Celebration Review: A New Year, A New You, An Old Me

I didn’t post yesterday because I was out celebrating Palindrome day – yep, just doing things that involved activities you can do backward and forward (roller skating was not included because I could never do that backward) like eating sandwiches, reading “Go Hang a Salami I’m A Lasagna Hog,” and wearing a full body unitard from American Apparel.

This New Years Eve celebration was grand. We had Thai food, champagne, second-hand smoke, good conversation, high-fives, hugs, the blues (musical), bourbon, beer, and I met a well-groomed preacher from Arkansas. In a rare goof, I left my SD card out of my camera (so I had to fight off low-grade anxiety from my obsession with documentation most of the night) and only have a low-light cell phone photo of the Hi Tone (we finished the evening there):

On New Years Day B and I went over to our friends place for a low-key family-ish celebration. A Bloody Mary and Buffalo Chicken kind of party. Children were invited.

I was headachey a a little tired from (the bourbon) the stress of not having my camera the night before, but still observant enough to make notes for the following short piece titled,

The 60 minute life cycle of a table of snacks at a party with small children:

The Set-Up:

The table, a “coffee table” in the middle of the tv/family room, starts with one bowl of corn chips with dip, one bowl of caramel corn, and one cracker platter with a variety of crackers. As the party progressed a glorious platter of mini (cheese)burgers fresh off the grill was brought out, as was a decorative bowl of chips and black-eyed pea dip complete with two small spreading knives with handles shaped like a snowman and a penguin, respectively.

The fate of the snacks 59 minutes later:

Bowl of Corn Chips – stable. Apparently uninteresting to small children.

Caramel Corn – Half-empty, half-chewed, and generally physically violated after repeated grabbing and regurgitation by four different toddlers.

Cracker Platter – 3/4 full with original inventory, of which 100% was smashed to tiny cracker shards by especially aggressive four year old.

Chips and Black-eyed Pea Dip – Chips – fine, if you don’t mind knowing that the chips had been fondled by a munchkin that was just in the bathroom for a half an hour without the supervision of his parents. The bean dip was found in small droplets on the area rug and the decorative spreading knives recovered from the onesie of a 19-month old girl with the most beautiful blue eyes.

So far most of the damage was visible, but perhaps the saddest fate belongs to the cheeseburgers, for it is not the damage we see that hurts us the most, but the damage we ignore:

While his parents watched the Rose Bowl directly across from him, a young boy just barely of coffee table height, ate the buns off two of the mini-cheeseburgers and probably being too full to eat a third, lifted the bun off another burger and proceeded to lick, lick the cheese on the sandwich before placing the bun top back on, giving it a precious pat with his small trouble-making fingers, and leaving the room as steely as a seasoned hitman.

I like to imagine that had their parents not been there, all of the children would have sat and watched the football game quietly munching on Cheerios or something. That will be another study (one that I probably won’t get to any time soon because I like clean snacks more than I like sociological studies).

In case you were wondering, I’d already had my snacks before the assault.