Party Planning Center

My Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party is coming up on the 16th…well maybe. The RSVPs are coming in slow which is making me nervous. I’ve only invited the six ladies in my Gathering Girls group so if too many have other plans, I’ll have gone through a lot of planning, shopping and worrying all for naught. Of course, I admit to overdoing the shopping portion---note I didn’t say buying portion. It’s overwhelming how much party stuff is actually available for theme parties but when I added up all the stuff I wanted to buy it didn’t make sense to spend so much for such a small party. Shopping was still fun while it lasted and it kept me occupied on a lot of snowy afternoons.

 I did buy tiny glass bottles and tags to hold the potion Alice drank that made her grow smaller. Don’t tell anyone but they’ll be holding pink lemonade. I also bought a package of keys for the hallway of locked doors that Alice faced and when I was doing my homework on why keys were featured on all the party websites I realized I’ve dreamed about that hallway of locked doors often in my life. It’s one of my reoccurring dreams. I attached a key to each save-the-date card and hand delivered most of them at our 3rd Mondays Brunch in March but the ones I had to mail cost $3.50 each. I had ‘sticker shock’ at the post office!

I also bought a deck of cards with cool vintage pictures from the pages of the Alice book. I’ll show you a photo after the party of how I’m using the cards in my centerpiece. In my head the old florist in me designed a dozen centerpieces but I’m ending up with something very campy but simple. I’ll give you one clue: it includes a layer cake from my old dollhouse. That tiny handmade cake cost a fortune back in the day as did the miniature handmade rabbit I’m using from another past collection. Oops, that’s one more clue than I planned on giving. Playing with those old “toys for grownup” made me realize how much fine finger function I’ve lost. Color me sad about that. 

I bought a few other minor décor type things but I’m most proud of coming up with an activity of sorts that didn’t cost me anything but some time putting it together. I made seven tiny scrolls with ‘read me’ tags and each one is a life lesson the Alice in Wonderland book taught us. We can read and discuss them or just consider them part of the décor if we don’t need conversation starters. For example, one of the life lessons is to always follow the white rabbit which the scroll goes on to explain simply means that it’s okay to be curious and even impulsive. If inventors weren’t curious and followed their impulses the world would have missed out on some wonderful things. We each have our own white rabbit in life that can lead us to interesting places. Another life lesson the Alice in Wonderland book taught us is that wandering doesn’t mean we’re lost. There is more than one way to get to our life goals and sometimes if we think we’ve strayed from pursuing those goals it just means we had things we had to learn along the way to our destinations. Like I said, I’ve been having fun thinking up party ideas and dismissing most of them, looking at recipes and menus and settling on simple choices that fit my skill level or lack thereof in the kitchen.

I’ve run into a few snags in my party planning, though. 1) I discovered that with the extra leaf in my table the tablecloth that matches my dishes doesn’t fit; 2) the vast internet doesn’t seem to sell moss green table clothes at a reasonable price; 3) I forgot I downsized my dishes last year and I only have place settings for six now and we are a group of seven; 4) I gave away a 3-tiered party server I could have used to save space and add height to the visual look of my table; 5) ditto on giving away my 8-cup coffee pot; 6) my housecleaning service called to push my cleaning too close to party day for my comfort; 7) because of the cleaning delay I had to reschedule the carpet cleaning service; 8) the weather is preventing my lawn care service from doing a spring cleanup (but I can’t control Mother Nature so I’ve crossed that off my worry list.)

And number nine of that snags that happened to my party planning is the biggest: when I started talking to the Gathering Girls about me having a party I wanted to do it in the middle of the afternoon with just beverages and desserts but I had to change the time to noon because one of the ladies takes care of her grandkids starting at 2:00. Therefore I’m doing more food preparation than I’m comfortable doing. But with my handy lists and battle plan it will all turn out okay and if it doesn’t it will just get chalked up to, “That’s Jean for you, the anti-foodie!” ©

Friends who Read Blogs and the Mom I Still Miss

I have a curious friend who knows I have a blog but she isn’t very computer literate which translates to she can’t find it and she’s tried. Several times when the topic has come up I’ve jokingly said, “If I told you how to find it, I’d have to kill you.” I debate in my head whether or not I should just give her the web address. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in my off-line life who read my blog and I like it that way because it frees me to write without the temptation to white wash my words to square with the filtered person I frequently show to the world away from my keyboard. I trust these five people to still like me even after reading my deepest thoughts. And more importantly, I trust them not to tattle on me if I write about someone we both know.

The year that Don died, I did put the web address in my Christmas letter but to my knowledge only three out of all the people on my mailing list ever stopped by. I get that. I really do. Mostly, it’s other widows who are interested in how newbie widows are handling that first year. And by the time I turned into a seasoned widow who was no longer fluctuating between crying in my beer and being the brave little trooper I came to appreciate the advantages of keeping my online and offline lives separate. That probably explains why my petty inner child is not keen on inviting my curious friend to my blog. My inner child can be quite bullheaded, a word my mother used often to describe me when I was growing up. Bullheadedness in childhood can turn into a useful tool in adulthood. If Mom were here now I’d point out that being bullheaded/persistent, if channeled in the right direction, gets things done. Sticks and stones can hurt your bones but words can never hurt you---unless it’s your mom drilling them into your head.

I don’t write about my mother often. She was a complicated person and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do her justice. She could be a tough disciplinarian and if I lingered too long on that point you’d get the impression she was a hard woman. For example, if I didn’t do the dishes before rushing out to have fun I’d find them piled in my bed to do before I could go to sleep at night. But if I told you she was affectionate with her family and compassionate with others in bad situations, you’d rightly get the impression she had a warm and loving nature. Case in point: whenever my uncle drank too much and gambled away his paycheck my mom slipped her sister money to help feed their kids. At Mom’s funeral I heard similar stories of her quietly helping others. But if I told you my mother was always squirreling money away for rainy days you’d get the impression she was a miser. When she died we had to check the pockets in all her clothes before donating them.

To understand my mom it helps to know that her own mother died after giving birth to my mom’s sixth sibling. She was ten years old and after that all the kids got shuffled off to live with other families across several counties. Mom, being the second born and deemed old enough to work, was sent off to earn her keep at her grandmother’s boarding house. She would tell a story about how all the tablespoons in the house would disappear when meals were made because her grandmother would taste something on the stove, then drop the spoon into the pot. She’d repeat that over and over again and all the spoons would come clinking out when the food was plated. By her early teens Mom had dropped out of school and was working first as a live-in housekeeper, then as a waitress living on her own in a rented room. Her dad would stop by the restaurant regularly to ask her for money. He drank away his widower’s grief until he drank so much he turned into an alcoholic. 

Mom married my dad when she was twenty-six years old and she didn’t talk much about those years when she was out on her own. But I do know that all that time working as a waitress turned her militantly against the system of tipping in restaurants. She thought if we did away with tipping the restaurants would have to pay fair wages. A woman could work her fingers to the bones taking care of a lot of customers, she said, but it was the flirty waitresses with big breasts who made the most money. A couple of times I saw Mom sneak part of the tip money off the table that my dad would leave behind. Bad service? Flirty waitresses? Rainy day fund running low? Your guess is as good as mine.

Mothers and daughters have unique relationships and I leave it to others who knew us both to decide if I’m anything like my mom. One thing I know for sure is she did her best to see that my brother and I had the opportunity to pursue whatever after school activity that we showed an interest in. She was the leader of my Blue Birds, Camp Fire and Horizon Clubs, she volunteered to help on school field trips and was determined I would get a college education. My mom also knitted and crocheted beautifully and played records when she was home alone. The only “mother thing” she didn’t accomplish was to teach me how to cook and that we can chalk that up to me being too bullheaded to learn. She died on an Easter Day in the early ‘80s and while Easter changes dates every year I associate the holiday with losing and still missing her. And it should be noted here that my brother and I still argue over who Mom loved the best.  © 

Photo at the top: My Mom (age 30) and I (age 2 weeks old) on the day we were released from the hospital, and that's my brother.

Name this Blog Entry…I Can’t!

Have you ever seen a possum up close, nasty mouth wide open and growling…or hissing? (I’m not sure how to describe the sound it was making.) It’s a scary sight I hope I never see again but I suspect I will. Last night Levi was in his dog pen when he started barking like his world was on fire and I ran out to see what was going on. Usually it’s just a rabbit on the other side of the fence but this time I found him barking at a possum he had cornered and all that separated them was two feet of ground and a couple of empty flower pots. I tried to grab Levi’s collar but he dodged me and darted around to my other side and took up the turf war again. Finally---after a lot of chasing and me worrying that the possum would bite me or the dog---I was able to latch on to Levi and herd him into the garage. I didn’t know I could move that fast! The rest of the night Levi begged at least ten times to go outside only instead of me letting him out the back door to his pen, I hooked him up on his leash and took him out the front door which, of course, wasn’t what he wanted. I didn’t dare say “no” because that would be the time he’d actually have to poop and he’d punish the carpeting for my refusal to let him out. 

From scary creatures in nature to gentle creatures. This week I went to the Butterflies in Bloom Exhibit at the sculpture garden. It’s the third time I’ve been invited to join my youngest niece, her two daughter-in-law’s and her four grand babies. One of the babies is five-six months old and I was surprised she was able to focus on a dozen butterflies at a feeding station. Her eyes were huge, her tiny mouth formed a perfect “O” and her little legs were kicking a mile a minute. She was strapped into one of those carriers on her mom’s belly and it was too bad her mom couldn’t see the baby’s face. They don’t allow strollers into the tropical conservatory where the butterflies are and the two with our group were the first two parked in the stroller area. When we came back out there were easily two dozen. These young moms in my family sure were impressive as they juggled the needs of babies and toddlers. Diaper changes and nursing for the babies and potty breaks and healthy snack times for the toddlers. 

From babies to old ladies. Sorry if calling myself and others in my age bracket “old” offends anyone. Well, actually I’m not sorry but I have been told by several people that the word “old” is an insult and referring to myself as old or elderly doesn’t fit a septuagenarian. Ya, sure. Accepting our ages and the stereotypes that go with whatever age bracket we’re going through at the time can be ego deflating. But be honest here, many of those stereotypes are based on facts. 

When Don turned 50 he was dreading his birthday and he got on a kick where he’d tell waitresses that he just turned 60 and he’d ask them if that qualified for a senior discount. These waitresses knew us as regular customers and they would reply variations of, “Wow, you sure don’t look your age!” After joking back and forth Don would admit the truth and we’d all have a good laugh. This went on for several weeks around his birthday until one day we went to a state park where the girl taking the money at the entrance didn’t know us. After Don pulled this fishing-for-compliments routine, the girl looked Don squarely in the eyes, gave him the senior discount day pass and handed him his change. The look on his face as we drove away was priceless and that was the very last time he pulled that joke. (If you think you’ve heard this story before, you did. Back in 2013 I wrote about it. See, I’m living up to the stereotype of old people repeating themselves.) 

Boy, did I get off track from writing about having brunch with my Gathering Girls pals at the Guy-Land Cafeteria. I was there by myself a few days before, early in the morning, and I was reminded of why I coined that name for the place. I was outnumbered thirty to one. It would be impossible to figure the ratio of men vs. women at our brunch, though, because we were there 3 ½ hours (!) while others came and went. (Don’t worry, there were always plenty of tables free. Two of us worry about things like that and about not taking up tables that are bigger than our needs...while one lady in our group thinks we’re crazy for caring about stuff like that.) And get this: we ate twice and joked about staying a few more hours and having dinner, too. In our defense, we had to stay that long because we got off to a slow, doom-and-gloom start before for we got to the silly, belly laughter banter that is our signature, get-together mode. All’s well that ends well. Now, if only I could come up for a name for this blog entry! Can you? ©