The Spice of Life

This past weekend I hosted a lovely tea party for 1st grade mothers. My sister-in-law had tried to purchase a tea party I had donated to a school auction, but had been out-bid. She asked if she could hire me to do another one for her fellow 1st grade moms. I had neither the time, nor the desire to say yes. Although I love doing tea parties, doing one I was paid for sounded awful. Truth be told, I don't even know what the definition of a high tea is. I don't know which direction is the proper way to pass food and I don't even know how long you're supposed to steep tea! I just like pretty tea cups and fancy little sandwiches and making people feel pampered. But when someone pays for something, they have expectations, and with that comes a different level of pressure. Anyway, I worked out a deal with my sister-in-law. I offered her a date for this weekend since Scott & the girls would be away at a Father/Daughter retreat. She would bring all the food, I'd set the pretty table and wait on them, and no money would be exchanged! Win, win if you ask me.


With Scott and the girls gone, and Johnny hidden away with a pizza & Play Station, I was able to turn all my attention to the tea party. It was very fun and I enjoyed meeting the mothers of first graders that were able to attend. Would you believe they have FOUR SETS OF TWINS in that class? (Three sets on campus and one set in the independent study program.)


One of my favorite things about a tea party is how utterly feminine and dainty everything is. After my guests left, I tackled the dishes. It is the only time I actually enjoy doing dishes -- "feminine and dainty" even make dishes more satisfying!


I went to bed quite late, topping of my girly evening with a couple of chapters of Anne of Green Gables. I've been reading it aloud to the girls and we're all thoroughly enjoying it. Since Saturday was one of those VERY RARE days where I could basically call the day my own, I allowed myself to read into the wee hours of the morning.


When I awoke, very lazily, and headed down to make myself a cappuccino, I discovered we had been TP'd in the night. Wow, twice in one month. There were no clues this time. It might have been the girls' friends, having taken up the challenge Catie practically dared them to at the end of her post about catching the last TPers, or it could have been Johnny's nemesis, recently back from college. Either way, it didn't take long for Johnny & I to clean it up. I made the tree my special project and had fun using the ladder to get up into the branches. I asked Johnny to take a picture of me in the tree, but he was busy rolling TP into one huge ball. Being much more comfortable BEHIND the camera, I'm not in the habit of asking to have my picture taken and was not willing to ask twice.

Like I said, it was easy to clean up and fortunately this time, it did not cost me any sleep.

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Cleaning up a yard of TP is a far cry from tea parties, nothin' feminine & dainty about that, but as the saying goes, variety is the spice of life.


P.S. One of the funnier aspects of this came later in the day when I happened to meet my elderly neighbor at the mailbox. He asked if we'd had a party the night before. I said yes and told him I'd had some ladies over for tea. Then I realized he might be referring to the TP that garlanded the yard until about 11:00 that morning. "Oh, and we were TP'd in the night."


He looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked, "Who does that?"


"The kid's friends." I answered, but sensing this did not clear anything up for him, I added, "It's just something that happens when you have teenagers in your house." Although he did not press for further explanation, I could tell he found the whole thing rather troubling. Hopefully he won't have occasion to be troubled by TP in our yard for a long time to come!!