Here was the plan for the big day (yeah, yesterday not tonight... or as we called it when we were kids, this day):
- Get up early (like there's another option; Mad's up between 6:15 and 7:00) and find the recipe to make for the breakfast omelet casserole thingy Tom and I last made maybe six or seven years ago. All Internet searches resulted in yucky dishes that involved soppy bread or cream of something disgusting soup.
- Make a shopping list for Tom and send him on his way. He's the better shopper between us when it comes to economics and value. I'm better with getting it done mas rapido.
- Finish up the little bit of cleaning and laundry (thank you, New Year's Eve, for coming right after the deep Christmas cleaning).
- Make an early dinner of roast pork and vegetables.
- Clean up and work on any food prep that needs to be done before the guests arrive. Tom's in charge of the veggies, fruit, cheese and crackers. I'll make a pumpkin marmalade and prep stuff for breakfast.
Here's how it went:
- Got up at 8:00, because our alarm clock (Madelyn) was a little worn out, apparently. Begged Tom, AKA Finder Man, to get his butt downstairs and help me look for the recipe because I can't find where Tom, AKA Organizer Man, put anything. Took him 5 minutes. If that man has to tell me one more time it's in the second drawer in the filing cabinet... that thing must be like Mary Poppins' carpet bag... *sigh*
- Made a shopping list that was broken down into "Tonight" and "Breakfast" and figured Tom would know what else we'll need for the week. Thought to mention that, although we need juice and milk, he should consider that we have not purchased that second refrigerator he talks about after every party; he should not over-purchase beverages requiring refrigeration. Mentioned that I just did roast chicken and vegetables on Christmas Eve and that maybe we want something different. Tom offered to grill. Told him he needed to start the grill at 3:00 to stay on schedule. Had a conversation and realized that each of us thought the other would be doing the shopping. Tom won shopping, I won cleaning. Yay me. ?
- Did the laundry. Corey and I did the cleaning, organizing, refilling of soap dispensers and stocking of toilet paper. Called Tom at 2:30 to see if he'd fallen off the face of the fricken earth. Man was stuck at his second grocery store (downside of living in the desert is the dearth of organic... or even decent produce). Both were madhouses and neither is particularly expedient on a good day. My economical shopper of a husband spent $400 on groceries. And, although I'd thought to remind him about conserving refrigerator space, I did not actually tell him. So he bought four different juices and milk for Madelyn, Corey and himself (they each drink something different). Plus beer and extra sparkling cider. No ice for the cooler. No water for the rest of the week.
- When Mom showed up a little early for our early dinner, we sent her and Corey to the store for ice and water.
- Early dinner was about an hour and 15 minutes later than I'd planned, but fricken delicious. Tom grilled steaks and made some sort of breakfast potatoes as a side. We still had just under two hours to get ready for the peeps. I handled the marmalade (which was also pretty damned good, happily) and cheese. Tom did stuffed mushroom caps, barbecued drumsticks and... oh, just about everything else while I cleaned up from dinner (the kitchen, that is).
- First guests arrived 15 minutes later. (Another downside of living in the desert, along the main road that gets everybody from LA to Vegas and all other points east, is that you never can tell how bad the traffic will be. So they left extra time and had not one problem.) No offense to anybody else, but these were my two favorite people aside from family. Having them there early didn't stress me out like it might have with someone else. As a sign of how cool these two are, Madelyn loves them. Madelyn is fond of my mother, father and a few other people she sees regularly. Jo and Pedro came with toilet plungers and Mad was a happy girl. We laughed through everything.
Right at 7:00 the doorbell rang for the next guests. By 7:30, Mad was done and ready for bed. As I came out of her room and approached the top of the stairs, I could hear a lovely hum of conversations. At 8:00 everyone was there and the games began. We did the drawing game. It went pretty well. There are more artistic people among us than I would have guessed. (Sorry, Hank. We'll try out the Mafia game some other time.)
The toilet plungers were for a game that Jo had heard of somewhere. She was wise to have us split by gender, especially since you just know Corey and Lisa would have stood in line together. Thank you, but that's an image I don't need to see. Boys beat the girls because what do we know about carrying toilet plungers between our legs or inserting the stick into a tube? Not much. We're okay with that.
I thought we'd play another game, but realized that everybody was wrapped up in conversations and munching. Just like it should've been, so I left well enough alone.
At 10:00 I realized I haven't stayed up for New Year's the past two years. Last year we were in Illinois and planning to start our salmonella-poisoned joyride home early the next morning. As it turned out, the kid-friendly hotel we had chosen ("984 feet from Six Flags") was full of kids... who ran up and down the halls blowing horns and shaking clackers as midnight neared. The good news is that they retreated to their room shortly after midnight. The bad news is that their room was right over ours. Two years ago I was six months pregnant with Mad and went to bed by 9:00.
Now I don't like to be a wet blanket, but I don't have any regrets about missing the stroke of midnight for either of those years. If it weren't for an extraordinarily long nap this afternoon, I'd be in bed right now. So yes, there was a brief moment last night when I thought two more HOURS? They went by in a flash.
At midnight we pulled poppers and toasted with sparkling cider. Tom and I had an extra special Happy New Year since this was our 10th together.
All told, we had 13 guests for the party and three who spent the night. By 12:30 or so, we were all in bed. Happily for all of us, Mad slept until nearly 8:00 again. Even better for Jo and Pedro, who were downstairs, so did the dog.
We had a late breakfast of an oven omelet and cranberry/apple twist. I forgot (a-freaking-gain) to take the pumpkin bread out, so I sent one home with Jo and P. I still have one. If you like pumpkin bread with nuts, it's all yours, baby.
Jo and Pedro left this afternoon, maybe one-ish. Mom left, and took Corey with her, about half an hour later. And that, my friends, is what an overnight party is like in our house. A little drinking, a lot of laughing, some good food and as much sleep as we're able to squeeze in. I hope yours was as fun and lovely.
Wednesday will be our third wedding anniversary. Being married just three years seems odd somehow. Maybe it's that we've been together well over eight years. So this year I will again say we've been married X years + five and a half.
For our previous wedding anniversaries (I point out wedding because there is also the first time we acknowledged we liked one another even though it was so impossible, because he lived in Chicago and I lived in LA; the first time we said I Love You, something we'd been feeling for a couple of months, but were waiting to admit to because... *ahem*... we hadn't met in person just yet; and the first time we met in person. Okay, we don't really celebrate the others so much anymore, but we used to, and I still keep things separate in my mind.), we have spent the weekend in Big Bear or in Julian. This year there is a budget crisis in our home.
Not only is Mad the proverbial "like a weed" daughter (hello! I'm hoping the size 12 months clothes we bought for winter are going to fit long enough for the weather to stay below 90 for more than two days in a row), but this is the year of our biennial Christmas trip to Chicago. Oh, and the company Tom works for (which shall remain nameless because I sense a rant coming sooner or later) is doing what it can to stay afloat. That means that he generally works four or five eight-hour days instead of five 10-11 hour days each week.
We have a "free" trip to San Francisco (airfare and hotel included) that we had planned to use this coming week, but the $80 processing fee and the fact that he'd be using up days off that we'll need for Christmas means that we had to come up with an alternate celebration.
In all honesty, I spent most of Saturday morning mentally moping. I didn't even bother to call my parents to see if they'd watch Mad until just before noon. Lots of internal scolding, cajoling and name-calling helped me get my act back together well enough to get going. We didn't have much of a plan before the kids were dropped off at their preferred grandparents' houses. I wasn't sure how late we could leave Mad with Margaret and my dad. We went for an early start time so we could get back early, too. Based on recent history (recent being since I got pregnant with my perpetually tardy husband's child), I am stunned to announce that everybody, including me, was ready to go, kids were dropped off and we were free to do what we wanted at 4:03 PM.
Neither of us had eaten much and Tom was starving, so he suggested an early dinner. I laughed and pointed out that we should go to Lenny's for the early bird special. Seriously. And to underscore how early we were seeking dinner, the Indian restaurant we'd chosen wouldn't be open for another hour.
**On a side note, I would have chosen something more than two blocks from my mom's place, but we are pretty well surrounded by fires and freeways are not all open right now, so it made more sense to stick close.
We talked about a few more options and decided to go to our old standby, Casa Sanchez. Sure, it's a little unfancy place in a strip mall. Not everyone would think to go there to celebrate getting married, but it was the first bona fide happy choice of the night for me. Why? Aside from the fact that the owners and staff are friends, this is the restaurant that catered our wedding. Between us, we had all the wedding night food. It was delicious. I can't remember the flavor of anything at the wedding because I couldn't get more than a couple of bites down, I was so excited. So we relived it that afternoon.
Yes, afternoon. It was still well within the four o'clock hour when we arrived. No, most of the people there weren't blue-hairs, but the couple coming out when we went in were rather old. And she was on oxygen. That's how close we were to being old fuddy-duddies (maybe the fact that I'm using that term means it's too late).
Dinner was great. We hadn't set any "let's not talk about the kids" rules. In fact, we talked about the kids we have and the fact that Tom would like to have one more. I'm telling you, he could probably talk me into anything. Oh alright, he already has, but not for now. Mad was our summer vacation surprise last year. The timing worked out perfectly in terms of time off after she was born, so that's our plan for next year. I'm a little excited about it. Like, I've already picked out a name excited, haha. But I'm only telling you, dear readers, because I don't want to have to answer questions from everybody I know for the next eight months. Plus, if it doesn't work out for some reason, I won't have to explain it over and over again.
Anyway, we decided to go see a movie after that. The plan was to find a light romantic comedy (Tom's suggestion because he knows his girl and because he was probably trying to set the mood, bow-chicka-bow-bow). We drove to a theater to see our options: nothing! So we headed over to a small independent theater. It's outside of "the village," a charming little place that is growing a bit too much. Tom's friend has called it too Disney-fied. The village is not, but the theater and surrounding shops do look a bit like a set. Most of the movies were either not for us this night (Bond, Madagascar 2) or we'd never heard of them. The one I recognized and knew I'd been interested in seeing was Rachel Getting Married.
Did I stop to recall what it was about? Did I pause to think about the review I'd read recently in which the word "disturbing" was used? No, I did not. So we bought tickets for a showing that started in an hour and went for a walk. We had ice cream and Tom answered sports questions from roughly a dozen kids who were apparently on a scavenger hunt type activity. They came to us while we sat outside Coldstone after going inside and singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame with the server inside.
The movie was good, but it was not light, romantic nor comedic. It was intense. I was tense. So tense, in fact, that I wanted to yell at any number of the characters or get up and leave, maybe slamming a door on the way out. Whew! And the music was mostly great, but there were huge stretches where it seemed like the makers of this movie just wanted to showcase their varied tastes.
After it was over, we needed to get Mad and go home. When we'd dropped her off, Margaret had offered to keep her overnight, but it seemed inappropriate to take her up on that at the last minute, like I was hoping she'd offer because I didn't have the nerve to ask.
I nursed Mad as soon as we were home and then Tom put her to bed. In the penultimate alternative anniversary celebration finale, I fell asleep on the couch while he took care of her. I'm pretty sure he tried to get me to come to bed, but I did not. It wasn't meant to be a withholding sex type of thing, just an exhausted woman thing. Thankfully, Tom doesn't tend to hold grudges and we were eventually able to enjoy the best part of our weekend during Mad's afternoon nap today. Corey didn't come home from Grammy's until after 9:00 tonight and that, too, felt a little like time away.
So even though I taught two classes Friday night and one Saturday morning, for the first time in a couple of months, I felt like the weekend was all that it should have been. I almost don't mind getting up and going to work tomorrow. I love my job, but Tom will be off, so I'd like to be here, too.
