I'm doing it again. I'm planning a party that starts out with me as Holly Golightly, in a cocktail dress breezing through a room full of guests without a care in the world while minions do my bidding, and ends with me as Alice from The Brady Bunch with four of 10 fingers burned beyond fingerprint identification, a grease stain on the boob of my silk party shirt, trying to pass off frozen rumaki as a nouveau delicacy.
Every time I have a party, I begin by planning to have it catered and hired out from start to finish. And then I chip away at the wonderfulness until I am MacGyvering the whole shindig myself. Each party starts out as a unique lark with a different theme and food no one has experienced before. Each party ends up being pretty much identical to the one before it. Because, let's face it: There's only so much one woman can do by herself, sans caterer and without a degree in culinary presentation. Also a lot of people just comes for the deviled eggs.
I'm doing it again.
Back in the spring, my husband and I started planning a holiday party to beat all holiday parties. The beginning of December was going to coincide with the final completion of all of our home renovations, so we thought it would be fun to invite a bunch of people over to celebrate.
In March, the party still had a fuzzy glow around it. It was far enough away from reality that it was epic. It was going to be the best party ever. I rode that unicorn all spring and summer until September when I started to get down to the nitty-gritty of planning the actual party in real life, with all the limitations and constraints that the human world has. That's when the unicorn turned into Eeyore.
And that's when I slipped into my party planning schedule, something that I've perfected over the years. It goes something like this:
Three months prior:- Tell husband, "I think this year we should just have it catered. I know we never do that, but wouldn't it be worth the money to just have someone come in and take care of the food for us? "
- Talk to sisters and other people who have had parties catered and bolster opinion that I should definitely have the party catered.
- Spend the next three weeks fantasizing about my doorbell ringing and two smartly uniformed people with shiny, bunned hair walking in with trays of food that someone who is not me has made. The dog does not knock these people over and the food remains intact.
- Smile a lot. Get really exciting about throwing this party. Look at catalogs. Plan clever centerpiece. Laugh, even.
- Go online to look up caterers. Get a recommendation from a friend for one who is "very reasonable price-wise, considering how amazing the food is." Get a quote from this company. Have a minor aneurysm. Go back online and look for cheaper caterers.
- Tell husband, "You know, we could probably end up with just as nice of a party if we ordered party platters from Safeway, picked it up ourselves, jazzed it up a little bit and saved ourselves some bucks. I mean, why pay a caterer to cut up little cubes of cheese, when Safeway could do it for less than half the price."
- Stare at picture of Safeway cheese plate for 15 minutes. Say to husband, "Why pay Safeway to cut up little cubes of cheese when I could do it myself for less than half the price?"
- Decide to do the cheese plate part of the food myself but get Safeway to do all the rest.
- Stare at pictures of Safeway party platters for 30 minutes. Say to husband, "Okay, really, those cream cheese rollup things? I make them in my freaking sleep. And they want how much for 20 of them on a plastic tray with more kale garnish than actual edible food?"
- Decide to do the cheese plate part and the cream cheese rollups myself and get Safeway to do all the rest.
- Sit down with intent to order the Safeway part of the food, which has been whittled away via conversations with my now-bored-stiff -bordering-on-angry husband, and has been reduced to meatballs and sliders.
- Tell husband, who is now no longer listening to anything I say that includes the word party, "Are they kidding me? Balls of cheap hamburger with a can of cream of mushroom soup thrown on it. I am not paying for that. I'm not doing it. If I can't make a bunch of meatballs, I don't deserve to even have a holiday party." Safeway part of the party is now down to sliders.
- While looking at pictures of the Safeway sliders, experience a freakish Internet accident in which I end up on Pinterest looking at homemade sliders. Tell husband, whose eyes are glazing over whenever I speak to him about anything now - anything at all - , "Making sliders is probably the easiest thing about the whole party! Making sliders is a piece of cake when compared to even the cheese plate. I'm making the sliders."
- While looking for homemade slider ideas, come across mini club sandwiches made with homemade focaccia bread, thinly sliced turkey, cheese, pesto and a crepe. An actual homemade crepe right on the sandwich. Say to husband, who now wears earphones with sitar music 24/7, "Ooh. That would be so elegant! This could be the talk of the party!" Spend 45 minutes imagining my party with crepey focaccia sandwiches that are so damn classy I can hardly stand it. Imagine a party guest saying, "What's this? A crepe right here on this gorgeous little focaccia sandwich? Who made these? Did you make these yourself, Diane? No. I don't believe it. You did not."
- I am now making all of the food for the party myself. Sit down to make a schedule and realize I should have started four days ago making the spinach balls and the sausage rounds and getting them in the freezer.
- Make mental note to eat all the leftovers in the freezer to make room for party food.
- Tell husband, who is threatening to join a cult that specifically does not celebrate any holiday after mid-summer, "I am going to need you to run me to Colma to help me buy the ingredients for the party food. I need to go to four different specialty grocery stores. We might need to rent a van. Also, we need to join Costco."
- Am so busy making party food in advance, I barely have time to get to the doctor to have my stress-related rosacea looked at. Cancel pre-party mani-pedi because my fingers are bloody stumps. I'm now on a diet of everything in the freezer, wine and my own cuticles.
- Begin to question the meaning of Christmas, social contact of all kinds, and why there is food at parties.
- Ask lawyer to contact husband's lawyer and ask him if he would like to come to my holiday party.
