Party Girl

I felt like quite the socialite this weekend. I had not one, but two parties to go to. I was even welcome without my husband, who was so sick from some virus he’d caught that he mostly spent the weekend in bed, alone.

The first was nominally a five-year-old’s birthday. Surprisingly, for a girl who’s not been in institutional school, Kelly’s enjoyed just as many kindergarten-age birthday parties as Neil did at her age. Instead of her schoolmates, she has her friends from the homeschoolers’ park days; her friends from Andrew’s storytime; and her friends who are the little sisters of Neil’s friends. It’s still not enough for her by the way, and she complains about not having constant access to another trove of friendships within a classroom, but I digress.

This party was a party for the little sister of one of Neil’s friends in Morgan Hill. And it was as much a party for the adults and the older sibling as it was for the little girl whose birthday we were celebrating. The parents, Kelton and Allison, typically have birthday barbecues, which pleases all. The children play amongst themselves and finish off with the cake and birthday presents. The adults get to hang out and nominally supervise, while eating barbecued food and drinking. That’s probably what birthday parties were always like before the advent of the bounce house and party pony, and this is a lot less stressful and fun for the grown-ups, too.

I surprised myself at being able to hold my own in party conversation. It helps that I am just completing a tech writing job which is still top secret, which probably makes it sound a little cooler than it actually is, and that I was hanging out with other people with tech jobs. The wine was good (as always), but I had to drive home in the rain, so I had to settle for one glass of some good stuff, and enjoy gourmet sodas instead.

The next day I got to go to a baby shower for a fellow homeschooling mom, Krissy. Normally, homeschoolers tend to be somewhat private (or at least distracted by their children) so it was a rare treat to go to a fellow homeschoolers’  house for a child-free party. The mom-to-be happened to be one of those super-nice people, and all her chosen guests were the super-nice people in the group. So I’m not sure how I got an in, but I guess I have my moments of being nice too, at least in the presence of the super-nice. I had several firsts there, too. I had fondue, which I’ve known about forever, but never remember having. It used to be too 70s to be cool, and now that it’s cool again, I was stuck in my 90s culinary habits. I also did “the identify baby food by taste” game, which is a baby shower staple, but considered too much of an old staple to have been at any other baby shower I’d ever been at. Needless to say, I completely failed at identifying the baby food.

Krissy got lots and lots of clothes for her expected son, including what I think was a sample of every newborn boy onesie currently available in Macy’s. If he ends up becoming a male fashion model, Krissy knows who she can blame.

My next weekend has no parties, though I may have to go to a beach house to model my beach geek look for my new column in Santa Cruz Magazine.