Note the plural on cocktail hour.
There's a darn good reason why it's a singular noun.
And should stay that way.
I tend to host the big family holiday dinners because cooking for 20 doesn't torque my panties. I have a 'saddle up" policy during the holidays-the more elbows resting on my sagging table, the better. I work best under crushing boulders of stress, when my stomach is uncharacteristically flat against the floor because King Kong is sitting on my shoulders pounding me with the hard cover of the Joy of Cooking.
I've got my beloved Swiffer in one hand, a food splattered cookbook in the other, with my cell sandwiched between my neck and hunched shoulder, chatting to Sissy, wondering if I have time to buzz up to Home Goods because I now must simply have the extra napkins I fished out of my shopping cart and chucked into the accessory department the other day. (That's called my psychological shop-up-packing my cart with eleven foot rugs, clearance casserole dishes, and serving platters taking them for a spin round the store and depositing said items on the opposite end of the store when I assess my goods and wallet and decide I really don't need an another white serving dish.)
I used to make out grocery lists for my dinner parties, but I'd either race out the door leaving the list on the counter, along with my wallet, or it would disappear in the big black hole at the bottom of my handbag.
this is why I never find anything in my handbag
Besides, I'd take one look at my messy shorthand writing and couldn't figure out if I had written litter or lettuce. Instead, I loiter in the meat department, desperately trying to recall half grazed recipes, putting the neurons on turbocharge so I can pull up those recipes whose ingredients I'd failed to commit to memory.
And this happens every time I have a dinner party, holiday or not.
Big Sissy makes out grocery lists. She knows weeks ahead what's she cooking. There's no last minute running around for her: she dodged that muscular Cade Procrastination gene, the flame retardant DNA that makes us impervious to the pain of having a blowtorch aimed at our asses while still being able to resist those chores, deadlines, or decisions that we'd rather not do.
But for me, half the fun is seeing how much I can cram into the day before my guests wander in. And although the husband says he wouldn't change a single thing about me (wink, wink), he starts squawking and fretting because if there's one trait that he'd rather not see expressed in the next generation of Joneses, its my "It'll only take five minutes," gorilla of a gene. I've painted chairs hours before my guests lowered their bottoms onto the seats, touched up walls with minutes to spare, and had my mother in law tethered to an ancient sewing machine, zigzagging curtains seconds before the doorbell rang.
"Oh, darling, I just don't understand how you can do this," she tutted in her delightful British accent, her tiny feet tapping the pedal, sounding very much like an SOS call.
Between whirling around the house on my Swifter, heading to Home Goods, the grocery store, and repainting the kitchen, I don't eat. And I usually don't make it to the gym.
And that's not a good pairing.
So, it's only natural that I unwind and enjoy the cocktail hour with my guests. But one hour turns into two and before I know it, my apron's off, I'm moving like Jagger and dinner is simmering on the stove, abandoned like the white serving dish and 8 by 11 rug in bath section at Home Goods.
See, my office morphs into a dancing den and I'll be damned if I'm cutting onions while my guests are cutting the rug so I throw down my santoku and slide across the kitchen floor into the real party room. Grooving with a bunch of middle aged mums, my teen aged son, who glides across the dance floor with a "unique" sense of rhythm, is as almost as satisfying as sitting down to an overflowing plate of pasta and meatballs.
And while we're bopping on the creaky wood floors, the pan-generational music bouncing off the walls, big Sissy always slips into the kitchen, making sure nothing has gone up in flames. If there's one gal you want in charge during a suburban mosh pit maelstrom in the middle of a dinner party, it's Sissy, who stealthy weaves around the kitchen, ensuring we'll sit down to dinner before midnight.
I've decided that I'll set the oven timer for my next dinner party. Cocktail hour-one hour- max- and that includes boogie time. I just hope Sissy hears the timer.
