Family Christmas Party Report

[muckefuck]

• Twelve Lords A-Leading
• Eleven Ladies Gabbing
• Ten Toddlers Toddling
• Nine Conversations
• Eight Centerpieces
• Seven Cans of Sterno
• Six Sibs with Families
• Five Cheesecakes
• Four Videos
• Three Gay Men
• Two Telling Quotes
• And a Four-and-a-Half-Foot Tree

12 There's a definite strand of bossiness running through the children in my family. This evening, it began with three hobbit-high cousins who stood outside directing relatives fifty years senior to parking spaces and coatracks and ended with younger daughters dragging their mothers bodily from the hall.

11 Dragging was necessary because once my Mom and her sisters start talking, mere words are not enough to drive them apart. Their married daughters have inherited this proclivity.

10 We had a large empty uncarpeted area in front of the buffet tables--basically a dance floor--that became a toddler free-for-all after all food was served.

9 I thought I'd be so busy that night making One Woman's Dream a Reality I wouldn't have time to sit. Not only did I, I was able to catch up with any number of relatives I hadn't seen since the previous year. Almost every one of them opened by asking how Chicago was, as if I had ridden in by stagecoach or something. "You know, we done made that river run bass-ackwards!"

8 They were gorgeous. If e. wasn't kidding when she said she basically pulled them out of her ass the night before (when her original plan didn't work out), then her ass is a perfectly-composed fragrant garden in seasonal colours. All but two went home with various female relatives.

7 But championship floral arrangement is not why she's the Hero of the Evening. No, it's that when the decorative netting on the buffet table CAUGHT FIRE she had the presence of mind to pound it out with her napkin rather than pulling the netting off the table, like my mom, or calling for help from the startled staff, like her hapless husband.

6 My mom has seven siblings. (This is why our number comes up only one every eight years.) All but one [vide 3, infra] is MWC. The standard brood is four and almost everyone thirty or over from that generation is married, most with kids of their own. (I was hoping they'd stick to two a piece, thus halving the total with each generation, but they apparently just can't stop themselves.)

5 In order of popularity: New York, triple layer, white chocolate, double chocolate, creme de menthe [my favourite--so fluffy!]. Sampler plates were the order of the day. (Apparently, there were supposed to be six, but e. tells me the pumpkin one gave up the will to live shortly after being plated.)

4 All Rankin-Bass favourites intended to keep the munchkins occupied in a nearby room during the cocktail hour. Mom was going to leave The Year without a Santa Claus behind because she "though it'd be a downer." I said, "How can you do that! It has the Heat Miser song!" Not only did it make the cut, it was shown first and received with rapt attention. "Heeeee's too much!" Ba DUMP ba BUMP!

3 (Not including me, of course. And leaving out possible late bloomers.)

2

1. "And I'm not one to recommend books, since I only read one every ten years or so."--Uncle 'Wally', after explaining how Men are from Mars, women are from Venus changed his views on the fairer sex.
2. "Just make sure the result is something you can live with."--Uncle 'Wally', on letting your spouse make all the decorating choices in your home.

1 'One-piece base'. I LAFF! Fortunately, my meagre skills with duct tape were sufficient to make sure it held together just long enough for the trip to the gift table in the rented hall and back to my sisters, where the cat got at it.