Susan Senator

March 9 is Maxie’s 16th birthday; tomorrow. But he’ll be celebrating it today, all day. First, H is coming over, and then at 1 he is meeting about 8 friends at the movies, to see Jumper, and then back here for cake and pizza and a total Geek-out. We are moving his gaming stuff up to the third floor, where there is a large living-room and an equally large Oriental carpet from Grandma B (what would she think of us all now, all grown up? Ned’s Grandma B was quite the formidable woman, tall, white-haired, eagle-eyed. She adored the boys and always broke out the antique toys when we visited her in Westchester.)

Max has his eye on the third floor as a bedroom. I think it’s an okay idea, except I kind of wanted it for Ned and me. Ned wants to convert it into an office space. I just want a master suite with my own bathroom. It’s funny how you grow into a house. When we first moved in, we could not imagine using the third floor, and now there are three of us fighting over it!

All the party guests will hang out up there. I told Ned I’d have to vaccuum. It has not been cleaned in a while. He said, “Uh, yeah, right…we don’t want to expose teenagers to dust, after all.” Well, I don’t! I hope we don’t need to turn on the heat for them; I have not had a delivery of oil for years, not since we converted the first two floors to gas. We left the ancient boiler for the third floor — which, as I said, we rarely used — and now I am regretting not converting that one, too. Oh, well. There is always a never-ending list of house projects, of course. In fact, the entire third floor should be replastered and painted. And the bathroom up there… And I’m not entirely sure that the huge water stain up there on the ceiling is old. Every time I look at it I say, “Did it change? Is it getting worse?” Or was it always this huge, yellow, and ugly, like a map of some gruesome netherworld?

So, around ten teenagers here for dinner and third-floor gaming. And, of course, cake. We will bake the cake this morning, with Nat, and decorate it in the afternoon, with Ben. Nat will be out with his buddy from Northeastern University, and Max will be at the movies. Ned and I came up with the cake idea days ago, and we are all set. Cake pics tomorrow!