy of guilt assignment....when all I wanted to be was asleep.

I am still deciding if Elise will not get "cake WITH friends" (her staple touchstone of joy) because of her indulgence this morning...or if we will decide that she has done her time out, and carry on with the day...

With the stress of this week, I think we all deserve Cake With Friends, because it is delicious....and everybody needs cake to celebrate something....