Sunday, November 18, 2001

• Aftermath

  The dinner was moderately successful, which means that no one got food poisoning.  The decorations which were supposed to reflect a Mardi Gras theme, looked like they were done by that psycho clown in Twisted Metal (SweetTooth, not the other one).  My king cake flopped, and my planter's punch was too mild for the drinkers and too strong for the non-drinkers. (Gordon told me this morning he thought it tasted terrible.  I looked at him wide-eyed and asked him if he had really had some.  He said that he had, repeated that it was terrible, and compared it to beer.  I told him that it had rum in it, and after he got over being embarrassed that he accidentally had a "grown-up" drink he wasn't supposed to, he got mad at me for ruining a perfectly good punch.  I asked him, "Why do you think they call it 'punch'?")

  The original bad idea was that I could fit 30 people into a single room of my house for a sit down dinner.  When I volunteered to do this, there were only supposed to be 20 at the maximum, but all those people who never show up decided to come to this one. 

  The process involved removing all the living room furniture to my carport and replacing it with banquet tables and stacking chairs.  I think this was a lot more work than my children wanted to do.  They were happy to help blow up balloons and tape streamers all around the room.  One of the other ladies came over to help set the tables, but Benjamin kept sneaking off with the beads and doubloons every time either of us turned our backs.

  The second bad idea was letting the one person in the club who is a vegetarian plan the menu.  She had no idea what she was ordering.  I changed half the menu, but probably not enough.  I have quite a bit of cajun baked fish and fried okra left over.  (I know, it sounds terrible, but when you consider that the original plan was to serve crawdads and set tin pails in the middle of the tables, it doesn't sound so bad)

  My house is back to normal, but I can't remember the last time a party ended with my feeling so dissatisfied.  I usually feel very accomplished after hosting a big to-do.  I can't really pinpoint what the real problem was.  All the guests were saying the proper nice things that civilized guests say to the hostess, I can't say that I know anyone was unhappy, I just have a gut feeling that it didn't meet expectations.

  I suppose the up side is that I won't be asked to do it again next year.

  • 10:51 PM
  • 1 view
  • 10 eprops
  • 5 comments