You Gotta Plan for Your Right to Paaarty

Saturday night my man and I had our first adults-only party since O. was born. We planned several weeks in advance so that our friends with kids would have plenty of time to wrangle babysitters. I called Feral Mom to give her a heads-up. “We’re having an adult party on February 25th, so get a babysitter,” I said. “An adult party?” she replied, “Are you going to have strippers?” We didn’t hire strippers, though we planned to remain open to any amateur stripping that our guests might want to engage in after a few glasses of wine.

Despite a rash of illness and injury among our set this weekend (one knee surgery, one toddler too sick to leave with a sitter, and one breast infection) the party was a success. No stripping and, alas, no spontaneous dancing, but plenty of eating, drinking, and amiability. I was just excited to be able to have conversations proceed without periodic interruptions to check on the whereabouts of a child, intervene in a sharing issue, or pull a climber off the bookshelves. I love watching O. in social situations, and I feel lucky that my friends have great kids I take true pleasure in hanging out with, but it’s nice for once to stay up late kicking back with the grown ups and swearing freely.

Our sweet but neurotic cat even made an appearance at the party, recalling the days when she would emerge when we had company to get some extra affection from our friends. Since the advent of O., she hides whenever we have people over, because there are always little children present and she wisely avoids the under-five set like the unpredictable tail pullers they are. Last night she lounged among our guests, mooching ear scratches and proudly displaying the pendulous belly she keeps bald through vigilant hypergrooming.

Anyway, parties. Fun. Now that we’re getting our party chops back we’ll hopefully be able to inspire some dancing at our next adults-only shindig. Maybe even some good-natured stripping among friends.

P.S You’ll be glad to know that even though I was quite toasted by the time I went to bed around 1:30 AM, I still remembered to brush and floss. No drunk tongue scraping though – that could be dangerous.