I had one of those book parties the other night. As soon as I agreed to do it, I regretted it. I used to do umpteen parties a year (i.e., Pampered Chef, Tastefully Simple, etc.), because I'm a total sucker when put under pressure, but finally decided to stick to one. One of my best friends is a consultant for At Home America, so for lack of a better term, I give her my business. I went to an Usborne book show a couple months ago and was impressed with the books. It's hard to feel guilty about purchasing books for your kids, so I thought why not. The why not is you have to provide food, invite people who would probably rather do a million other things than go to yet another party, but it was done, agreed upon, so I did it. Feeling somewhat guilty about just having had an At Home party back in September, I didn't invite the whole lot. You get your usual bunch that always comes, the usual bunch that never comes, and of course the ones you never hear from. Given the limited number of people I invited, the usual crew that was set to attend amounted to 7 - and given my track record of inviting people to my house (harhar) - 4 showed up. These four were at the previous party I went to that I signed up to do the party, so the consultant skipped the whole sales pitch and we just sat around, ate food that was too fattening, and talked. All in all it was a good time.
I was looking around at my clean house the next morning - admiring the sparkling cleanliness that surrounded me. Since it was a small party, all the cleaning that went into the party stuck. It was still clean! Yeah! As I was loading my Diet Cokes into the refrigerator - four to be exact, I'm trying to limit my addiction to a reasonable number - I was basking in the joy of only having laundry on my to-do list for the day. Laundry is a given. It's on my to-do list EVERY day. What should happen next? I drop one of the cans on the floor. Dropping a can on the floor is a normal occurence, no big deal. You just push it to the back to let it settle, and grab one from the front. But not this day. No. This day it busts open, spinning in circles, spraying soda ALL OVER MY SPARKLING CLEAN KITCHEN. AR starts crying, totally freaked out by what had happened; the boys think the whole thing is hysterical and take the opportunity to run at lightening speed and see how far this wet floor can send them (which was into the Dining Room btw). So now there's sticky soda on the floor, the cabinets, the fridge, the wall, the pictures on the wall, the couch and coffee table (hearth room), the counters, and the chairs at the island. These are the kinds of moments where you just want to run out the door crying and maybe, just maybe, never come back. But you take a deep breath, stick the kids in front of the t.v., and start scrubbing. Because as always, today is just another day, and this too shall pass.
