I don't know how we managed this but we had about 30 guests this year, same as last year, with only five repeats. Last year seemed like more maybe because there were more children. This year weather deprived me of my best friend Gethen, despite my having the red and white pipecleaners all ready for jewelery-making and had bought stickers and set out construction paper and crayons. Pynchon discovered the tupperware from which I supplied the cookie trays and commenced stacking, and I showed his mother the treasure trove of more tupperware, so there was more stacking and knocking over. I also speak enough baby-sign to tell a mother when her child has asked for more.
Once again I shoved Booboo in the fruit cellar, and a good thing I did because Pynchon also discovered Pantalaimon. After that I brought out Hamlet and Monty and from downstairs Tigger and Opus and Babe and Ophelia the okapi too. Trish wanted me to wear the Rudolph nose (the battery contact is made when the roundthehead elastic is taut) so I did, and another baby thought that was peculiarly interesting, but he didn't want to wear it. I turned Hamlet into the Red-Nosed Elephant instead.
Friday night AEK organized drinks at Café Star before carpooling to Blossoms of Light before cocoa and cookies at her house. I took a shine to a man at whose unpronounceable last name I stared on a business card and who was gobsmacked when I assessed the origin of his name (Hungarian). "She's really smart," MDD offered, and I was giddy and flirtatious and agreed, but when he and RDC started talking geeky tech talk I flirted with a baby instead.
Thursday was Dot Org's holiday party, and Saturday before my own party I was feeling grumpy and ill and unsociable (but I rallied); and when Sunday dawned just as buttclenchingly cold as the all the days of previous week, I blew off Jack and Diane's party in Beigeland and a neighborhood 50th birthday party and hibernated.
But in the evening when Charenton called to invite us to their New Year's Eve party (as they might have even if I hadn't invited them to our Yule fête), I was sorely tempted.