Signs That Your New Year's Eve Party Was A Success:
*You look around see that half the guests are currently laughing so hard they can hardly breathe.
*Almost all the food is gone.
BEEP BEEP!
I'd like to interrupt this list to relay a conversation Neal and I had while setting up the food table for the party.
Scene: We were really, really late. Of course. People were scheduled to begin arriving in about 20 minutes, the food wasn't quite done, the house TOTALLY was not ready, and neither of us were dressed. We'd already polished off a bottle of champagne, though.
Neal: "We have a problem."
Me: "What?"
Neal: "Do we definitely want to set up the food in the living room?"
Me: "Well, yeah. We don't want the party centered in the dirty kitchen, do we?"
Neal: "And do you definitely have to serve this fondue?"
Me: "Don't even- YES. Yes, I do. Any fucking dish that takes me 3 fucking hours to prepare even though it's just melted cheese and stuff will most certainly be served to our guests, even if it tastes like sponges dipped in White-Out."
Neal: "OK, but we don't have an outlet anywhere near where the food table has to be."
Me: "Let me introduce you to an old friend of mine. 'Extension Cord, may I have the pleasure of introducing you to my live-in lover, Ne-'"
Neal: "Dude, shut up. I tried of that, but it's nowhere near long enough."
Pause, while we both sip champagne and think really hard about his one.
Me (having a major, brilliant Martha-Stewart-moment brainstorm): "Do we have any strings of Christmas lights left?"
Neal (and I swear, this is what he says to me): "WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO DO MORE DECORATING NOW!"
After I recovered from my fit of laughter, I explained what I meant.
Me: "Festive AND functional!"
And Neal and I discovered that Christmas lights make lovely decorative extension cords.
Okay, back to the list.
*Someone who owns a cafe compliments the grub.
*People start creating a box of "Suggested Resolutions."
*People keep coming up to you and telling you they're having fun.
*Someone's mom gets high.
*When you leave early from post-party bar-hop, you receive angry, drunken phone calls wondering just where the HELL you are.
*You crack up while reading the New Year's Resolutions from the night before - thinking about how your friends are sarcastic bitches, but you love 'em.
*The next morning, you awake and find a large sticky spot on the floor.
*Your new electric puppy's hind leg is glued to the floor because of said sticky spot.
*All the lights are on, the TV's on, and the music is still pumping.
*Your crock pot has a thick, crusty layer of brown-black cheese burnt to it.
*You promptly turn off all that shit and return to your bed with a smile on your face, and sleep away almost the entire first day of 2002.
P.S. Neither Neal nor I wanted to go anywhere near that crockpot. I was seriously considering just throwing it away and buying a new one. Meanwhile, the foul odor of burnt cheese was permeating our very being. So a few days later, I came home from work and saw that Neal had cleaned it out beautifully.
Me: "Was that hard to clean?"
Neal: "Actually, no. It's non-stick, so the burnt cheese pretty much peeled out in a big clump."
Me: "Hey! So that's how we'll clean it from now on! When we're done with the food, we'll just leave it in there until it burns solid, then peel it out!"
Neal: "No. No. God, no. Get out of the kitchen."
Me: "Not a problem, Amelia Bedelia."
