It's not easy being popular. I've been burdened these past few weeks with too many parties to attend. I've been pulled in all directions- I'm supposed to be at three places on the same night, and everyone gets offended when I decline their invite or don't show up. There just isn't enough of me to go around. Can you understand what that's like? No, no of course you can't. Sorry.
On Thanksgiving I went to Leslie's house in Oakland. Leslie purchased half of a duplex with her friend Jen, so they share a wall and a back yard. In the back yard is a hot tub and some sort of tool shed that Leslie has converted into an office. This is amazing because not only can she afford to buy property in the Bay Area, but also because she's Leslie.
It wouldn't be right of me to share any of the true, terrifying, and hilarious tales of her younger life, but they all start something like, "We'd been up for three days at this point..." or "She figured nobody was using the snowmobile..." or "We were detained at the border due to.." Long story short: She wasn't nominated for Most Likely To Succeed.
So her house is great and she cooked nearly all the food for about 16 people and we were all able to sit down and eat at the same time. While we were digesting she fired up the hot tub and people got down to business. I was hanging in the living room with some people including this very cool daughter of one of the other guests. (Anyone under the age of 18 whom I don't fear or am annoyed by gets special props.) She decided that she'd like a pie thrown in her face, because everyone should have a pie thrown in their face at some point in their life.
She had a very good point. I've never had a pie thrown in my face, and I've always felt my life has not been quite complete. So she got pied in the back yard, as did Leslie. I was up for it, except I was supposed to take BART home and when you see someone whose face is covered in massive amounts of sticky white residue on public transportation, it's best to shoot first and ask questions later. I wouldn't even blame the mob for lynching me.
The next day I headed off to a leftovers dinner at Vanessa's relatively new apartment in Sausalito. I hitched a ride with Jen and David, which cut about two hours off the commute by ferry. David is charmed by the suburbs. (This happens to one when one lives in a loft in the ghetto in which one had to build one's own bathroom.) He narrated our journey with, "This is great, It's so quiet over here! You can see the ocean, and smell the eucalyptus, and... [two Marin housewives walk across the street] bang soccer moms during the day when their husbands are at work!"
Safely indoors, we heated up our combined leftovers and ate. My leftovers were in reality Leslie's leftovers that she donated to the cause. I couldn't remember what the things were called so she had to write it down. One was a "root vegetable gratin" and the other was something like a "goat cheese and dill casserole." Whatever, they were both creamy.
Someone at the party hadn't seen Bring It On before, which gave the rest of us an excuse to insist he see it so we could watch it again. Then we played Cranium and The Other Jen and I lost badly because neither of us could do any of the word puzzles as complicated as "spell 'thorough' backwards." I'll never make a living in the language arts.