I’m not kidding about the cops. But first–
One thing I didn’t have to do was cook dinner for the sleepover. J wanted to go with take-out Indian food. I was a little worried that the other kids wouldn’t be up for it, but she insisted that four out of five guests would like it, and the only one who wouldn’t love all of the dishes tends not to like much of any food, anyway, and she’s a huge naan fan, at least.
We’ve found an excellent new source of Indian food. Karam Asian Grocery has got a restaurant located at 1473 State Street, which is at Willow Avenue, the road that runs parallel to Fehr at the end of Central Park. I went in search of more information and found that Cute W had already written a review on Yelp. I know I should have taken photos, but I was busy hustling around putting food in front of kids. Apparently the cook used to work at Sitar, the restaurant on Central Avenue that we loved before it closed. The guys at this new place are very friendly and very grateful for the business, and the food is yummy and an excellent value. We spent $89 to feed our six party girls, plus the rest of our family, and we had tons of leftovers that we were still eating on Monday. Their menu looks a little small, but when we asked about dishes that we like that weren’t on the menu, they were happy to make them. Which is great because you know how J loves her Malai Kofta, and theirs is yummy, and Cute W said it was his favorite Palaak Paneer (he is usually not a fan). So: if you like Indian food, you should totally go. You could eat there, but it’s casual and for us, better for take-out.
One activity we’d planned was a campfire and s’mores. J loves a good campfire, and I figured it would be a way to get some outside time into their schedule. Cute W and I decided to put our fire bowl in the middle of our shared driveway because our next door neighbors were out of town, anyway, and this way we could avoid scorching the grass. Well, it turned out to be super-breezy, and some of our wood was scrap wood that was popping up a storm, so Cute W and I hung out for a quite a while waiting for the flames to get down to a nice, manageable simmer that would have enough hot coals for marshmallow-roasting without freaking anybody out. As Cute W was poking the wood and I was setting out s’more-making supplies, I noticed multiple emergency-type vehicles slowly cruising by our house. “I think someone’s worried about our fire,” I told Cute W. He thought I was being paranoid. Then I went into the house for some reason or other, and by the time I came back out, he said, “You’re right. Someone must have called the cops on us. ” Right on cue a small fire truck passed. And then another squad car. It got ridiculous. “Do you think I should wait at the end of the driveway and flag them down and talk to them?” I asked. We ended up ignoring them. But, truly, it was comical, especially since at just about that time there was a homecoming post-party happening where people were charging high school students $10 for alcohol (which I heard about later). They were probably a lot more likely to get into trouble over at that house.
After gorging on Indian food and roasting marshmallows, we didn’t get around to cake until about 10:30 pm. Then many of the girls managed to stay up until 4 am, and it turned out that M slept over at a friend’s house and stayed up very late as well, so we all spent Sunday recovering. Which was a bummer, because it turned into a beautiful, perfect-for-apple-picking kind of day, but the girls basically alternated between watching tv and doing homework all day. Then on Monday, when we’d recovered, it was a rainy day made for naps. Oh, well.
