Everyone loves a casual summer get-together
I am thirty three. The thirty three year old woman, she has learned, at the age of thirty three to stop trying to impress groups of people with large scale cooking/baking sprees calling themselves "parties". The thirty three year old woman is wise. She has left all of that foolishness behind her and now does not entertain, nor does she think the word "salads", nor does she attempt to remodel bathrooms in four days or get the clematis to bloom on time or think any thoughts whatsoever about which plates match which cake. The thirty three year old woman doesn't care about such things. The people who might attend parties involving salads or cakes or careful consideration can stay at their own house sobbing into styrofoam boxes of big macs and watching Charles in Charge while chewing on their toenails.
Not that the thirty three year old woman has always been this wise!!! Why, only days ago, that poor lost soul had her nine recipe troughs in front of her while she merrily, drunk on promise, perused her ten million recipes searching for just the right potato salad, the right coleslaw, the right pasta salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs. She labored mightily in the search for just the right chocolate cake recipe and there is nothing on earth which has more recipes than chocolate cake! She added furthermore a large fresh peach crisp with a coconut crust! She ripened her peaches in perfect rows of five. She ripped the cabinets apart laying out each and every carefully chosen platter and bowl and relish tray. She wrote all of the names of all of the dishes to be prepared and literally placed each and every word into each and every plate/bowl/dish. She made grocery lists and menus in just the right combination of ink on just the right pieces of paper. SHE THREW CAUTION TO THE WIND! She bought kiwis and NUTS and spices and WHOLE MILK! She pushed many a grocery cart through many a store. She stuffed the refrigerator, the cabinets. She lined the counters. She made absolutely certain that each little space in the giant yellow bug-shaped platter had something to go in it!
She knew she was foolish. She knew that some wisdom was forthcoming. Where other people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, the thirty three year old woman has a very very intelligent Jewish old bag on one shoulder and a capricious blonde 25 year old scrapbooker on the other. The scrapbooker wanted salads. The Jewish bag wanted the thirty three year old woman to GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF and buy FIFTEEN PEPPERONI PIZZAS and STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. Yes, it is true. Old Jewish Bags (OJBs) are pro pepperoni pizza. Don't split hairs.
The people came. There have been incidents in the thirty three year old woman's life where the people did not come, where the only equation possible is that 0 x 30 = 0, despite the 30's obvious efforts to take a starring role in the equation. But this was thirty whole people with mouths and digestive tracts and eyeballs and the ability to wield high grade plastic forks and follow through with the entire swallowing procedure, start to finish. The thirty three year old woman assuaged her OJB with the promise that paper plates were to be used! Plastic forks! Pop in cans! CANS! She did not pull out the china or attempt wild sloshing vats of punch with things floating in it! Look at how reasonable I am being here.
The reason for the occasion was one small, long haired blond child with a burgeoning case of the teens. He was no longer only twelve and that, coupled with a recently completed gigantic cedar deck created by Mr and Mrs Thirty Three Years Old seemed to holler "SALADS" at the thirty three year old woman and "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING" at the thirty three year old man.
There were hot dogs. The thirty three year old woman made them all by herself while cursing the thirty three year old man for being AWOL, as he was chatting up his little friend the thin, tan, blond, vegan skateboarder.
ALL of the thirty three year old man's relatives came. They created pockets of themselves and everything about their existence was that of a conversation that had been taking place at another place and another time. They had simply been lifted up into the sky, busily yapping, and placed down at my house. They never noticed they had moved! They simply continued their conversation amongst themselves. Many two year olds were given an entire hot dog which all two year olds pushed into the dirt. The thirty three year old woman rued the day she thought she was getting a good bargain on all kinds of hot dogs, factoring in mightily the habits of certain inlaws' tendencies to not know the hot dog eating tendencies of their own two year olds.
Only one relative of the thirty three year old woman came, her father, who was moving to Mexico in ten days. The father of the thirty three year old woman has only two words that he says and those two words are COSTCO and MEXICO. COSTCO! the father said eating his hot dog. MEXICO! the father said, describing the cabinet pulls in his new Mexican house. Costco, Mexico, he said. FREQUENTLY, the father talks about the Costco which is IN Mexico. The father of the thirty three year old woman attends every event of the thirty three year old woman but is absolutly MISERABLE and always stays for only fifteen minutes before abandoning ship as he cannot abide the thirty three year old man's family or any of the thirteen year old's friends. He has something to pick up at Costco on his way to Mexico. And I have forgotten to tell you about the part where the father brought fifty pounds of frozen meat to the poor harried thirty three year old woman mid party. Fifty pounds of meat, a refrigerator full of food, expired peanut butter, a giant vat of styrofoam cups and a huge vermouth box filled with polished rocks. Because when a crazed thirty three year old woman who has finally realized that her OJB knew best is scurrying in her kitchen putting large spoons in things, what that woman really needs is a large unwanted delivery of foodstuffs for her already crammed refrigerator.
And there the salads sat. And the dips. Oh, the dips. The thirty three year old woman had even roasted peppers! She had put turmeric and onions and things in the blender and tried to jab a spoon in it sending the spoon and half the blender contents UP and then DOWN, staining the kitchen floor with turmeric. All this for a bowl of dip into which nothing was dipped. The family of the thirty three year old man was very stealthy at reaching PAST the dip to grab the cucumbers and retracting each cucumber slice without. touching. the. dip. They were, obviously, Jenga players. The two spreads, obviously placed in the middle of the incredible selection of crackers, melba toast and flatbreads SAT AND ROTTED. They had matching Williams and Sonoma spreaders inserted in their contents for added suggestion that indeed these two crocks of terra cotta colored creamy wonderment were indeed included as an accoutrement for such cracker items.
The thirty three year old man's family talked to themselves. The thirteen year old boy played Guitar Hero while his thirteen year old friends watched. The thirty three year old man ate hot dogs and the vegan skateboarder resigned himself to fruit salad while the thirty three year old woman worried that he might at any second realize that there was, technically, honey, an animal-involved product, in the fruit salad and send the entire plate skyward in horror. This did not occur, though the thirty three year old woman could not ignore the vegan skateboarder's eschwance of each and every melon ball.
The presents were opened! The thirteen year old boy received so much cash in envelopes that the thirty three year old woman allowed her OJB to exclaim "What is this, a bar mitzvah?" thoroughly confusing the thirty three year old man's entirely Mormon family. The thirty three year old man and the thirty three year old woman gave their adorable newly thirteen year old boy his own ipod which the thirteen year old boy immediately loaded with bad music and welded to his head, leaving himself gloriously isolated from his own party.
The tiny cake was cut and served. The giant peach crisp was scooped and snarfed. The desserts were a hit though no one knew or mentioned or insinuated a knowlege of the EFFORT that the poor poor foolish thirty three year old woman went through making that chocolate cake from SCRATCH, rolling her eyes at the entire concept of cake mixes, frosting cans, or bakery produced sheet cakes for only $16.99 plus tax. Top shelf baking chocolate! Real creamery butter! Many pieces of cake were abandoned on any number of surfaces.
In fact, many of everything were abandoned on all number of surfaces. Hot dogs rolled along the ground, cake sat in bookshelfs, melon balls sulked at the sides of plates as though any vegan skateboarder could conceivably hide anything so gloriously orange in the floral border of a Chinet paper plate. Oh, but the pop cans. The thirty three year old woman thought she was so very clever. So VERY VERY CLEVER with the pop cans. And indeed many, if not all, partook of this substance known as pop. We had fruit punch and lemon lime and root beer and orange and cream soda and grape and strawberry and two kinds of diet and WATER BOTTLED AT THE SOURCE! Folks lined up for MILES for the opportunity to crack open a can and then leave it every damn where. There were pop cans on tables, pop cans on shelves, pop cans on banisters, pop cans on floors, pop cans on ledges. No one managed to swallow the entire twelve ounces of effervescence before losing track of their chosen beverage and opening another.
The family of the thirty three year old man lifted up their conversation with themselves and flew into their four white cars and drove away. The father of the thirty three year old woman had long since gone to Costco. Some of the thirteen year olds had done the right thing and gotten the hell out of my house. Many of the thirteen year olds did not do the right thing and stayed for a "sleepover". The thirty three year old woman's intelligent husband and the melon-hating vegan skateboarder gathered up the remaining thirteen year olds and forced them at gunpoint away from the Guitar Hero and into some cars and took them skateboarding in Seattle so that the now permanently brain damaged, though mightily introspective thirty three year old woman could have some silence in which to clean up the damage from her very own little quintissential summer luncheon! HOWEVER! The hope of silence was dashed when the younger brother of the thirteen year old and, of all people, Jamal, emerged from the downstairs and took their place at the Guitar Hero swapping out that disk for a disk called Mario's Incredibly Loud, Irritating Seizure-Inducing PCP Adventure and proceeded to both of them scream and yip and swing their arms around clutching their gaming tidbits with cords and buttons. Jamal went on to eat three hot dogs and complimented me on my carefully Dymo labeled cabinet contents, placing himself solidly in my top five of people on earth. Did the thirty three year old woman mention to you that no one would sit on the deck? The whole party was planned because the deck was done but everyone sat in the living room like sardines no matter how many times the thirty three year old woman went, R. Crumb style, legs pumping, arms a swinging through the french doors and demonstratively shoved her rear into a comfortable rocking fatigued iron chair with Sunbrella all weather cushions and sipped coffee with great relish and aplomb.
She poured a hundred cans of pop down the drain. She put seven great big untouched salads into seven great big tupperwares. She put a hundred plates of hot dogs in the trash and washed ninety seven platters, bowls and trays. She used lemon scented Lysol three in one all purpose kitchen spray. She filled the dish drainer with clean dishes over and over again.
Ultimately the thirteen year olds returned and began what was to be a long night of "sleeping over", watching horror movies at top volume while shooting 8,956 rounds of nerf gun bullets at the ceiling of the room which happened to do double duty as the floor of the master bedroom, the place where the thirty three year old woman likes to get her eight hours of shut-eye, you know, in a perfect world. The thirty three year old man slept like a LOG while the thirty three year old woman tried to create just the right mantra. Mantras have to be positive, don't they? They can't be "NO MORE OF THESE GOD DAMNED FUCKING PARTIES" or "NO MORE FUCKING SLEEPOVERS" or "ALL CHILDREN DESERVE DEATH".
In the morning, the thirty three year old woman awoke to no thirty three year old man. This is common. The thirty three year old woman tends to make up for her stressful life as a failed caterer by sleeping later than everyone else on the earth. The thirty three year old man came in and offered coffee to the thirty three year old woman and together they drank the coffee and did not kick the snot out of the five bulging sleeping bags lying prone all over the floor. They took as much as they could take, and even offered unlimited Fruity Pebbles, but once the pebbles had been consumed, and all the thirteen year old boys moved on to stabbing the remaining cans of pop with ball point pens and slurping the contents through the punctured sides, the thirty three year old man and the thirty three year old woman hissed at their own darling thirteen year old boy that he had about ninety seconds to get these fucking kids out of this house or that god damned ipod was going back to Walmart.
Not that the thirty three year old woman has always been this wise!!! Why, only days ago, that poor lost soul had her nine recipe troughs in front of her while she merrily, drunk on promise, perused her ten million recipes searching for just the right potato salad, the right coleslaw, the right pasta salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs. She labored mightily in the search for just the right chocolate cake recipe and there is nothing on earth which has more recipes than chocolate cake! She added furthermore a large fresh peach crisp with a coconut crust! She ripened her peaches in perfect rows of five. She ripped the cabinets apart laying out each and every carefully chosen platter and bowl and relish tray. She wrote all of the names of all of the dishes to be prepared and literally placed each and every word into each and every plate/bowl/dish. She made grocery lists and menus in just the right combination of ink on just the right pieces of paper. SHE THREW CAUTION TO THE WIND! She bought kiwis and NUTS and spices and WHOLE MILK! She pushed many a grocery cart through many a store. She stuffed the refrigerator, the cabinets. She lined the counters. She made absolutely certain that each little space in the giant yellow bug-shaped platter had something to go in it!
She knew she was foolish. She knew that some wisdom was forthcoming. Where other people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, the thirty three year old woman has a very very intelligent Jewish old bag on one shoulder and a capricious blonde 25 year old scrapbooker on the other. The scrapbooker wanted salads. The Jewish bag wanted the thirty three year old woman to GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF and buy FIFTEEN PEPPERONI PIZZAS and STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE. Yes, it is true. Old Jewish Bags (OJBs) are pro pepperoni pizza. Don't split hairs.
The people came. There have been incidents in the thirty three year old woman's life where the people did not come, where the only equation possible is that 0 x 30 = 0, despite the 30's obvious efforts to take a starring role in the equation. But this was thirty whole people with mouths and digestive tracts and eyeballs and the ability to wield high grade plastic forks and follow through with the entire swallowing procedure, start to finish. The thirty three year old woman assuaged her OJB with the promise that paper plates were to be used! Plastic forks! Pop in cans! CANS! She did not pull out the china or attempt wild sloshing vats of punch with things floating in it! Look at how reasonable I am being here.
The reason for the occasion was one small, long haired blond child with a burgeoning case of the teens. He was no longer only twelve and that, coupled with a recently completed gigantic cedar deck created by Mr and Mrs Thirty Three Years Old seemed to holler "SALADS" at the thirty three year old woman and "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING" at the thirty three year old man.
There were hot dogs. The thirty three year old woman made them all by herself while cursing the thirty three year old man for being AWOL, as he was chatting up his little friend the thin, tan, blond, vegan skateboarder.
ALL of the thirty three year old man's relatives came. They created pockets of themselves and everything about their existence was that of a conversation that had been taking place at another place and another time. They had simply been lifted up into the sky, busily yapping, and placed down at my house. They never noticed they had moved! They simply continued their conversation amongst themselves. Many two year olds were given an entire hot dog which all two year olds pushed into the dirt. The thirty three year old woman rued the day she thought she was getting a good bargain on all kinds of hot dogs, factoring in mightily the habits of certain inlaws' tendencies to not know the hot dog eating tendencies of their own two year olds.
Only one relative of the thirty three year old woman came, her father, who was moving to Mexico in ten days. The father of the thirty three year old woman has only two words that he says and those two words are COSTCO and MEXICO. COSTCO! the father said eating his hot dog. MEXICO! the father said, describing the cabinet pulls in his new Mexican house. Costco, Mexico, he said. FREQUENTLY, the father talks about the Costco which is IN Mexico. The father of the thirty three year old woman attends every event of the thirty three year old woman but is absolutly MISERABLE and always stays for only fifteen minutes before abandoning ship as he cannot abide the thirty three year old man's family or any of the thirteen year old's friends. He has something to pick up at Costco on his way to Mexico. And I have forgotten to tell you about the part where the father brought fifty pounds of frozen meat to the poor harried thirty three year old woman mid party. Fifty pounds of meat, a refrigerator full of food, expired peanut butter, a giant vat of styrofoam cups and a huge vermouth box filled with polished rocks. Because when a crazed thirty three year old woman who has finally realized that her OJB knew best is scurrying in her kitchen putting large spoons in things, what that woman really needs is a large unwanted delivery of foodstuffs for her already crammed refrigerator.
And there the salads sat. And the dips. Oh, the dips. The thirty three year old woman had even roasted peppers! She had put turmeric and onions and things in the blender and tried to jab a spoon in it sending the spoon and half the blender contents UP and then DOWN, staining the kitchen floor with turmeric. All this for a bowl of dip into which nothing was dipped. The family of the thirty three year old man was very stealthy at reaching PAST the dip to grab the cucumbers and retracting each cucumber slice without. touching. the. dip. They were, obviously, Jenga players. The two spreads, obviously placed in the middle of the incredible selection of crackers, melba toast and flatbreads SAT AND ROTTED. They had matching Williams and Sonoma spreaders inserted in their contents for added suggestion that indeed these two crocks of terra cotta colored creamy wonderment were indeed included as an accoutrement for such cracker items.
The thirty three year old man's family talked to themselves. The thirteen year old boy played Guitar Hero while his thirteen year old friends watched. The thirty three year old man ate hot dogs and the vegan skateboarder resigned himself to fruit salad while the thirty three year old woman worried that he might at any second realize that there was, technically, honey, an animal-involved product, in the fruit salad and send the entire plate skyward in horror. This did not occur, though the thirty three year old woman could not ignore the vegan skateboarder's eschwance of each and every melon ball.
The presents were opened! The thirteen year old boy received so much cash in envelopes that the thirty three year old woman allowed her OJB to exclaim "What is this, a bar mitzvah?" thoroughly confusing the thirty three year old man's entirely Mormon family. The thirty three year old man and the thirty three year old woman gave their adorable newly thirteen year old boy his own ipod which the thirteen year old boy immediately loaded with bad music and welded to his head, leaving himself gloriously isolated from his own party.
The tiny cake was cut and served. The giant peach crisp was scooped and snarfed. The desserts were a hit though no one knew or mentioned or insinuated a knowlege of the EFFORT that the poor poor foolish thirty three year old woman went through making that chocolate cake from SCRATCH, rolling her eyes at the entire concept of cake mixes, frosting cans, or bakery produced sheet cakes for only $16.99 plus tax. Top shelf baking chocolate! Real creamery butter! Many pieces of cake were abandoned on any number of surfaces.
In fact, many of everything were abandoned on all number of surfaces. Hot dogs rolled along the ground, cake sat in bookshelfs, melon balls sulked at the sides of plates as though any vegan skateboarder could conceivably hide anything so gloriously orange in the floral border of a Chinet paper plate. Oh, but the pop cans. The thirty three year old woman thought she was so very clever. So VERY VERY CLEVER with the pop cans. And indeed many, if not all, partook of this substance known as pop. We had fruit punch and lemon lime and root beer and orange and cream soda and grape and strawberry and two kinds of diet and WATER BOTTLED AT THE SOURCE! Folks lined up for MILES for the opportunity to crack open a can and then leave it every damn where. There were pop cans on tables, pop cans on shelves, pop cans on banisters, pop cans on floors, pop cans on ledges. No one managed to swallow the entire twelve ounces of effervescence before losing track of their chosen beverage and opening another.
The family of the thirty three year old man lifted up their conversation with themselves and flew into their four white cars and drove away. The father of the thirty three year old woman had long since gone to Costco. Some of the thirteen year olds had done the right thing and gotten the hell out of my house. Many of the thirteen year olds did not do the right thing and stayed for a "sleepover". The thirty three year old woman's intelligent husband and the melon-hating vegan skateboarder gathered up the remaining thirteen year olds and forced them at gunpoint away from the Guitar Hero and into some cars and took them skateboarding in Seattle so that the now permanently brain damaged, though mightily introspective thirty three year old woman could have some silence in which to clean up the damage from her very own little quintissential summer luncheon! HOWEVER! The hope of silence was dashed when the younger brother of the thirteen year old and, of all people, Jamal, emerged from the downstairs and took their place at the Guitar Hero swapping out that disk for a disk called Mario's Incredibly Loud, Irritating Seizure-Inducing PCP Adventure and proceeded to both of them scream and yip and swing their arms around clutching their gaming tidbits with cords and buttons. Jamal went on to eat three hot dogs and complimented me on my carefully Dymo labeled cabinet contents, placing himself solidly in my top five of people on earth. Did the thirty three year old woman mention to you that no one would sit on the deck? The whole party was planned because the deck was done but everyone sat in the living room like sardines no matter how many times the thirty three year old woman went, R. Crumb style, legs pumping, arms a swinging through the french doors and demonstratively shoved her rear into a comfortable rocking fatigued iron chair with Sunbrella all weather cushions and sipped coffee with great relish and aplomb.
She poured a hundred cans of pop down the drain. She put seven great big untouched salads into seven great big tupperwares. She put a hundred plates of hot dogs in the trash and washed ninety seven platters, bowls and trays. She used lemon scented Lysol three in one all purpose kitchen spray. She filled the dish drainer with clean dishes over and over again.
Ultimately the thirteen year olds returned and began what was to be a long night of "sleeping over", watching horror movies at top volume while shooting 8,956 rounds of nerf gun bullets at the ceiling of the room which happened to do double duty as the floor of the master bedroom, the place where the thirty three year old woman likes to get her eight hours of shut-eye, you know, in a perfect world. The thirty three year old man slept like a LOG while the thirty three year old woman tried to create just the right mantra. Mantras have to be positive, don't they? They can't be "NO MORE OF THESE GOD DAMNED FUCKING PARTIES" or "NO MORE FUCKING SLEEPOVERS" or "ALL CHILDREN DESERVE DEATH".
In the morning, the thirty three year old woman awoke to no thirty three year old man. This is common. The thirty three year old woman tends to make up for her stressful life as a failed caterer by sleeping later than everyone else on the earth. The thirty three year old man came in and offered coffee to the thirty three year old woman and together they drank the coffee and did not kick the snot out of the five bulging sleeping bags lying prone all over the floor. They took as much as they could take, and even offered unlimited Fruity Pebbles, but once the pebbles had been consumed, and all the thirteen year old boys moved on to stabbing the remaining cans of pop with ball point pens and slurping the contents through the punctured sides, the thirty three year old man and the thirty three year old woman hissed at their own darling thirteen year old boy that he had about ninety seconds to get these fucking kids out of this house or that god damned ipod was going back to Walmart.