Party Time
I am sitting here at party-central this weekend. It’s almost 2pm and we have an open house from 3-6pm where we are expecting 40-50 people in total. Yesterday we had about thirty people for brother-in-law Bennett’s 70th birthday party. Yesterday was a fully catered party with what had to be the most California healthy menu I’ve ever seen. They called it a “Mediterranean Menu”, so I will know now what that means, lots of rice, lentils, leafy lettuce humus, tahini, flavored yoghurts and pita triangles. The add-ones were avocado and feta cheese. I will bet that Gourmet Magazine and Sunset Magazine would give it a big two thumbs-up rating. Suffice it to say that I nibbled at this and that and fundamentally decided that it was a good fast and cleanse day for me.
Today I am getting myself more properly prepared. I had a bagel (day-old) with cream cheese for breakfast and half of a roast beef and cheddar sandwich. Kim has declared that there will be no prepared dinner tonight so I am prepared to order Chinese food or something once the soirée is over. I’m anxious to see the food platters that Kim has ordered since they seem online to be real works of art with garnishes galore. There will be charcuterie platters, crudités platters, fruit platters and now an added sweets platter. I am guessing that the most useful item we have bought in preparation for this party will be the zip-lock bags to package up the left-overs for everyone to take home. We are leaving in a day and a half for our trip so, given that we are gone for five weeks, we want to dispose of any perishable food. I have told Kim that my guess is that while everyone is likely to have a drink or maybe even two, the platters may be so pretty as to be dysfunctional. What that means is that no one will want to dig in the way you might if they were grab and go finger sandwiches. Wee will see.
Our first big issue was to decided what could and could not be used from yesterday’s party for today’s party. The easy call was on the flower boxes, which look just as good today as they did yesterday. The much harder call was on the balloons. I’m not sure what came over my sister, Kathy, but she really overdid it on the balloons. I’m guessing there were more than 150 balloons tied up on weights. There were Happy 70th balloons, generic Happy birthday balloons, balloons with silver and gold dots, black balloons with white and silver stars, Mylar balloons of all colors and regular balloons of even more colors. They were all helium filled and with the exception of the Mylar balloons, they were all losing their Mojo. The argument was whether balloons at any cost are festive or whether balloons that are lying on the ground with depleted helium are more of a downer than festive. I prevailed on this point that the only salvageable balloons were the Mylar ones and we proceeded to execute the rest.
Kim is a very socially conscious person when it comes to recycling, and there seems to be a rigorous protocol when it comes to balloons. Balloons are not only a form of plastic that can be harmful to aquatic and bird life, but apparently the rubbery nature of the beast does particularly bad things, especially when attached with colorful Mylar ribbons. So, Kim spent a good hour cutting up, deflating and disposing of these festive reminders of yesterday’s party. When the balloons had been disposed of I set the one bunch of remaining Mylar balloons out in front of the main door. That proved to be a bad idea thanks to the Ring doorbell, which doesn’t understand that Mylar balloons moving with the wind are not animate objects approaching the house. So, the Mylar came indoors to create a “welcome to our home” bouquet, which sat next to our name tag table and neighborhood map with pins for everyone to mark their home. This allowed us to keep track of everyone who showed up.
The party went very well and we were quite pleased with the attendance, but, as always, not everyone who said they were coming came and some who hadn’t bothered to RSVP showed up. It was all good with a grand total of 50 attendees (the top end of our expectations), representing 19 existing homeowners in the neighborhood, three that have houses well along in construction and another who is just closing on a lot (a Peruvian family who bought one of the inner lots across the street. Five homeowners who said they were coming didn’t show, which leaves five who told us they couldn’t come and six who never responded one way or the other. I’m not sure why I am bothering with all these statistics other than to say that this has proved to be a good event for us to meet and get to know our neighbors a bit. Why should we care at this stage of our lives? I guess the answer is that this is now our home and it always feels better to be connected to one’s community. If I were characterizing the group, they were about the age I was expecting (our age or older by up to ten years for the most part), they were more diverse than I would have expected (one Persian, one Japanese, one Palestinian, one Chinese, two Scottish, three Peruvian and one Mexican), and, quite surprisingly, I suspect, more blue than I was expecting. There were six children in attendance (five from one prolific family), so the games area got some serious play. In fact, the youngest member of the cohort could be heard screaming when it was time to finish up at the games area. At first I thought he may have encountered a rattlesnake (we had specifically put down snake-be-gone pellets for that express purpose), but he was just disappointed to be leaving. That may be the best endorsement I could ever ask for the games area.
I now have one neighbor who wants me to go play golf with him. I have another who has every imaginable form of heavy equipment that I can theoretically borrow (he’s the guy with eleven acres and whose property qualifies as a “farm” for tax purposes). While I doubt I will ever borrow one of his front-end loaders that can lift 8 tons (impressive), I may get the urge to borrow his wood chipper. I just read that Cal Fire will chip whatever you cut and when I mentioned that to him he said he didn’t qualify since his is technically not a residence, but a farm. I guess there’s always a downside to every tax-driven decision. But, overall, I feel like we can cruise the hood and wave at people now more specifically than vaguely when we see them. Being social has always had value, but now after the worst of COVID (God help us I hope that is the case, otherwise we may become the next super-spreader Typhoid Mary event that makes the 11 o’clock news), it is even more clear that we all value being sociable. I bet we will have several dinner parties with the neighborhood people now that we feel we know each other. I have yet to figure out how we loop in the other fourteen homeowners who missed this gathering…I guess there’s always time to do another party, perhaps at the next seasonal change like the winter holidays. Party on.