hostess with the mostess...

Who doesn't love a hello kitty pirate in capped sleeves?

I swam 40 laps and then threw 40 pots today with 2 band aids encasing the tip of my left index finger. The band aids weren't that troublesome, but they did serve to remind me that I nearly hacked the tip of that finger off on Monday evening and been grossly inept socially. I was making a noodle dish with ginger peanut sauce, basil, cucumbers, carrots, peas and pork. I glazed pottery all day, came home early from the studio with the baby, propped her on the counter, and fed her applesauce and yogurt intermittently while I chopped. I'd given myself a 1/2 hour to prepare dinner for 10...from leftovers. I think I was airing out the house, making sun tea and switching laundry too...

I knew it was a pretty bad cut. It took me 5 minutes to take the dish towel off of my hand to inspect what had happened. During those 5 minutes I was putting together the peanut sauce and mentally weighing my options if I had, in fact cut the tip off of my finger. At one point I figured I'd just go to school with the dish towel on my hand and the baby on my hip and some peroxide and band aids. I'd ask one of the teachers there to clean and dress it. I rejected that because it seemed too dramatic and needy. I've been self-conscious about being 5-10 minutes late to pick the kids up, so the clock was ticking, and I was damned if I was going to let a flesh wound make me late.

I dressed it myself. I'd cut the top half of the nail off, but the pad on the other side of the finger was still intact, so I figured I'd be OK. Of course by the time I got there the band aids were saturated, and I was trying to hold the baby on the other side and hold that finger up so the blood would stop. The "We're at the cement park" sign was up, (It's descriptive but it does give me a little twinge about bringing up my kids in the city) so I walked to the little park just as the posse was leaving. Jack Peter had skinned his knees. He saw me and refused to walk. He started wailing and continued on and off for 2 hours. He kept saying that he couldn't sleep ALL NIGHT LONG; apparently he had to monitor the band aids. He wouldn't straighten his legs at all, so I carried him to the house and dumped him in the green chair. The girls suspected that he was getting special treatment; they started howling, Steel ranting about imaginary aches and pains. I continued making dinner with my left hand in the air.

Tim came in and smoothed everything out. He put a movie on for Jack Peter and kept saying to me, "Stop cooking and sit down!" I finally did and had my first glass of wine.

I polished off close to 2 bottles by the end of the night. It's not a pretty coping mechanism. Our guests came in 2 shifts. The pregnant couple with a 2 year old stayed till kiddie bed time. The late comers were my friend Eu and his 2 sisters. They are 3 from a family of 8. I'm fascinated by people from big families. I was grilling them about their lives. Eu is conspicuously single, so I wanted a little relationship gossip from his sisters..no joy. They are both single too. The younger, Faustina, had said a surreptitious grace before she ate. Couldn't that have reigned me in?

Nope...I had to ask, point blank, how their in-their-30's bodies cope with celibacy. Celibacy has never worked for me. I've always equated it with being unhealthy. The only time I struggled with my weight was during my teen years in boarding school. I hypothesize that puberty is such a nightmare because your body is telling you to reproduce and society is trying to scare you out of having sex. You eat doughnuts and chips all the time and on weekends get drunk enough to ignore what society is telling you not to do. During the week you're panicked, so you eat more doughnuts and chips. Delightful hostess that I am I suggested that they were replacing their body's sexual needs with food. After all, 3 out of the 10 dinner eaters were children, 1 was too drunk to eat, and we went through 2 boxes of pasta and a huge piece of meat...

You'd think that would be a conversation stopper, but they stayed for a while. Maybe I was like a horrible car wreck, and they couldn't turn away. Our nanny came in the next morning. An avid reader of my blog, she said, "Was Tim angry with you for referencing his drunkenness in your blog?" I said, "No but I'm sure he wasn't thrilled last night when I told 3 of our dinner guests that they're fat..." If I'd hacked my finger off after having drunken too much, would I lay off the booze? I AM going to be really careful next time I'm cutting up barbecued pork.