HOW ENTERTAINING

            Entertaining - as it is defined in the dictionary - means, "To receive as a guest, esp. at one's table; show hospitality to."  Entertaining - as it affects our household, is something decidedly different!

            As the holiday season begins to surround me, I am, for some inexplicable reason, overcome with the urge to throw parties, invite family for extended stays, and just generally do a great many things that I really should know better than to be doing!  My inability to pull off a truly elegant affair (Or even a simple get-together) with aplomb is the stuff of legends.  A family reunion does not find my kin fondly reminiscing about childhood pranks and laughing warmly at inside jokes.  No, those present are much more likely to be snorting, guffawing and rolling around on the floor with hilarity over the latest or largest of my famous 'Fetes that Flopped'.  Oh, a jolly group they are too, as they wipe away tears of merriment and gasp out their personal accounts of attending one of my disastrous to-dos.

            I suppose I really should have caught on early in my party career that I wasn't destined to be a Martha Stewart.  My first attempts at party giving were definitely less than successful.  (Actually the first was a dinner party for 12 - only my husband showed up, and I could tell HE didn't want to be there.  The second was a bridal shower for a friend, only the bride, the groom and her mother showed - the wedding itself was called off the following week.  A sign?  You tell me.)  But I was intrepid, and a bit stubborn.  So I kept right on trying, much to the dismay of my potential guests and the glee of my story telling family.

            Things did improve, sort of.  People began to show up anyway.  But now I actually had to feed these people, and show them a good time, and get them out of my house at a decent hour.  I'm still learning.

            But the story that gets told most often actually involves a party I DIDN'T plan.  It started with my invitation to family for the holidays.  We lived 12 hours away from our nearest relatives and so had invited them to come for Thanksgiving and Christmas whenever they could. (It works out best that way.  We have the most children, and for some reason most of our extended family recoils at the notion of being invaded by a rust covered station wagon that spills forth, after 12 hours of captivity, 4 crummy looking kids (with attitudes) 1 pretty crummy looking dog (with a bladder problem) and two REALLY crummy looking adults (one of whom has PMS and the other of whom has a wife with PMS) and all of the paraphernalia a trip entails.  Go figure.

            This particular year, no one had indicated any interest in making the trip.  So we went ahead with our Thanksgiving dinner as usual.  It was about 2:00 p.m. and we had just finished over indulging.  We suggested to the children that they could do the dishes, and they had retired to the kitchen to engage each other in a fight to the death over who had to clear and who had to scrub.  They were working on expanding their vocabularies by exchanging colorful epithets concerning their various grooming habits and work ethics.  The two younger children were shrieking and racing between the dining room and kitchen grabbing food off the table and either feeding it to the dog or rubbing it in their hair. 

          My husband had removed his shirt and was leaning back in his chair clad in his undershirt and unbuttoned pants, thoughtfully scratching his stomach, while I, more fashionably dressed in my torn sweats and his old flannel shirt was much more animated - hollering threats at the kids in the kitchen and making futile swipes at the ones running by, as I simultaneously attempted to eat everyone's unfinished desserts.

            I had just noticed that all of the children were now in the living room engaged in a thunderous pillow fight. I was pretty sure that the dishes were NOT done, (The fact that they were still on the table was my first clue) and my spouse and I were in the middle of a heated debate on whether or not it would be sacrilegious to teach the kids to play "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" on their armpits, when the door burst open and there in my entry were my parents, two of my sisters, my brother, 2 brothers in law and my sister in law, as well as five of their children.

            Needless to say, I was unprepared.  Not only did the immediate area resemble a nuclear test sight, but, as we weren't planning on company, and it was a holiday, I hadn't made the kids clean up their rooms (which made them eligible for 'blighted area' status) AND I hadn't done any laundry for about a week (with a family of six - well let's just say it is NOT a pretty sight!).  As they slowly entered, carefully picking their way around the debris, no one said a word.  Finally, my Ms Hostess personality kicked in, "I could sure use a drink!" I blurted out, "Does anybody else want one?"  It wasn't exactly what I meant to say, but it did the trick.  Everyone started laughing and the kids resumed their pillow fight, the guys retired to the family room to see if they could harmonize their armpit chorus, and the ladies helped me polish off the wine and the pumpkin cream pie.

            We spent the entire weekend visiting and I didn't get to the laundry until the following Monday.

            You know what?  I looked up 'Entertain' in the dictionary again.  It has another meaning as well -"to hold the attention of agreeably, to divert; amuse."  Hey! Maybe I'm better at the entertaining thing than I thought!  HMMM, maybe I'll plan a party....