There were fireworks

When the youngest asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day I said tickets to the local Rotary fireworks on Saturday night … with her.

She screwed up her nose, rolled her eyes and groaned: “Whhhhhy?”

She doesn’t like fireworks. She thinks they’re boring and environmentally unfriendly.

They don’t do much for me when they’re in the distance, but up close they are magic.

Our annual Rotary fireworks literally explode above our heads as we sit on expensive astroturf in our folding chairs, sipping wine and nibbling on cheese plates.

Well, that was how I imagined it, but I muffed it a bit.

I crammed too much into the day because I never learn.

I drove 30 minutes north on Saturday morning and met DD at St Ives, then we went to lunch at his friend’s house at Epping.

The traffic was truly horrendous and we arrived 45 minutes late. Being late is my least favourite thing, so I was vibrating with stress when we finally got there.

We apologetically dashed off from the lunch early and headed to my sister’s place for drinks and nibbles with my mum and dad, who had driven down for the weekend.

We swung past my place and grabbed a cheese plate and some pink bubbles from my fridge.

The youngest made me close my eyes when I dashed into the house and presented me with a Mother’s Day babka that she’d made while I was gone (the dark bits aren’t burnt, that’s dark chocolate).

It was at that point I realised that we had forgotten to collect my car from St Ives. Faaaaark.

DD had been planning on skipping the fireworks, as he’d only had five hours sleep and it was cold, but was trapped by circumstance and had to schlep along with us so he could drive me back to my car afterwards.

In my flurry, I neglected to pack nibbles or bubbles for the fireworks, so we arrived empty handed and parked ourselves on the astroturf to wait for the show to begin.

There were 50 people in each food truck queue, so we gave up on getting dinner there.

I was pretty strung out by the palaver by that point and had turned my stomach into a soup of stress, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to manage anything to eat anyway.

However, the fireworks delighted me – they were so sparkly and fabulous that I cried. My heart also swelled at the sound of 1000 little kids oooohing and ahhhhing at each explosion.

DD took this photo of my big kid grudgingly watching the fireworks, plus some of me. But I look so old that I’ve decided not to make them public.

We grabbed the youngest a takeaway pizza afterwards, dropped her home and drove 30 minutes north to get my bloody car. Then I drove 30 minutes home and cleaned up all the babka making mess.

Mother’s Day was slightly more sane. I went for a walk with a friend, grabbed the youngest an outrageously expensive AFL ball from Rebel, had lunch with my family, then headed north for some pink wine on the couch with DD.

The youngest had an AFL game in Hornsby mid afternoon, but I pleaded Mother’s Day and got my ex to take her instead.

But I still need another weekend to recover from that one!

How about you?

Song of the day: Katy Perry “Firework”