Thursday, January 4, 2007

It's Gonna be a Bad Day

You know it is going to be a bad day when you find a pile of poop on the floor. Grrr...

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Adventures in Entertaining - continued

Thankfully our planned meal was simple. We were having fried turkey, mashed redskins with smoked gouda and corn. The redskins and corn would be easy but the fried turkey we had never attempted on our own before. First he injected it with a little bit of honey (yum!) and then he injected the turkey with a little bit of Jack Daniels (yummier!) just to give it a little bit more flavor. As he hid out in the garage "watching the bird" I got to entertain our friends who were complaining about various things. They were too hot, too cold, had a fever, whatever. I finally got tired of hearing it so I began ignoring them and pretended to be doing things to get dinner ready.

There were a few people kind enough to offer help and so I put them to work setting up an extra table and more chairs. They also started setting the table for me (hopefully Martha Stewart isn't reading this, boy would she be appalled) and as they were doing this I realized we only had enough place settings for 8 people. So 8 people got regular plates and the least favorite people got paper plates and they were just going to have to deal with it.

We all sat down to dinner at about 8:30 (a good 2 hours after the originally projected dinner time) and the food was fabulous (or so I thought). Everyone seemed to like it but our friend male H complained about our good friend Jack. He exclaimed how he could for sure taste it and that female H (his wife) would have to eat less so she could drive home. He was sure he would be drunk. Thankfully everyone seemed to ignore his comments and between bites murmur "mmm....good" like Homer Simpson.

Everything was quiet and then it happened again. Our tree fell over. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Everyone saw it yet no one could do a thing. The people with their backs to the tree even got to see it thanks to a big mirror in front of them. We all sat there for a second before anyone did anything. Everyone was afraid to talk. Once again there was broken glass, water and ornaments everywhere. We decided we had had enough and that the tree was going to stay there, mess and all. It was to be ignored and not talked about for the rest of the night, which is hard because it is the size of a sequoia now sideways in our living room.

After dinner we decided to play board games. All was uneventful until part way through a game the smoke alarm began screeching. Now we didn't know what was causing it to go off. The power strip and electrical wires that had been smoking earlier had by this time been out for hours. So we began a search to figure out what the cause was. It turned out to be nothing big, simply a candle left burning too long that had been smoking away under the smoke detector. It was quickly extinguished and the board game resumed.

We must have had a rowdy board game going because the husband spilled his beer twice. Female H (who is obsessive compulsive - which always makes for an interesting guest) also spilled her beer. She I guess felt so bad she went to the hallway and cried. Weird I know. I couldn't make this stuff up. All I can say is thank goodness for tan carpet, a dog who likes beer and friends that are not Martha Stewart. The rest of the night went well. No more surprises/things falling. However, the next day was needed to clean up our house yet again. I don't see us entertaining that many people in the near future. Thankfully the New Year's party is at someone else's house.

Adventures in Entertaining

In a temporary moment of insanity the husband and I (in our infinite wisdom) decided to have 12 people (and a baby) over for dinner as an early Christmas celebration (on a Friday to boot). This is mistake #2, mistake #1 is coming shortly. After a day of work the husband got home early to finish cleaning and start dinner preparations hours before I even got off work.

Everything had been cleaned and festively decorated when he heard a noise and felt a WHOOSH of air. Here is where mistake #1 comes into play. We (once again in our infinite wisdom) decided to forgo our traditional fake Christmas tree in exchange for a real tree the size of a freaking sequoia. Yup, that's right...an hour and a half before company was supposed to be there our tree falls. (Note: this wasn't the first time the tree had fallen. The first time was a week before only it had not been decorated yet and it stayed on its side for a week before we picked it up.) So back to the carnage. There are ornaments everywhere, some broken, some whole, the top of the tree barely missing our fish tank. There are ornaments down the stairs, in the kitchen and under the table. Not to mention the added bonus of broken glass and water everywhere. Some water splashed into a power strip so there was also the sent of burning electrical wires.

He wrestled the tree back into place (my hero), unplugged the power strip, opened the door to air out the stank and cleaned up again. With all of that excitement out of the way the night is bound to get better right? Wrong! With the additional mess to clean up none of the dinner preparations got done. I got home and guests started arriving soon after. Our projected dinner time was now nowhere in the near future. As we busily finished preparing for dinner we were unknowingly turning our friends into little icicles (the door was still open and it was about 30 degrees outside).

Our friends B & S (funny I know) arrived with their adorable 6 month old son K C. As cute as he was there was a problem. He was petrified of our dog Boddington (a Chinese Shar Pei puppy). Now he may be goofy looking but he is equally adorable and not scary at all. Screaming and crying and hyperventilating ensued. We tried to lock him in the bedroom (the dog that is) so KC could calm down but then the screaming and crying ensued - this time it was Boddington (he doesn't like to be alone). We couldn't handle that either so he came out again and they both cried until they got used to each other (half an hour later). See, he isn't scary...